Okay people, things might seem a little "know-it-all-ish" and preachy on this blog the next few days. I have a goal to get rid of my backlog of draft blogs by publishing one post a day until they are all done. I want them out of the way before the baby gets here. It's basically nesting only in online form. (I'm doing plenty of offline nesting too.)
Today you get treated to a post that is so old I forgot I was working on it. I think I originally started this for my friend Katie who is planning a wedding. Apparently I went to all the trouble of finding and uploading all these photos before I ran out of steam. I might as well finish it up.
To put it simply, I loved my wedding. I loved planning it, I loved being a part of it, and I love remembering it. I also love sharing the things that I did for my wedding with other people. So here are some things that worked for me. Maybe they will help you as you plan your own wedding or as you help someone plan theirs.
If you're not having fun you are missing the point
This is my number one rule for just about anything. But I came up with it in relation to my own wedding. Its so easy to get caught up in wanting to impress people, or have everything be "perfect." But weddings are ultimately about two people starting their lives together. Everything else is just fluff.
Pick a date that works for you
You will go crazy, absolutely crazy if you try to find a wedding date that works for every member of your family. Brandon and I decided that we would pick a date that worked for us and our parents. If someone else had a conflict - then that was just too bad.
We even went so far as to reserve the temple before we became officially engaged. When we announced our engagement we told everyone, "We are getting married on this date, we'd love for you to be there, but if you can't we understand and we still love you."
Pay for it yourself as much as possible
I wanted complete creative control over my wedding. The best way to ensure that I wouldn't have someone else forcing their ideas on me was to pay for as much as possible by myself. That way if someone said, "oh you should really do ______" I could say, "Do you want to pay for that?"
Our parents did pay for things too, but we tried to keep those things to a minimum.
I loved the fact that I was able to pay for my dress, veil, shoes, and jewelry with cash - all while listening to another customer beg her daddy for money.
Unless you have an unlimited budget you are going to need to sit down and decide what is the MOST important thing to YOU (and your fiance).
I wanted to have a big party type reception with a lot of dancing. Brandon and I spent a lot of time putting together CD of music that we wanted played.
On the other hand I didn't care about spending money on a photographer. I knew my dad could take pictures that I would like. And I figured I would feel more comfortable with him than anyone else.
Involve your fiance in the plans
Girls, I know you have tons of ideas for what is going to happen at your wedding, but you need to at least talk to your fiance and get his input too. You two are about to become a family. And as a family you are going to celebrate lots of holidays, birthdays, and other special events together. Believe it or not, you don't have the same idea for how those things should go. Planning your wedding together is good practice for when you need to plan things as a married couple.
Looking back at my wedding my absolute favorite thing was that I was able to plan it with Brandon. When we got engaged we had no idea how well we worked together. As we planned out the details of our wedding we discovered that we have an awesome synergy together. One of us could have and idea that was pretty good, but when the two of us started talking it over we could turn it into an amazing idea.
I fell in love with Brandon all over again on the day that I first showed him the cultural hall where I wanted to have our reception. I told him a lot of my ideas. Then he stood in the middle of the room and turned to me with an excited look on his face. He said, "Yeah, we can do this!"
I had major issues going ring shopping with Brandon. I never could do it. I knew he couldn't afford much, and I didn't want him to feel bad that he couldn't get me an expensive ring. I just wanted HIM I didn't care about the ring.
I don't know how much he ended up spending on my ring, but I know it isn't much. And that makes me happy. I'm glad I don't have $2000 sitting on my left hand. I like that I feel comfortable washing dishes or camping while wearing my wedding ring.
I bought Brandon's ring on Overstock.com for less than $100. It was a Tungsten ring which meant it stayed shiny no matter what happened to it. It also could be dropped on the floor and not break at all. Unfortunately it wasn't "loss-proof" and Brandon buried it on accident. But since it had been so inexpensive it wasn't a huge financial loss.
This was a must for my wedding. Since I was pulling double duty as the bride and the wedding coordinator I didn't want to have to deal with setting up the reception right after getting married.
Brandon and I were married on Thursday May 17. We took pictures outside of the temple and then went to his house where his parents hosted a backyard BBQ luncheon (also a really good idea.) Then we just went and checked into our hotel.
The next day we had a relaxing morning and then showed up at his Stake Center at 2:00 to start setting up. When the reception was over we left and went back to our hotel.
If you can't split up the day of the ceremony and the reception then I suggest you set up your reception the night before. We did that for my sister Emily's wedding. There is no way we would have had enough time between the ceremony and the reception to get everything set up.
You can't do it all. You need to Delegate, Delegate, Delegate. My mom made skirts for the bridesmaids, my mother in law made the cake, my dad made some wedding slide shows, and my siblings helped with a lot of the set up. In addition to family members we had lots of people who helped stay to clean up. One of Brandon's family's home teachers came and helped with a lot of the clean up. I wasn't there, but my dad says that he was a great helper because he hadn't been involved with the rest of the wedding so he was "fresh." My parents made sure to get someone "fresh" to help clean up at Emily's wedding.
