I don't want to go on and on about this because it inflates these issues and honestly, I'm over them. But I'm throwing this out there just in case any of it applies to anyone who is in the throes of planning. This is looong but I decided it was better than inundating you with tiny posts all week and forcing some of you to be annoyed for multiple days.
Almost every little niggling thing that bothered me on the wedding day can be summed up this way: Not trusting my gut. No one's fault but my own. If you know yourself pretty well, and something feels right to you, do it. Please.
+ I wish I hadn't bothered hiding before the ceremony. We had our "cocktail hour" before the wedding. We opened the bar at 6 pm so that guests could trickle in until 6:45 pm and find their seats before the ceremony. So civilized.
I originally wanted to be out mingling, but I let myself be convinced by everyone that it would be super anti-climatic if people saw the bride before the ceremony. I started to doubt myself. So I hid in a back room and waited, anxiously. I wasn't alone, of course, but I could not relax. Just like I knew I wouldn't. I am not patient. I despise waiting.
I think I would have been calmer, I would have enjoyed the chance to have a little extra time talking to guests and I still think that people would have been excited when I entered the ceremony even if they *gasp* had already seen what I was wearing. I mean, they already knew what I looked like. Hopefully.
+ First looks are a personal preference, not a revelation. The first look didn't do anything special for me or D. I kind of knew that would be the case. I was very glad to get a hug, but it wasn't a life changer and it would have been logistically simpler just to catch a ride over to the venue together. Some people love theirs, so maybe we're cold hearted creatures.
+ I'm sad we didn't have video, but I'm mostly over it. There was no way we could have worked it into the budget so it wasn't really a decision.
+ I'm so glad we splurged on a DJ and a photobooth. We considered tackling each one as a DIY and neither would have been nearly so successful for us and the cost wasn't that crazy. The photobooth made me so happy. We micromanaged the non-dance music in a big way, but our DJ* was wonderful and totally on board and we let him have free rein of the dance portion of the evening which made our lives much simpler.
+ Our wedding planners** were a necessity, given the nature of our wedding (short set up and tear down window, bringing EVERYTHING into the venue ourselves). I couldn't have done it without them.
+ People are exactly who they always are, even at a wedding. We have a portion of the family that is chronically late (it's a cultural thing, not a rudeness thing) and I originally sat them where it would have been easy to slip in quietly. Then we worried that they might notice they were over at the edge and we put them in prominent seats on one side of the aisle. As expected, they were late enough to miss the entire ceremony and it was kind of a bummer to see the empty seats on half of our aisle. Not a big deal, but it would have been easy to avoid.
+ I love our posed family photos and I wish we'd gotten a few more. I kept the list as small as possible because we have a huge family and I wasn't sure how long it would take, but with a very detailed and organized list we knocked it out really quickly and could have had more taken. We honestly only took the family portraits because we knew our parents would want them, but they're some of my favorites from the day.
+ I wish I had done a better job figuring out the serving part of the dessert buffet, but it took up all of 15 minutes of the evening, so whatever. I was really glad we had take out boxes and none of the cake went to waste. I was sad that we didn't pack even more cake for ourselves because I definitely would have eaten it for a week.
+ Annnnnd ... the one that counts - I wish I had asked our wedding planners to order a stack of pizzas once I realized the food service was going to be super slow. It wouldn't have been classy and it probably wasn't necessary, but I do think it might have made me relax a little faster. I couldn't really calm down until I saw that everyone had a chance to eat. The food is the ONLY thing that still bothers me a year later.
If you guys have any questions or deep planning thoughts, leave it in the comments and I'll try not to talk your ear off. I could have written enormous novels on how we went about selecting music, making the invitations, organizing seating, etc. I just hate to overwhelm the blog with something that was a (highly emotional) blip in our lives.
* Brady of PropsFX here in Southern California, who was so sweet and enthusiastic and happy to work with our very eclectic mix of music. I can't recommend him enough. Also, super affordable.
** Angel, Anna and Michelle from Events of Love and Splendor. Angel went to college with one of my dear friends, and she and her team were wonderful.
