I'm engaged! / Wedding advice, please!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
61

Congratulations! I’m currently a few months out from marrying Acid Lamp, and what has made it a relatively relaxed experience for the both of us is not being terribly obsessed with minutiae. Think of it like a big party and it’ll make things simpler. Do you really need special napkins or fancy toasting glasses or other frivolous things? Not really, and they’ll only make you stressed in the long run.

As for the officiant business, my boss is marrying us, as she’s a public notary and a pretty cool lady. See if anyone you know and like is legally allowed to marry people in your state and go from there.

What cut down on cost for us was looking around when it came to venues. In our region, the norm is about $100/plate plus exorbitant fees for the space rental. We’re significantly under this cost* and have fewer costs for things like the floral fees** because we picked a place that’s naturally beautiful for the time of the year we’re getting married. Look around, get a feel for what you like and what you want to do, and see whether it’ll work with your budget. If so, go for it.

Don’t stress too much about details, and don’t let anyone else stress you out about it either. The proximity of my future MIL and her ideas about tradition*** has been the majority of my stress throughout planning, and this includes dealing with my mother’s death two months before booking the wedding venue.

Our biggest expenses are photography and the food/alcohol; one is for the enjoyment of the guests, and one is for us to have some really high quality images to look at while reminiscing about a day that means a lot to us. It is, however, just one day and not the highlight of our lives together.

Lastly, I’ve had to compromise a lot to make other people happy**** in this process. There will be things that you think you’re going to be firm on that won’t be so important in the end. Pick your battles, and stand your ground for what’s important to you. Other people’s feelings count when it comes to the wedding, but not nearly as much as they think that they do. Make the day memorable to you, but not so “out there” for your guests as to make most of them uncomfortable. Remember, you may have a grandparent or some other relative who won’t understand why you’re not doing it their way and will be upset no matter what; either cushion the blow a little or just ignore their reaction to it.

[sup]*I do wonder how long this will be true, as I keep getting demands worded as requests from the in-laws on the food and it’s driving up the cost. Luckily, they’ve mentioned they’ll pay the difference.
**I’m doing my own flowers and am not going to do ceremony decorations beyond bouquets and boutonnieres for the appropriate parties.
***I like to “riff on” tradition; I’ll do some traditional stuff, but I’m generally more likely to add a twist or only hint at the tradition behind the gesture. I’m pretty modern and wasn’t raised in a “traditional American” family, so some of the nuances of American wedding traditions are new to me or go over my head.
****That’s not entirely true. It was more to keep people from crying and whining and being asses about it for the rest of the time planning the event.[/sup]

62

If you consider doing this, go through your entire guest list (especially the males), and ask yourselves the question “Is this the type of person to take pictures of his genitalia as a joke?” If the answer for any of them isn’t a resounding “NO!”, then expect lots of pictures of genitalia, and don’t send your maiden aunt to pick up the prints.

63

Alternatively, your male guests may need to be made aware that said pictures would result in the slow and painful removal of said genitalia.

64

I’m sure it’s been posted already but, best entrance ever:

65

I don’t know if there is an etiquette thingie about handwriting envelopes, so I may be about to cause fainting fits in the very rule-conscious.

We invited about 600 people to our wedding. (That was mostly relatives and a few friends. We both have, um, prolific families.) That, spanky, is a lot of addresses to write. So I bought clear labels that could be run through a laser printer, and found a lovely handwriting-like font. Then, when I printed up the labels for the wedding invitations - in alphabetical order, of course - I printed an extra set for the thank you notes at the same time. It prevented terrible writer’s cramp, and there wasn’t any question about whether we’d written the thank you note for a particular person/family. If the label was gone, it was done. It saved us a lot of time.

66

On the other hand, I think a very fair punishment would be having that photo posted online with the rest of the wedding pictures and the caption, “Watch out for Uncle Joe when he gets into the Scotch.”

My mom sent me that a few weeks ago, shortly before my fiance proposed. I love it, except it does run rather long.

And the question of the officiant has been resolved! My brother knows both of us well and writes with a strong and poetic tone. He’s visiting for a week and accepted our request to act as officiant.

'Nother question, for the brides: is it important for my maid of honor to live nearby? My best and oldest friend, whom I would love to have as my bridesmaid, lives exactly halfway across the country and couldn’t make it out to Boston until a week or two before the wedding.

67

My matron of honor lives three states away and I didn’t see her – or her dress – until the night before. Of course, she was my only attendant, and I basically told her the general color scheme and she bought an appropriate dress. If you trust your maid’s taste, I’d say it’s not that important, except she’ll miss out on a lot of the fun stuff.

68

IMO, hand-writing the addresses on the envelopes is not important. Hand-writing the **contents **of the thank-you notes is.

It depends how involved you need the maid of honor to be; ultimately, it’s about picking the person **you **want. I’ve had several friends with cross-country maids of honor and best men.

