to ask what little touches you added ?

[danker126]

Im trying to plan my wedding and thinking what little things you added ? Like baskets in the bathrooms with sprays and bobbles? Flip flops for all the sore feet? Do you ladies have any other ideas i can steal :)

We had photos of guests instead of place cards, goodie bags and a magician for kids, mix CDs of tunes that reminded us of times with guests as favours :)

Rose trees for the parents, rather than bouquets, to say thank you. They're still going strong 20 years later in the respective gardens.

I got married so long ago that anything we did is bound to be totally passé now

The things that people still talk about, when I see them, are:

• evening buffet was a delicious hog roast rather than a traditional sandwich/sausage roll/potato salad job;
• I did little gift boxes for all the children attending with toys, games, puzzles etc, just to help them through the sit-down meal;
• We named our tables according to a secret theme and invited guests to guess the connection. This was that all the tables were named after things that had happened on the date of our wedding in previous years. These days someone with a smartphone would probably solve it in moments but back then, it proved a bit more challenging and good entertainment for the more competitive guests!

Instead of a guestbook we had people write letters to us with when they wanted us to open them on the front and put them in a jar. The jar is still sittin gin our house, and we get nice little surprises when we get to open then now and then. :)

Instead of a guest book we had a very large photo frame with a caricature of us in the centre, and everyone some people signed it. I have it hanging in my home office and I love seeing it, I'd never drag out a guest book.

Bets on how long the speeches lasted were organised by the ushers. The winner got a massive applause and bought a huge round in.

A wedding I went to last year had a huge table down one side of the room absolutely laden with old fashioned sweets in big glasses. There were little tongs and paper bags and everything. It was ace, we ate so many sweets.

pinterest is fantastic for this.

Get guests to write date ideas on a bit of paper, fold it up and stick it in a jam jar (little bits of paper obviously) for you to lucky dip dates further into your marriage.

Instead of the usual stupid heart shaped chocs favours, we opted for giving everyone a small packet of lavender seeds to plant in their gardens (our wedding was lavender coloured). I painstakingly collected the seeds from the lavender plants in our own garden, so liked to think that some of it is living on in other peoples' gardens

We also had a hog roast in the evening instead of a buffet. Always popular (we had jacket potatoes for the vegetarians/non-pork eaters) and there was so much left over the next day that we invited people who were staying locally to come back the next day and have another after-wedding party - some people who couldn't make the actual wedding came along to this, and it was lovely that they got to celebrate part of our wedding with us.

I also did goody bags for all the kids attending, that included books/puzzles/colouring/sweets etc for them to amuse themselves during speeches.

if you have kids going them try amd get some giant games that can be put in a corner so they don't get bored and try doing activity packs as favours for them. I had several people come and thank me for doing this for the kids at my sisters wedding

my sister also had a photo booth in the evening and a picture of a tree with an ink pad so people could create a finger print tree, it is hanging over the fireplace in their lounge now

DertieBertie that sounds great!!!

If you can get someone to take charge of a polaroid camera and take the not so typical wedding pics! it'd make a nice addition to the photo album.

also, if you can get someone to go around with a video camera even an iPhone will do and record answers to different questions e.g. 'what is the secret to a long and successful marriage' and then film the answer! this gets fun as the evening descends and everyone is wasted in to newly wedded bliss!

Congratulations on your wedding! We wrote a few personalised sentences on each guest's placecard to thank them for coming and for support/laughter they'd given us over the years etc - it had MIL in tears. It was a little trickier for a few plus ones we didn't know so well but we generally got round that by making cheeky jokes about their partners who we did know

My side of the family travelled to England for the wedding and MIL made up little bags with things from the local area for them, which was lovely. We made up age-appropriate activity bags for the kids with things like cameras, quizzes, little toys etc. It helped keep them entertained esp during the speeches!

For the favours we gave little pots of jam made by myself, my DM and DGM, as our family has made jam for years. We also gave family and close friends decorations from the day such as candles used in the table arrangements, nightlights and birdcages which we'd used to decorate the garden of the hotel and it's lovely to see them when we visit them.

We asked our eldest nephew to do the video of the day out of cheapskateness . Everyone said it would be a disaster and I had my misgivings about it myself, but it was the best wedding decision we made - because he knew us and a lot of the people there it made it much more fun and personal. Have fun!

strikethrough fail! but you see what i mean

Well not something that I've actually done, but an idea I had. One of the venues that we viewed made their chicken liver pate in house (they were very proud of it). Their wedding planner mentioned that guests often ask if they can buy it. I suggested that they offer an option to have it jarred in wee individual portions (like little jam jars) with the couple's names and wedding date on the label, as favours. They are now doing that .