+ I'm sad we didn't have video, but I'm mostly over it. There was no way we could have worked it into the budget so it wasn't really a decision.
+ I'm so glad we splurged on a DJ and a photobooth. We considered tackling each one as a DIY and neither would have been nearly so successful for us and the cost wasn't that crazy. The photobooth made me so happy. We micromanaged the non-dance music in a big way, but our DJ* was wonderful and totally on board and we let him have free rein of the dance portion of the evening which made our lives much simpler.
+ Our wedding planners** were a necessity, given the nature of our wedding (short set up and tear down window, bringing EVERYTHING into the venue ourselves). I couldn't have done it without them.
+ People are exactly who they always are, even at a wedding. We have a portion of the family that is chronically late (it's a cultural thing, not a rudeness thing) and I originally sat them where it would have been easy to slip in quietly. Then we worried that they might notice they were over at the edge and we put them in prominent seats on one side of the aisle. As expected, they were late enough to miss the entire ceremony and it was kind of a bummer to see the empty seats on half of our aisle. Not a big deal, but it would have been easy to avoid.
+ I love our posed family photos and I wish we'd gotten a few more. I kept the list as small as possible because we have a huge family and I wasn't sure how long it would take, but with a very detailed and organized list we knocked it out really quickly and could have had more taken. We honestly only took the family portraits because we knew our parents would want them, but they're some of my favorites from the day.
+ I wish I had done a better job figuring out the serving part of the dessert buffet, but it took up all of 15 minutes of the evening, so whatever. I was really glad we had take out boxes and none of the cake went to waste. I was sad that we didn't pack even more cake for ourselves because I definitely would have eaten it for a week.
+ Annnnnd ... the one that counts - I wish I had asked our wedding planners to order a stack of pizzas once I realized the food service was going to be super slow. It wouldn't have been classy and it probably wasn't necessary, but I do think it might have made me relax a little faster. I couldn't really calm down until I saw that everyone had a chance to eat. The food is the ONLY thing that still bothers me a year later.
If you guys have any questions or deep planning thoughts, leave it in the comments and I'll try not to talk your ear off. I could have written enormous novels on how we went about selecting music, making the invitations, organizing seating, etc. I just hate to overwhelm the blog with something that was a (highly emotional) blip in our lives.
* Brady of PropsFX here in Southern California, who was so sweet and enthusiastic and happy to work with our very eclectic mix of music. I can't recommend him enough. Also, super affordable.
** Angel, Anna and Michelle from Events of Love and Splendor. Angel went to college with one of my dear friends, and she and her team were wonderful.
All great tips. I wish I had been less conventional during my wedding. I did so much because I thought I was supposed to. If I had been more self confident I could have had it be more 'us'.
ReplyDeleteI think that pressure is always there. It's hard to avoid all the "shoulds" people throw at you during wedding planning!
DeleteGreat post! I am in the midst of planning a wedding and this is the advice you want to hear from people. I am trying to stick to my gut too, because in the end no matter how much you fret about what everyone will think or feel, you're the only one who's going to remember it in the long run, so do it for you and your fiance.
ReplyDeleteBest,
Dawn
Long comment coming... I think we might be kindred spirits! The only things that I didn't love about our wedding (which was about 3 months ago so still pretty fresh in my mind) were the things I didn't just trust my instict on and instead tried to bend to "tradition."
ReplyDeleteLike you guys, we also did drinks before the ceremony and I mingled with our guests which was so nice- it gave me a chance to greet everyone and it started the event off on a really personal yet relaxed note. The one thing I would have done differently is I would not have worn my wedding gown for this part mostly because I felt oddly formal compared to our guests and also because it was so hot out. I wish I had just worn a cute little frock to greet and mingle and put on my gown right before the ceremony.
This brings me to my issues with our first look... I am right there with you- this was not anything special for us and actually felt a little rushed as we got a late start and guests started arriving as we were taking some pictures. In hindsight, I wish I had just started the evening out in a simple dress, changed into my wedding dress right before the ceremony where everyone, including my husband, saw me for the first time in my dress walking down the aisle.
