To ask you all what would be on your 'not to do' list when having a wedding?

[Clockingoff]

Seems to be tons of wedding threads at the moment, so thought maybe we should have a go at extrapolating from them what should definitely not be done when planning a wedding if you don't want to piss guests off.

The obvious ones seem to be:

No poems demanding cash gifts;
No awkward far flung destinations and then sulks when guests can't afford the money or time to attend them;
No disappearing for hours to have photographs taken while the guests kick their heels back at the hotel.

Anything else?

Act normal, do not loose sight of reality. Don't turn into a Bridezilla.

Whatever you do or don't do, someone probably isn't going to like it. You can't avoid upsetting everybody. But everybody needs to be reasonable. Asking guests to wait around for hours while you take photos isn't reasonable. Complaining for 19 years about the food at a wedding isn't reasonable either. You, of course, cannot control whether or not other people are reasonable, you only control whether you are reasonable.

I Reserved a few table at the front of the top table for close extended family & elderly relations. The rest of the tables were unreserved so people could sit where they liked. I had too many guests & didn't want the hassle of seating people. It would have caused a UN type fiasco with certain branches of the family not on speaking terms etc.

Make sure the priest has his reading glasses on & doesn't substitute the best man's name for the groom. I had to whisper the correct name otherwise I would have ended up marrying my bil

I didn't do a seating chart. I didn't want to get into that quagmire.

I vote for a seating chart! Was DSis' Maid of Honour. Broken leg meant not so fast getting to tables so ended up in the back room with my aunt. No one moved despite being asked. Seating charts at my wedding meant all of the people we wanted near us were near us.

I don't think seating charts matter as such but at least tell people which table to sit at. We did this, we just didn't do place names.

That way at least everyone gets to sit together who should be together and there's no one left out. Granny left on a separate table, that sort of thing. Or tables half filled.

Not believe that your wedding is the most important thing to anyone but you.

Also, most people don't give a shit what the favours are or the colour scheme for that matter.

Do not leave the guests sitting in a freezing cold church for half an hour because it's the bride's 'privilege' to be late. Some of your guests have been up since the crack of dawn to travel long distances to get to your wedding on time. If they can be punctual, why can't you?

Although in fairness, sometimes this is the photographer's fault. Bride arrives at church with a couple of minutes to spare and groom spends twenty minutes taking photos of bride getting out of the car, bride standing on the red carpet, bride having her veil arranged by bridesmaids, etc etc etc

Why do B&Gs need 50 formal photographs anyway? Surely a couple of nice ones to put in frames and give to parents, and then nice casual ones actually interacting with their guests would be nice. I mean, how many wedding albums are gathering dust in sideboards around the country, yet these photographs seem to be allowed dictate the whole wedding day.

The main one that always gets me is when people 'mix up' the seating plan to encourage their guests to 'mingle'!

I've got 2 small kids and DW and I both work. If I am at a wedding it is a rare treat - a day out with food, drink and no kids hanging off my ankles. I do NOT want to spend the day exchanging meaningless pleasantries with a perfect stranger while my DW who I am aching to spend some quality time with is forced to sit 2 tables away!

To say it's wanky doesn't even come close!

Don't ask your friends to make favours/invitations/decorations etc etc - and then NOT THANK THEM.

Another thing I've decided I won't ever do (having done it myself at two weddings now) is ask a friend to take the photos. I spent both days behind a camera lens - and even got shouted at and bossed around at one wedding for "behaving like a guest". No idea who the upset woman was... but it was my brother's wedding, and I was a guest. Just a guest taking pictures all day.

I think if you ask people to take pictures for you (rather than get a professional), break it down into shifts, so that people are only doing an hour each or something.

The two experiences have made me decide that if I ever need a photographer, I'll bite the bullet and pay for one.