69

No, it’s not important. One of my bridesmaids also lived across the country. She was still able to help plan the shower with some help from local people. The shower was held about three days before the wedding after she arrived. I also kept her in the loop by asking her advice on certain things, which she appreciated. They wore their own black cocktail dresses, so that wasn’t a problem either. What really matters is having your friends by your side on your wedding day. :slight_smile:

70

No. My sister’s entire wedding party was from out of town, and I (her matron of honor) and her maid of honor (she had 2 of us) lived across the country. I did ask her to find and reserve a shower location herself since it was much easier for her to do than for me, and it restricted her shower date to two days before the wedding, but we took care of the rest of it. And I couldn’t go wedding dress shopping with her, which was annoying, but she found a pretty one anyway :slight_smile:

71

Absolutely agree.

72

This is so awesome! Congratulations! I guess I would only have two small pieces of advice for you.

#1: Financially, don’t break the bank on the wedding. We had a beautiful church wedding for $300. We didn’t have the money to spend on an extravagant wedding, and probably wouldn’t have spent it if we had it. But our wedding was nice and memorable, and we’re still just as married as we would have been spending more money.

#2: Enjoy the day, and don’t sweat the small stuff. I know this from experience. On our wedding day, my SIL was walking down the aisle when the church pipe organ died. Our organist was in the middle of playing the Trumpet Voluntary: I was in the back of the church, and I heard… “Duh duh duh duhduhduh dooowwwwww…” and the music ground to a halt. My SIL was wondering what to do, so she just stood there. My husband said, “Well, she (meaning me) wanted it to be memorable.” I’m freaking out. I’m back there, going, “What HAPPENED?” My Matron of Honor said, “Don’t worry about it. They’ll fix it.”

The officiant, who happened to be our Minister of Music, said, “We’re experiencing technical difficulties. Please stand by.” This was his first wedding actually officiating: he had sung at many, but never actually did this before. The organist turned off the organ, walked across the sanctuary, hit the reset button, then came back and restarted the organ. He then started playing the piece right where he left off. Then, a few bars later, it happened again. He turned off the organ at that point and played the rest of the service on the piano.

This required a few changes. The Wedding March, which my husband wanted but I didn’t, sounded really pretty played on the piano. When we lit the Unity candle, he was supposed to play “We Are One in the Bond of Love” on the chimes so the neighborhood would hear it. Well, the neighborhood couldn’t hear the piano, but it was beautiful. For the recessional, I wanted Widor’s Toccata: but that just does not sound as majestic on the piano (if it can be played on the piano at all) so Bach’s Ode To Joy was substituted.

We went to a cousin’s wedding a few years later. We were all cracking up when the organist started playing the Trumpet Voluntary. Everybody else in the church thought we were nuts. :slight_smile:

So, it’s your day. Work hard up until that day: but on that day, relax and let it happen. Nothing else will matter except that you are making a lifelong commitment to the one you love.

73

Since you’ve said you want to do your photos before the wedding, let me tell you about the schedule for my wedding…

We got married at an outdoor place where we had the wedding and reception all at the same place. We also had a ceremony planned with a little bit of “audience participation” - when we said our vows, we also asked the attendees to promise to support our marriage, and we had the assemblage pronounce us husband and wife, instead of the officiant. And after the ceremony, we did a “reverse receiving line” - the audience all lined up along the path between the ceremony site and the dance floor, and we went down the line talking to them, instead of the other way around. But all those things meant that we needed some time to explain to them all what was happening.

So we did sort of a “pre-reception.” Before the daytime ceremony, we served bagels and mimosas to the guests, and let them wander around looking at some displays we had put together of our family trees, etc. They also all signed the very wide matting of a framed photo of us, instead of doing a guest book. (That photo is the first nonliving thing I would take out of the house in case of fire.) In the mean time, we did our photos. Many guests came and stood behind the photographer and took candids of the posed shots (we had confirmed that the photographer was OK with this). As we were wrapping up the photos, the officiant gathered together all the attendees and explained their roles during the ceremony.

Then the guests all climbed the hill and took their seats at the ceremony site, and we processed up and had the wedding. Afterwards, we did the reverse receiving line thing, and immediately opened the dancing and the food. It was a heck of a party.

One big advantage of the “pre-reception” that I only realized after the fact is that even the members of DH’s family who are chronically, seriously late made it to the ceremony.

74

Think about how you, the groom and all the parents, concerned aunts etc etc, are going to be feeling before the ceremony. It’s likely this mix of emotion isn’t going to make for brilliant photo’s. It’s hard to smile when you’re that nervous. Just get the service out the way, so the big nerve wrecking part is over, then have your photo’s done then, and before the reception.
Don’t leave the official photo’s too late, the sooner they’re done, the more presentable people will be; you don’t want photo’s of ‘Uncle Jim’ plastered on scotch, or ‘little cousin Timmy’ with his dirty trousers where he’s fell in dirt.

The Wedding Nazi should be your photographer. She wants the people in the photo’s so it’s her responsibility. Especially if you’re paying for her services (I dunno if you are, if she’s a friend).

75

What a great idea! I also like what my friends did for theirs–they had a book made up that featured lots of pictures of the two of them, family, and friends, where people could then pick any page to sign.