Sister and her DH made up individual goodie bags for the children attending their wedding , based on each child's interests. Involved a few phone calls to the parents and a fair bit of effort, but was so worth it. The kids were all delighted.

Loving so many of these. The kids gift bags sounds fun theres going to be alot of kids and have been trying to think of fun things for them.
All the different guest book / photo books sound great ! Do many people usually sign them? Its going to be a pretty big wedding i have alot of family.
Thanks everyone ! ??

Disposable cameras on all the tables so you get to see lots of different views.

My friend had various colours of leaves to sign then made them into a wreath for her lobby/hall. The bonus was the frunken rude comments (!) could be excluded and her bridesmaid snuck off to get her v elderly GG to sign one as she couldn't do the reception.

My one regret with our wedding earlier this year is that hardly anyone signed the guest book. I think we had about 6 entries out of 100 guests!

If you go for a guest book/signed photo/anything...advise your wedding party in advance. So get your bms/groomsmen to remind people to sign it as they circulate. I think it's just something that a lot of people forget...I've been to weddings in the past where I've seen the guest book on entry, thought 'right i'll have a drink and come back for that' and then thought no more of it.

We had about 10 dc at our wedding and the best thing we did was provide stuff for them to be entertained. In the welcome area of the marquee we had two huge bean bags and a selection of toys...dress up items and some cars etc. They were brilliant and when the dc were dropping to sleep in the night the bean bags were fab as a bed...by about 11pm there were around 6 kids lined up on them sleeping!

I also bought a personalised activity pack for the tables for them from ebay...about £2 each. And in the garden we had a couple of footballs, Frisbees, ball catch games, giant bubbles and giant skittles. The adults enjoyed these as much as the dc and it gave a relaxed summer fete type feeling, which is what we wanted.

I also bought extra disposable cameras...so there was one each for the tables, which is pretty standard, and I gave one each (with their written on them) to each child.

We actually got some lovely photos from the dcs camera...kids have no inhibitions about sticking a camera in someone's face and going 'say cheese!'. So not only did it keep them busy but we had some really lovely group shots from them - as well as a few bare bum shots from ds1 and his friend (6) which I had no idea they'd done but they thought was hilarious!

*with their name written on them

Free bar.

For our table plan, a friend made a nice sort of display of the tables and names. We put it on a trellis, wound loads of greenery through it and put photos of everyone coming to the wedding on the trellis. Some were old and black and white, some a bit drunken, it was great.

A friend also bought a frame along as a kind of prop for photos which I thought was a bit weird but was prepared to go with it. The photos we got were fantastic and I've seen it at every single wedding I've been to since, if the guests were at our wedding. They always bustle over and apologise for "nicking the frame idea"!

Aw, what a lovely thread.

We made a booklet with little intros to all the guests (how we knew them, fun facts, etc) and put one on each table. They worked really well as ice breakers and were a lot of fun to make up.

Oh and we left a disposable camera on each table with an instruction to take photos. Basically extra photos for free, capturing some of the little moments we missed on the night quality of the shots hugely variable though

I gave bridesmaids a framed record of our favourite song for getting ready for a night out, with pictures of us from over the years.

When sending thank you cards we included a picture from our photographs of the guest at our wedding - with their partner or at a fun moment.

We had a chilli buffet with tequila in the evening.

We asked all the guests to pick a song for the evening playlist.

Congratulations, have a lovely wedding :)

I've been to nine weddings this year, so have had the opportunity to see the best and worst of them!

Most Pointless award goes to the flip flops in the bathroom at wedding 1. Nobody touched them, just taking their shoes off instead.

Best Favours award was wedding 5, which gave out cds of the couple's favourite songs (and those played at the wedding disco). Admittedly, this only worked because they're both into their music and had made a really good mix of interesting stuff.

Next-best favours were wedding 4, where the couple had mixed their own cocktails with funny names relating to their friends and past memories. Favours at wedding 3 were good in theory (little plants to take home) but of course everyone left them on the tables as they wouldn't fit in handbags.

Eight of the nine weddings had sweetie tables, so I think they're too "done" now to be original. Best wedding food was, by a mile, the cheese and wine on arrival (with huuuuge rounds of locally sourced cheeses and chutneys to help yourself), a fish and chip van turning up to deliver the main meal, and coffee and a choice of cakes at 11pm ish.

Toys for the children went down well at wedding three, where they'd put thought into the ages of the kids present.

Oh, and table decs etc - don't bother spending much as nobody ever, ever pays much attention!