My biggest wish was that I had hired someone to run the day. Our caterer assured us that they would run the entire reception but once the time came the team who was onsite had not been prepped for what we had planned and I spent a fair amount of my time managing the event which wasn't the hugest deal but I really wish that instead of having to tell the DJ we were reading for speaches and cue to caterers that it was time to cut the cake, I could have just been sitting back and enjoying everything.
One of the things I loved most about our wedding day was one that we went back an forth on but ultimately trusted our instrict on- we spent the whole day together- we woke up in our hotel, walked to get coffee, had breakfast just the two of us and then spent the rest of the morning with our bridal party in our hotel suite before we all took a van together to our venue. Once at the venue the guys went swimming and the girls hung out with champagne and snacks before the madness began. I loved how relaxed it was and how much time we actually got to spend together before the big event.
It sounds like you did a better job of trusting yourself than I did! I love that you guys spent the day together. I think that would have felt more natural for us.
DeleteI tell everyone to get a wedding planner if there's any way they can swing it, just because a wedding is such a huge party and managing it takes a lot of effort. I'm so sorry that your caterer didn't handle it as promised!
Honestly, I think many things in our lives deserve a bit of waxing rhapsodic about how things went and what you would do differently.
ReplyDeleteAttending zillions of weddings (and watching TLC's "Four Weddings" with my mom when I'm on vacation) --- they are the best things for helping me think about what I like, what I want, mull over possibilities, see how certain decisions play out in real-wedding time. I would love more introspection about the choices you made and why. Pinterest inspiration for parties and weddings is great, but I find individual stories so much more helpful when it comes down to it.
I should probably have written more about the planning while we were actually planning, because we did put a lot of thought into it and now the idea of going back and trying to write it all up is overwhelming! We were trying to keep the budget reasonable (only semi-succeeded) and to still have everyone able to attend and those two factors dictated most of our big choices.
DeleteWe had a lot of family health issues going on at the same time, which you would think would make it exponentially more horrible, but it actually made it a little less horrible, because we were able to keep the wedding in perspective. It was important to us, but it wasn't the most important thing we were dealing with and we couldn't afford to get too caught up in it.
I'm sure it is overwhelming to think about going back to the decision-making process, and I don't mean to give you a coronary doing so! :) But my vote is, if you'd like to write about some of these decisions, go for it! I'm definitely interested, and it seems like others are as well.
DeleteHa! No, I didn't feel like you were pressuring me at all! I'm touched that you like reading the posts. It just makes me wish I'd written it in the moment, because the motivation totally disappears after the wedding. I think that's probably pretty common. I'll write more if I think of anything useful!
DeleteRachel, my wedding is in a month, and - for what it's worth - I'd LOVE to hear more about the nitty gritty details! I don't know that there's much I can change now, but I enjoy reading about your wedding and all the planning!
ReplyDeleteThis makes me wish I'd written a little more while we were planning! I probably won't go back and write everything up in posts because the idea is overwhelming, but if you (or anyone else) has anything specific to ask, I'm happy to answer in the comments! I'm just not even sure where I would start!
DeleteRachel, thanks SO much for this post. I am in the throes of wedding planning right now and am finding it really hard to strike that balance between what we want and what it feels like we should want because so many before us have done so. It's invaluable to get these kinds of "lessons learned" from someone I can relate to! I'm setting this post aside for me to reference as we're making these decisions!
ReplyDeleteGlad it's helpful! Good luck with the planning (and have fun!).
DeleteThe best thing that my husband I did when planning our wedding was having an overall budget and not a per item/service budget. We weren't bothered with things like rentals being more expensive than we thought, or my dress being cheaper than we thought so long as we stayed within the set budget. That being said, if something was outrageous we costed it out through several suppliers and vendors.
ReplyDeleteI agree, the things that stress you out before the wedding don't matter. People only remember the over all experience.
My wedding is still the best day I've ever had.
