To not get how when you buy a wedding package from somewhere it's a years worth of work?

[feellikeahugefailure]

I'm probably being U, but i just dont see how a wedding is so much work.

You choose a package from a venue that does them every weekend. Pick who's coming and sitting where, the entertainment, photographer, go tasting to decide what to eat, flowers, dress. Sure its a few weekends of sorting stuff, but I don't see how people claim to have spent a year organising their wedding?

I'm a Wedding Manager for a large venue - I organise around 100 weddings a year.

I currently have 32 bookings for 2020. 2020 I kid you not. Reasons being they need the time to plan it and yes, save, which I get but the planning- you need a dress and a suit, if you fancy it and just turn up!

I shouldn't get narked really but Brides who over think EVERY detail really need to stop and think - its the 20 mins you are in front of the Registrar that matters - NOTHING ELSE. On the day you really wont care about your colour co-ordinated carpet/invites/shoes/toilet accessories!

Isn't it more that popular venues get booked up at least a year in advance for popular dates ? A work colleague booked wedding recently for 2018. Not because they need 2 years to plan but because they want a particular venue in summer. Can't see this particular colleague spending their free time picking napkins & table decorations😂

Mine took a fair bit of time because I had a big white wedding on a modest budget. I made my own invites, table centres, name cards, bouquets etc. I enjoyed it to be honest. It didn't take a year though. It took a few weeks if I put it all together.

not to be patronising but in case you don't know - and lucky you if you haven't been bored to tears by friends with this! - but for example, some places will give you 20 of "chair dresses".

one of my friends insisted on hand cutting individual invites and then cried due to the stress !!!

some people make a year's project out of it, is the answer. If it makes them happy I have nothing to say - though if it makes them cry, I will comment in future.....happily i think I'm past the wedding stage of life.

• sorry that should say "20 choices of chair dresses"

Haze, I'm pretty good at being realistic and sticking to budgets. I went to a wedding sale and had an idea of the type of dress I wanted. They didn't have it. But they did have others which also looked nice. I compromised and got a dress I loved but not exactly what I wanted.

It had to be pure white, no cream or lace. Which I stuck to, but the neckline was not what I wanted. Having found something off the peg which fit my criteria by 80% and realising that what I wanted didn't really exist off the peg and I would need to double my budget I was happy with that.

The bms were also given a budget and a colour, I said they didn't all have to have the same style but as the dress was a gift to them I wanted them to get something they liked that they would wear again. we went out for an afternoon to oxford street and they all decided on matching dresses which I bought there and then.

Had I had a larger budget or needed fittings then yes it would have taken longer. But I chose not to for that reason. My bms were not the types to enjoy going to endless fittings etc.

Why judge tho gazelda. Yes i know we all make jusgemwnts all the time blah blah ah but really? It's frgging confetti, hardly a harpooned whale on their table centre!

treacle i think the more stuff is handmade the more timevstuff takes. All our wedding STD's and invites, seat planner, table cards, name places, menu's, order of services and conferti cones were handmade. It would have been quicker to buy them online but nlt everything is about speed

My guess is that they're spreading the organisation (and cost) over a year rather than a few weeks/months. Also there are waiting lists for popular venues including registry offices!

It doesn't take a year. Mine took 3 weeks to arrange and it was a fab wedding. But everyone has different ideas of what they want. I couldn't stand the stress of planning for a year, but thata just me. Then again everything I do is lastminute.com and it was no different with the wedding.

koala mine were just not the sort to bloody agree! Part of me wishes i'd said here's a colour buy a dress like i did with the shoes, part of me loves the matching dresses i picked

I suppose if you care a lot about details, it would take up a lot of time. Most of our wedding planning time was spent arguing about another set of relatives he wanted to invite (we had literally 10 guests from my side and 240 of his very closest friends and family!). IME it's definitely the fighting that takes up the time!
I made the bridesmaids' dresses myself and that took me a couple of weeks flat out because I'd never made a dress before(I'd made clothes, just not dresses). My mother insisted I wasn't allowed the fabric I wanted (blood red velvet, it was gorgeous) and made me use a nasty pinkish- purple polyester satin she'd bought. If she'd pressed the hems like she was supposed to the dresses would have been less hideous, but in the end we were married and that was all I cared about.
The reception planning was one 30 minute meeting. Kilt hire, car hire,band and singer for when the band needed a break took a ten minute phone call each and I let my bloody mother organise the cake and flowers to make her fuck off out of my face.
I did find being married far less stressful than planning the wedding, even in that tricky first year. The only thing I'd change is that I'd wait a while- I was 20 and I think that was probably a little young.

We booked the venues 12 months in advance but then really didn't do that much more until a few months before. It wasn't a year's work but there were quite a number of hours involved over the period of 12 months. The invitations was probably the most time consuming - there were 60 odd - I designed the cover and we printed them at home but it took two or three evenings one week to get them done.

My sister did "Wedding as a hobby" when she got married.

She spent nearly 2 years getting more and more obsessed and Bridezillaish until I almost didnt go. My mother was nearly as bad.