Honestly, the cake was not one of my priorities. I couldn't see the point in spending so much money for flour and sugar. My original plan was to get a nice sheet cake or something similar from a grocery store bakery and put a very nice cake topper on it. But then I found out that my mother in law made wedding cakes. She could make a beautiful one for the same cost as buying a sheet cake so I had her make one. And it was lovely.
After we set up the reception someone went and picked up a bunch of pizza for all of our helpers. We were only going to be serving cake and brownies at the reception and I didn't want everyone in my family to be starving.
My parents only lived about 15 minutes from the location of the reception. At first they planned on going home between setting up and the actual reception. But I told them that was a bad idea. Too many things could happen to make them late. Instead they brought everything to the church and got ready there. My siblings and I did the same.
My in-laws on the other hand lived only 5 minutes away so they just went home. I never found out what happened, but somehow my mother in law was over 30 minutes late to the reception.
One of my few regrets about my wedding is one shot on my wedding video. Brandon and I are dancing and the way the camera is pointed it looks like we didn't decorate the reception at all. All that is behind us is an ugly wall. At Emily's reception I made sure there was something in every corner.
A lot of people say they don't want to have a line, and that's cool and all, but consider this: Many people are going to travel a long way to attend your reception. They want to have a chance to at least talk to you for a minute. Having a receiving line gives them an easy opportunity to congratulate you.
You don't have to stand in line the whole time. On our invitations we indicated that the line would last from 6:30 to 7:30. Cake cutting and other traditions would last until 8:00 and then dancing would take place until 9:00. We had a steady stream of people who came through our line during that hour. And then we were free to walk around and talk to other people the rest of the time.
I'd been to a lot of receptions before I got engaged. I hated sitting around at a boring reception and wondering if they were ever going to toss the bouquet or if I should just leave. So we put it on our invitation when all the fun stuff would happen. And we did it in the middle so people could either leave afterward or stick around for the dancing.
This may seem a little "type A" for some of you, but it was important to me that someone decorate our car. I'd heard of weddings where everyone assumed someone else was decorating the car and it never happened. So I made sure that my friends from my home ward knew I wanted the car decorated. We'd all spent many summer nights toilet papering each others houses so I knew they'd be up for the job. Its actually pretty good that I was one of the first of our group to get married. Over the years the car trashing hijinks have only increased. (And Brandon and I love to help out because no one can retaliate against us)
I wanted to have our reception at my stake center. But it was already scheduled for the date. So we ended up having the reception at Brandon's stake center. He'd never thought that he would have his reception there, but it turned out just fine.
This is the biggest regret I have about my reception. Somehow my mom thought that we were planning on saving my cake to use at my sister Lindsey's open house the next week. (My mom had two daughters getting married two weeks apart so I can forgive her for the confusion) So the top layer went into the freezer for Brandon and me to eat on our first anniversary (it actually tasted okay) and the bottom two layers went to my parents house.
When my mom told Lindsey that the cake was for her open house Lindsey was shocked. She wasn't planning on using it - it wasn't in her colors and it had already been cut. She poked a hole on the other side of the cake to ensure that it wouldn't get used.
Then my family was left with a giant cake on their hands. The frosting was made primarily out of Crisco so nobody really like eating it. Instead my siblings mined out the cake, and the cake ended up collapsing on itself. When I stopped by after my honeymoon I was saddened to see that my beautiful cake had turned into a model of Mt Saint Helen's.
Moral of the story: either serve your cake or just make it out of Styrofoam.
Brandon's twin brother Bryan makes professional wedding videos. Check out his website here. He made us a very high quality wedding video as a gift. I love that we can watch it and remember how perfect our wedding was. The video also came in handy when Brandon went to basic training. The girls would watch that video over and over and over again.
So we went to a bed and breakfast that my family loves in Sanpete County. I'd spent two years living in Ephraim so I knew what there was to do around the area. It was fun to introduce things like Maple Canyon to Brandon. We knew that we could always come back again so there wasn't any pressure to go see and do certain things. If we wanted to just stay in our room we could.
Hopefully that helped you with some ideas for your wedding, or maybe it reminded you of your own wedding.
What things did you love about your wedding? What advise would you share?
We were married in the chapel of a local stake center and had our reception immediately following. Since we'd been standing for our ceremony, I was very grateful we'd done a receiving table instead of a receiving line. It also gave me a chance to sneak a few bites of food in (I hadn't eaten all day!).
ReplyDeleteWe set it up the night before and added last minute touches the morning of. 99% of those last minute things were completely delegated.
We had a photographer and had a family member who dabbled in amateur photography also taking pictures. That same family member made us a book from Kodak Gallery of candids they'd taken. It's my favorite wedding memorabilia and helps me remember the details of my wedding (including several I didn't see the day of!).
8 months later, when I'd been a member long enough to go to the temple, we had a small sealing and only had those 10-15 people over for lunch after before they headed home. We did it potluck style at the park behind our apartments. Not having a second big reception was one of the greatest things about it!