That is good advice! We didn't really have a budget (terrible, right?) just a range we were comfortable spending. I'm always confused by how people are able to set a line item wedding budget if they haven't planned a wedding before. The only reason I had any idea of what things cost was because I'd helped with my sister's wedding a couple years prior. And even then, I was totally surprised by some things.
DeleteRachel,
ReplyDeleteThank you for this post. My boyfriend and I have just begun to think of what we would like our wedding day to look like and it's overwhelming to say the least..and he hasn't even proposed yet! :)
Your post helped put into perspective what many people (I'm close to 27 dresses in the bridesmaid count) loose sight of - it's about you and your husband. Too many of us are swayed by the expectations of others. When the years pass we have to be happy with (most of) the decisions that we made and find joy in the memories that are created on that special day.
My question is: how did you both really discover what you wanted your day to look like? What questions were you asking? I feel like I know myself pretty well, but when it comes to the wedding I just keep drifting towards the idea of elopement (which I'm perfectly ok with doing, but then who to include, if anyone??). I've never had a "dream wedding" planned in my head and don't want to spend a lot of money on a wedding. Any suggestions/words of wisdom would be so greatly appreciated.
Hi, Jessica! That's a good question and I know there are a lot of different schools of thought. Neither of us had any wedding dreams, but we both wanted a full on wedding. We were basically starting from a blank slate.
DeleteWe sat down and talked about how we pictured our wedding and then sorted through the common details. Imagine your wedding day - how do you want to feel and who do you picture being there with you? I think those are the most basic questions and they can define the whole thing.
We both have large families that are a big part of our lives and so we knew from the beginning that we weren't going to have a small wedding. We decided our priorities were 1. Having everyone there and hosting them graciously 2. Not going into debt 3. Having it feel like a low stress big dinner party (we both wanted an evening wedding with dinner and dancing)
We looked into pretty much every option that we could that covered those three things. It would have been a lot easier if we cut the guest list or upped the budget even more or changed the time of day. My sister had an afternoon wedding so I knew it was much less expensive and still lovely. But those three things were critical to us and all our other decisions stemmed from them.
We kept everything else loose (date, decor, colors, food) until we found a venue that we could work with and then we started brainstorming the fluffy pretty stuff. Those decisions were inspired by our venue, which was vaguely spanish style, which worked with D's heritage and our love of tacos. It was also more casual than other places we'd looked at, which drove our decision to use a taco truck and the space limitations meant that we had everyone sitting at their dinner tables during the ceremony, which drove our choice of layout for the tables. It's all connected!
I guess what I'm saying (in an incredibly long winded way) is to start with the absolute nuts and bolts of how you want your wedding to make you feel and then STAY FLEXIBLE on everything else until you have a space. Trying to force a preconceived wedding into a specific venue can be really difficult and expensive.
If your heart is going with eloping, DO IT! But if you're tempted to elope just because planning the wedding seems like a pain (this is how we felt, several times during the process) then make sure you talk it out before going with that option. There are as many ways to get married as there are people, I think.
Thank you so much for your response! I really appreciate it. We will just have to start at the nuts and bolts beginning :) Love your blog - thank you for all the inspiration!
DeleteLove this post, and all of the others about your wedding.
ReplyDeleteWe are having our wedding in Mexico. We rented out a boutique hotel right on the beach. By some miracle it is completely affordable. I haven't been planning to hire a DJ because we will only have about 30 people, mostly family. I'm also fearful we'll get an earful of reggaeton if we hire someone there! :) That said, I would KISS YOUR FACE if you shared your playlists!
Yay! That sounds amazing, Kati!
DeleteOkay, I'll check and see if I have our playlists (they must be somewhere because I know we gave them to our DJ) but I definitely have the final list of what actually got played. Our DJ sweetly provided it to us after the wedding.
Here is the process we came up with, because it might actually be more helpful to you than our lists, which are really specific and maybe not to everyone's taste.
We did this in the car, while driving back and forth from LA to OC during all the wedding planning. It only works if you have use iTunes in some form, but you could adapt it. And while I sent everything off to our DJ, it would be really easy to just set up a playlist on your own this way.