Then after the wedding........nothing. She crashed as she had nothing to focus on. Her OH was just as bad and they both went into a real deep blue funk for months because they realised that nothing had changed. There was no sudden rainbow and unicorn filled world because they were married, life went on as it always had.

Subsequently, when H and I got married we did the exact opposite and had a much better time as a result!

We had 9 months between proposal and wedding. Managed to book the venue in the first week and got most of the big stuff done in the first month.

Then we eased up on the planning till about 3 months before the date.

Some of it is time consuming if you both work full time and only have weekends free. We had separate appointments for wedding dress shopping, suit hire, venue tour, going to the registry office... That's a month worth of Saturdays there.

The guest list, invites and chasing RSVPs was the most stressful and time consuming part for me.

Saying that, I really enjoyed planning the wedding. It was a lot of fun working with DH, family and friends to put together a big celebration that suited what we wanted.

The most stressful and longest thing was the part that I didn't organise and handed over to ex-mil. She wanted to be involved and was into making cards and craft. So we said she could do invitations and table favours. We gave her a clear brief, colours and things we liked and wanted. Every week she would post a load of mock ups of things SHE liked but bore no resemblance to the brief. Then there would be hours of phone calls as we explained why they were nothing like what we wanted (wrong colours, fussy, huge, twee, cringey etc).

Eventually she came up with what we suggested all along - a small white box with a simple pink or lilac ribbon and 5 sugared almonds in. We were pleased. The night before the wedding she arrived with the favours and showed me. My face fell, she had made elaborate octagonal boxes with a kind of ruffle on the top and used black ribbon and rosette things.

She had decided the black was a lovely contrast to the pale pink of my flowers and the boxes were just 'nicer'. I know it sounds silly, but I really was furious. I am quite tight on my visions for things (having studied design and art and fashion etc and doing events myself) and the black was totally jarring to my eye. Also I hate black. I never ever wear it.

She was quite surprised and pissed off I didn't like them!

So if you have various relatives 'helping' who are trying to steer the ship in different directions then I can also see how it's stressful and more time consuming. My advice would be delegate nothing!

My second wedding was organised in 3 weeks (or whatever the min time is between booking and getting married) and it was shit! I very much regret that tho.

I totally agree with you about the fuss and expense that weddings seem to be, even the most sensible people I know think nothing of throwing away silly money on some aspects of weddings.

Our was totally low key, no seating arrangement, made our own invites and flowers etc and was six weeks. Most of that was spent looking after a toddler and having to wait the month for the paperwork. I think I spent a few evenings doing the invites and researching the honeymoon. No fuss, no drama.

What i never get is the "my mom / mil / friend" wouldn't let me have what i wanted. If they're paying they may feel entitled to an opiniom but that's all it should be and if its not, pay for it yourself

Because some people don't like "packages" and custom/tailor everything themselves.

Because some people like to do more than a registry office wedding in a hotel

Because flowers aren't for everyone

Because most package weddings are the same as every other package wedding.

But. Even with all that, it doesn't take a bloody year!!! DH and I are very organised and I used to run events... Our wedding was entirely custom (much to our suppliers dismay) and went from engaged to wed in 7months whilst working full time. It's easy!

What gets me is the way the costs skyrocket the minute you put the word 'wedding' in front of 'flowers', 'car', tiara', 'shoes', 'invitations', 'buffet' - you name it, the price quadruples (at least).

It's like everything in life, some people make a huge drama out of it and some just get on with it and it takes days.

It's the talk upto the weddings, it like they are the first bride ever to get married and the years planning feels like ten. Just when you think it's over they get pregnant and start all over again

The actual vow part seems lost for many, too much focus on matching items rather than the sacred vows between husband and wife.

Ah, the monthly competitive tiny wedding thread!

Ours was 18 months from engagement to marriage - sorted church and venue ASAP then left it for a while. Then did all the rest. We had the whole lot from toastmasters to string quartets to three different types of entertainment in the evening (no evening guests). It cost shitloads but my parents were so keen on it, we have a big family and we were happy to go along with it. They weren't pushy or showing off and I wasn't a bridezilla. They just wanted everyone to have a lovely day. No it probably wasn't much different to anyone else's but hopefully the lots of seats, lots of food and entertainment made it less of an ordeal for the guests than some threads here would have you think.

We're coming up to our 16th anniversary but I'll bear in mind that our marriage isn't supposed to last because our wedding cost a bit. I'll hang on till 20 years and then have a think about it...

As others have said, it's industry hype. Organised ours in a few weekends, a couple of months from deciding to do it to doing it. My best friends wedding was the same. But they were pretty, pleasant weddings that got the job done- not pintrest worthy.

On the other side of the coin, I've got friends whose weddings have been two years in the making and they've handmade each and every element. One friend collected rocks from a beach and wrote over 200 guest names on them in acrylic paint. Took her weeks. Whatever floats your boat, but I couldn't be arsed with that.

Also length of planning varies based on when you get engaged / want to get married. I wanted a Spring wedding, DH proposed on Spring. So that's a year then.