I would flip through D's iPod, because he is amazing and keeps ALL our music on there, not just his.
I'd read down the line of artists, we'd pause whenever we hit one that we particularly loved or wanted included (this weeds out my collection of weird angsty girl music from the 90s). I'd make a note of the artist.
Then we would go in and start skimming through the tracks for our selected artists and choose two, MAX THREE, tracks from each one. We figured that we didn't want it to sound like we were just playing a CD, so we couldn't pick too many songs from the same source. NOTE - we were also screening for how the songs would flow in our wedding. As much as we might love Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, it was not going to work without sounding jarring.
Once we had the list of songs we decided where they fit. We were looking for cocktail/dinner hour, the ceremony, and the parent dances and money dance.
We sent all those options to our DJ, along with a thumb drive with some of our more random choices as music files, because they weren't all things we would expect a DJ to have on hand and we were SO last minute that we felt bad asking him to track them all down himself (which he would have, I'm sure, because he was really nice).
We let him have free rein on the dance music, because we figured current top 40 would be our best bet to really get people dancing and we didn't want to have to deal with it. We only sent him a few songs that we wanted to be incorporated, and we gave him some guidelines based on our preferences (NO DISCO! NO CLASSIC ROCK!).
The day before the wedding D suggested that we use Home by Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros as our last song of the night and it ended up being one of the most important choices we made, musically. It honestly reminds me more of our wedding than our first dance song. I can remember that exact feeling every time I hear it now. So good.
Hope that helps! I'll pop back in and leave links if I can find our specific playlist suggestions.
Rachel, I'm a bit behind responding....but thank you! This is so helpful. I love that you put thought into your last song. That's something I probably would have overlooked. I'd still love the playlists if you came across them, but in the meantime I'm definitely going to be doing a massive iPod shuffle and selecting things that way. Thanks again.
Deletei loved reading this post about your wedding! I'm no where near ready to start thinking about these kind of things (still have 2 more years of law school, and a boyfriend thats less than 6 months fresh ;)) but i will for sure make my way back here when that time comes! :)
ReplyDeletereading your food mishap was particularly enlightening - things are def. always not going to go perfectly, but that happens. and you just deal.
and despite all your mishaps, the food truck route sounds great - but with compostable plates, cups, etc. :) im amazed at how easy it is! all of the events at the law school now use compostable materials and its AWESOME.
We looked into that, but couldn't find a compost service to dispose of them! My parents compost heap was too small. Since compostable items don't compost in landfills, it's important to make sure you know those items aren't just ending up in a dumpster at the end of the night. We didn't have a way to get them to actually compost so we just ended up using the paper goods that came with our food. It did make me a little sad but there wasn't an alternative we could make work logistically without spending a fortune.
DeleteWe at least were able to set up recyling bins for the drink bottles and cans and those were well used.
Rachel-
ReplyDeleteThank-you so so so much for this post! I’m in the midst of planning, and it’s so great to hear your personal experiences like this. I’m especially thankful for your DJ info (we’re currently stuck in that dept…). I also read that additional comment you posted regarding more DJ details (it was just what I needed to read). While we’ve nailed some bigger things (photobooth, caterer, photographer/videographer)…I’m still stuck on THE DRESS. Do you have any pointers or places you recommend for the dress hunt? I’m more up your alley in terms of the look of the dress- something simple, not poofy, or not overdone…which is why I ask!!
Thanks again for the fabulous post!! So freaking helpful!
Hi, Rox! So glad it's helpful!
DeleteI'm sadly not your best resource for dress hunting. I'm not a great shopper in general, and I really hate high pressure shopping. I had seen the Saja dresses online, really liked the look of one in particular, made an appointment to try them on at a local Bella Bridal, tried on 4 dresses and purchased the original one I'd liked. It was perfectly fine and very comfortable and I looked like myself. The only tiny regret I have is that I didn't get some little sleeves added. I bought extra fabric, but it was just something I didn't get around to figuring out.
Oh, I also ordered a couple options from J. Crew and tried them on at home and they were pretty and simple. The silk of my Saja dress was much nicer (so floaty!) and it won me over.
So, J.Crew and Saja both have simple dresses. It's also worth looking at some of the higher end sites (net-a-porter and shopbop are what I'm thinking of in particular) and doing a search for white dresses because sometimes they have great options.
I would advise putting a little more effort into it than I did if you have the time. I was overwhelmed with actual life stuff and the dress was less important. I'm glad I saved the time by not bothering much, but I'm a little sad that I didn't at least explore a couple more options. And sometimes I wonder if I could have found something even better. I'm not sure I would have, but it might have been nice to know I tried!
Aaah! I miss you! I'm reading a few months ago. Sorry, my English is not very good :-) I'm speaking French and I'm living in Belgium. I love to read you! And your beautiful pictures! See you soon...
ReplyDeleteClover
Hi i love your post!! Im in the process of planning and im wondering how you managed not to kill yourself while you planned the wedding? especially with seating charts, its such a pain!!
ReplyDeleteThanks so much!!
Monica
Hi, Monica! Ha! I'm not sure what advice to give for that. We were stressed planning the wedding, but we worked well as a team and that helped a lot, because I never felt isolated or like I was taking on this huge thing on my own. We tried to set aside time to work on wedding stuff and make it pleasant. When we had big discussions to hash out, we'd go to a bar, get a couple drinks and just talk, brainstorm and take notes. It made it feel like we were getting a break but we were actually doing the work. I've said it before, but we were dealing with pretty serious family health issues at the same time, which actually took a lot of pressure off the wedding, even though it also meant we had a lot less free time for planning. The wedding can be planned relatively efficiently - it doesn't have to take over your life!
ReplyDeleteThe seating charts were a total pain, but so necessary!
We started by splitting people into groups. His dad's family, his mom's family, my dad's family, my mom's family, our college friends, our high school friends, our graduate school friends.
The we tried to keep those general groups of people together and interwove them where it worked out okay (cousins are fine being mixed in with friends, because they're usually the same age). We were super lucky because despite having divorced families we don't have anyone who hates each other and has to be separated. If you do, I really feel for you, because that would make it harder.
We did our seating chart in AutoCAD, which is not at all useful to the general population (unless you are marrying an architect!). Martha Stewart has a method using colored post it notes, I believe, where you use the different colors to code the different groups of people (we did that, in AutoCAD, makes it much easier to see if you are accidentally sticking someone in where they don't know anyone).
You are never going to make every single person perfectly happy with a seating chart, but ideally you can get everyone somewhere they are comfortable. And remember, they are all adults, they can deal with it if they don't get to sit next to their best friend for a couple hours. And everyone will feel free to shift around as the evening progresses anyways.
Good luck!
Thank you so much!! that was very helpful!! :)
DeleteThis is such a great post! I'm not married yet but i am an event planner. It makes me really happy to hear "wedding planners/event planners are necessities". I believe in the same view. A bride and groom should always enjoy themselves, there shouldn't be anything they need to worry about or to take care of. It's their day to celebrate with love ones. Leave the "worrying" part for a professional to do. That is why this profession exist! Thank you for being so honest with us with your thoughts :) You're wedding is magical!
ReplyDeleteHi Rachel! I began to type my comment and then re-read Jessica R's post and she summed up my situation completely. Thank you for such a thoughtful response back. I keep thinking that I want the marriage, not the wedding and I am finding it difficult to juggle the two. Your priorities when planning seem to match our thoughts, and you were happy with the outcome, so I will take comfort knowing it can be done!
ReplyDeleteSometimes when people ask about our plans and such, and I explain our thoughts, I receive push back from the people listening. Maybe it is because they want the typical wedding or that they themselves had a full out wedding, but I feel as if they take offense that we aren't going that route. Did you ever run into that? I feel myself more and more overwhelmed as people start inputting their suggestions/feelings. (I'm sorry to hear you hid before your wedding! But I can see how influential people can be!)
Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts! It really was very helpful!
Honestly, I found that the best way to get people to not offer too many opinions was to not talk about the wedding too much. We kept it vague with people who didn't really need to know what was going on.
DeleteFor close family members, we sat down with them early on and told them we'd be doing our own thing, but that if they had any traditions that particularly mattered to them, we'd try to incorporate them. People care about the weirdest things! My dad really believes that it isn't a wedding without cake and told me he doesn't like square cakes. Okay. That one was easy. D's mom cried when he told her we weren't going to be doing the money dance, so we gave in and while it wasn't my favorite thing to do, it was fine and it made her really happy. We had a little push back from older members of the family who were worried that it was going to be too casual or that the seating was weird or that a food truck was just not wedding-y. Those things we just shook off. No point in arguing about something you have no intention of budging on.
It probably helps that I'm notoriously stubborn, so most of our family members gave up trying to convince me to do anything years ago. : )
So, don't worry about people who aren't critical and avoid giving them too much of a chance to air their opinions. Take the opinions of critical people into account but don't let it dictate anything major.
Good luck! The family stuff can be difficult but it's a great time to practice presenting a united front to your families.
Thanks for your post, Rachel. My wedding is in two months and weirdly I feel like I have nothing to do for it right now! Did you ever find this was the case - stuck between having sorted out the big things and not being able to achieve the last minute things (like flowers)? I find it quite frustrating.
ReplyDeleteI love that you guys went out for drinks whenever you discussed big wedding things, that would definitely alleviate some of the anxiety :) I might suggest this to the fiance next time.
I guess we're kind of lucky because although we live in New Zealand, my family are in England and his are in Argentina, so we had a great excuse to invite very few people/family! We're not close to our extended families but I'll be sad on the day that my eldest sister can't come from England because she has a baby. We'll be getting a friend to hold a laptop up so she can see the ceremony - cue potential technical difficulties. One issue is that my family don't speak Spanish, his family don't speak English and as the dinner party is very small there might not be much banter going on! But as you say, they're all adults and will learn to get along - maybe even better than if they could understand each other :)
How did you feel about the timings on the day? I'm worried ours is going to be long (from 2pm til late) and people will get bored. Thanks again for posting!
That's good! It means you scheduled everything well!
DeleteSadly, I don't have any advice because I wasn't ever in that position. I ended up a little behind my schedule and had to cut a few projects in order to not go crazy.
If you have the free time, make sure everything is super organized (I had a list of boxes with contents and where it was all going and when, not sure if that applies to your wedding) and do as much prep for the last minute tasks as possible. Then relax!
We had two languages at our wedding but most people were functional in english, so we did the ceremony entirely in english and just did spanish translations for the menus and text. It's tough when there's a real language barrier but hopefully your families will find a way to communicate. People can sometimes muddle through if they're excited enough.
Our wedding was pretty short. Drinks at 6, ceremony at 6:45, last song at 11:00, out by midnight. Our dinner was prolonged, we had the photobooth (which was a huge help) and we had dancing, so no one seemed bored. We did have plenty of older family members who left earlier, but that's to be expected.
I think a 2 pm start time is lovely, and I'm sure if you're feeding everyone dinner later that the party will go on well into the evening. Just make sure there's plenty of food and drink and something for people to do if you want them to stick around late.
Thanks so much Rachel! I know for a fact I can't be that organised yet so I better get onto it before I'm freaking out last minute :) and thanks for making me think about the menu, I just asked fiancé to translate it on the back, I hadn't even thought of that!
DeleteHi Rachel- It's so nice to hear you write this! I've been married for just 3 months now and it is funny to feel it 'fading' a bit- we spend SO much time planning for it, and it is such a big day, but it's just a day- hah! It almost makes me feel silly over how much thought and time I put into it.
ReplyDeleteI have to agree with you about the family photos- I thought that I wouldn't care less about those, but we got them back, and I wish we would have done more! We were married in a park at sunset and the photos turned out gorgeous. Also, I thought about those groupings for ages, and I still left people out! It definitely makes a difference to have input, because I basically planned everything alone.
My one piece of advice for other brides is to make an itinerary. The one thing that bothered me the most (throughout the entire planning process) was the amount of questions that everyone kept asking me. I know they were always trying to help, but it always made me so anxious I couldn't stand it! I knew I didn't want to feel that way on the big day, so... I made an 8 (OMG, I know!) page itinerary and distributed to everyone involved in pictures / other aspects. I had a few people who thought I was crazy, but I didn't worry about a single thing that day. And when someone asked me a question, I just said, "What does the itinerary say?" That way I didn't have to make any decisions!
I suppose I could ramble on about everything, but I wanted to say that i totally agree with trusting your gut on things. At least that way you aren't disappointed in something later on, because you'll know that you trusted yourself!
Congratulations, newlywed!
DeleteThe itinerary is key! I was lucky because our planners drew one up for us, so I didn't have to worry about it. But it helps the day run smoothly, especially if you're dealing with a large number of people.
Happy One Year!
ReplyDeleteYour wedding seemed very lovely! I completely understand about the regrets and not trusting your gut. My wedding (6 months ago) didn't go as I had hoped and I wished I hadn't tried to please everyone and instead fought more on things because in the end it didn't feel like us at all. My fiance was not at all involved during the whole planning process and only added exponentially to the last minute stress of preparations. The venue manager quit 2 weeks before the wedding and the new manager changed the layout and vision of the reception. After giving in, having her follow my floor plans (also done in Autocad--I even made a site plan) was an ordeal. I decided to splurge on a planner and dj (even though I couldn't even afford a florist) but they were a disappointment and not very professional. The planner and her gazillion assistants didn't put out half of the decorations/graphics I had prepared and really lacked attention to detail. The highlight (thankfully) was that my ceremony musician, caterer and photographer really pulled through for us and were the only ones that didn't need hand-holding. When I think back on it I still get really irked to this day. At least we have beautiful photos...I would not have wanted a video documenting that day.
Oh my god. Hon, that sounds so stressful! I'm so sorry that you had to deal with all that and I hope the disappointments keep fading and the highlights keep getting stronger as time goes on.
DeleteHi Rachel, love your blog, been stalking it for quite some time now. Thank you so much for this post! Very timely, I got married a week ago (the 15th), and it's helpful to know that some of the less important things fade. Mostly our wedding was wonderful, and we miraculously kept it feeling like "us" despite the push backs from family and friends about not going with tradition. Mostly I just wanted to say thank you. Really love your blog and your thoughts, esp: "People are exactly who they always are, even at a wedding." So true. :)
ReplyDeleteCongrats, nearly newly-wed! I'm so glad that you guys enjoyed your day.
Deletegurrl, for future reference... when the party starts at 5, you've got to tell the mexicans it starts at 3.
ReplyDeletexoxoxox
Yeah, we knew it was going to happen. I'm not sure why I let D convince me that the seating as we originally planned it wasn't okay. It would have made so much more sense.
DeleteMy wedding is in 10 days and this post couldn't have been more timely! It is great to hear what worked and didn't. Thanks so much for sharing!
ReplyDeleteOne more thing - I'm basically stealing your idea for centerpieces so if you have any tips on how to get the succulents in the tall glass vases, etc. Or any tools you needed or trouble shooting you figured out that would be extremely helpful! I'm thinking of using tiny little pebbles, did you use soil or sand at all as well?
ReplyDeleteThanks so much!!
Gah! So sorry - I didn't get to this in time. I hope your wedding was wonderful!
DeleteFor anyone else who was wondering, we used a coarse sand and we just stuck the succulents in there with no real tools. We did enlist the help of my nieces, so the tiny hands were useful for the skinny vases!
We didn't plant the succulents at all - just popped them in the dry sand, which we bought at a landscaping supplier here in LA.
Awesome advice! I'm getting married next year, so things like provide take out boxes for cake buffet and get more family photos are going on my list of things to do. Thank you!
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