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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Best bits of a wedding

140 replies

Teaplease29 · 08/04/2021 20:26

Posting here for traffic!
AIBU to want to know the best bests of everyone else's wedding? Or weddings you have attended?

Beginning to plan ours and want loads of great ideas and inspiration

Thank you!

OP posts:
Maverick66 · 08/04/2021 21:11

Food and music are most important things at a wedding for me.
Don't like gimmicky favours.

1Morewineplease · 08/04/2021 21:16

An informal affair is always best.
The photographs are bloody annoying to wait around for... does every bride need 200 shots of her? And barely any of him? and if you have a formal wedding feast followed, hours later by a disco ( that almost no body wants) then you're going to have a lot of very bored guests in between.

Lemmeout · 08/04/2021 21:17

The divorce

WhatAreWordsWorth · 08/04/2021 21:21

Food!!!! I have particularly vivid memories of one wedding we went to because they were SO stingy with the food.

Tiny canapés served straight after the lunchtime ceremony, main meal wasn’t served until about 4pm as they did the speeches first! Everyone was RAVENOUS and we were treated to a tiny bacon-wrapped chicken breast, ONE boiled potato each (seriously) and some mixed carrots and peas Envy I actually thought I was going to faint at one point. It was in a barn too and absolutely frrrreeeezing.

The best weddings I’ve been to have offered plenty of food and at least a drink or two with minimal waiting around between ceremony/photos/meal etc.

My friend sent a little card with their invite asking for a song that would get us up on the dance floor. I thought that was a good idea. I know some people prefer live music but I love a DJ at a wedding! Grin

Teaplease29 · 08/04/2021 21:22

Thanks everyone!

Feel like we are on the right track with wanting an informal affair, not hours of photos. No crap roast!!! Lots of outdoor space and relaxed seating. Plus some money behind the bar.
Ohhh actually getting excited now. Thought I would dread planning my big day!

OP posts:
AlrightTreacle · 08/04/2021 21:23

Food and live music.

Pinksmyfavoritecolour · 08/04/2021 21:23

Best wedding I went to was my husbands cousin, we had to travel from Kent to Liverpool to a hotel for 3 days, coach took us from hotel to church and back on wedding day, hotel had a basement room where dancing and music were, another room with endless food, pots of chilli, curry, rice, chips, etc and then lots of rooms here and there where people sat with who they knew, or with others and just chatted, kids had gift bags with stuff to entertain them throughout and just made friends with each other so our 5 yr old son had the best time, which then meant we relaxed, 20 years and lots of other weddings later it’s still the best one I’ve been to.

Piglet89 · 08/04/2021 21:26

So many ingrates on Mumsnet; people invite you to their wedding and you moan about the “crap roast”.

ImAlrightThanx · 08/04/2021 21:34

Best wedding I ever went to was a super cheap student wedding, they were broke but had a registry office and hired a nearby community hall for the reception. Buffett table provided by us friends, someones friend as a DJ, everybody had a great time with their friends with no fuss and no expectations from anyone!
Basically- relax! Every detail doesn't have to be perfect to have a perfect day.

81Byerley · 08/04/2021 21:34

Any wedding where I can attend the ceremony, go to the reception , eat, have a drink, and then go home.

professionalnomad · 08/04/2021 21:37

We had a very unconventional wedding by keeping it super personal and very informal. We just kept the bits we enjoy from weddings. It was written about [[https://offbeatbride.com/muticultural-fusion-wedding/ Here]]

Stellaris22 · 08/04/2021 21:38

Short, informal weddings are ideal.

I must admit I've never been to a wedding where I wasn't bored. I know I'm just a guest so should be grateful to be invited, but it's my honest opinion.

TurquoiseDragon · 08/04/2021 21:39

If you have a buffet, get it catered, ie, someone serving up. I've been to plenty of weddings where the food has run out before the last tables get up because the greedy pillocks at the front have overloaded their plates and then the cunts don't eat all of it anyway Make sure a buffet has plenty of veggie options, as meat eaters will still eat those too.

Otherwise, the best weddings I've been to have had plenty of food and drink (including tea and coffee, not everyone wants alcohol) and of decent quality, not too big a gap between ceremony and reception, especially if the food is being served around a meal time hour. Be aware that people may have missed a meal time to make the wedding so keeping an eye on timings will help.

No endless photos that you'll never look at again. Plenty of seating, especially if more people are due to come along in the evening.

Short speeches are good, people tend to glaze over at a speech that goes on forever.

One lovely wedding I went to was in the summer on a georgous day, and photos were done after the meal, not before. We all stood or sat outside in the garden, happily drinking and chatting and just waiting for calls to be in photos, mixing with people and it was so relaxed.

Got another wedding in October, and looking forward to wearing the first dress I've worn in years. Especially now I've lost weight.

Chosennone · 08/04/2021 21:43

I've been married twice and been to countless weddings. Food and good music for me!
We had a high end buffet with hot roasts and a range of dishes and sides so that it wasn't all beige! We also splashed out on a band who have a great reputation.
I have been to a wedding where the buffet was ordered for half the amount of people and it literally ran out! Lots of people starving 😬 I also have been to one with the music being played from someone's playlist on their phone! Zero atmosphere on the dancefloor

Oversize · 08/04/2021 21:45

The dancing.

Okbye · 08/04/2021 21:51

Great (and lots of) food, a great DJ/band or great music in general.

NOT lots of waiting around or an overly/unnecessarily long ceremony 😒

A photo booth is always good fun 😃

hopingforabrighterfuture2021 · 08/04/2021 21:52

Best parts of ours:

A not too long drinks reception before sitting down to eat- and loads of canapés so people weren’t starving

Speeches when we sat down so that people making them could then relax and enjoy the drinks and meal.

We did free drinks rather than a paid bar, but didn’t have spirits as we couldn’t really afford that, everyone seemed happy with wine/beer/champagne and soft drinks.

Normandy144 · 08/04/2021 21:53

For me the priorities were from the outset we didn't want day and evening guests. Everyone who was invited came to the whole thing. The other main priorities were food, open bar and live band. Our wedding was in the UK but we had a.loy of overseas guests and so we felt it would be rude to ask them to pay for drinks. Everything else is secondary. No one cares about flowers, decor, favours (they'd rather have a free drink - see open bar).

Bellabelloo · 08/04/2021 21:54

Booze and good music!

TheChosenTwo · 08/04/2021 21:56

Food and booze both plentiful (I don’t mind there not being a free bar, happy to pay for my own drinks but I hate it when the bar is very limited!) , great music, better if the bar and dance floor are in close proximity!
I love the speeches, photos, getting dressed up etc. What I wouldn’t give to be going to a wedding in the near future, I don’t think I’ve got one to look forward to at all Shock
We went to a wedding once where the B&G had cut all kinds of corners with their wedding budget because they splashed out on the honeymoon of a lifetime - and then invited 200 people to their neighbours large garden in a marquee, didn’t feed their daytime guests enough, hired a band for an hour and then had a jukebox for the rest of the evening. Which we had to put money in 😂 there were lots of awkward pauses between tracks changing, people desperately hunting for a £1, didn’t feed their evening guests at all or provide one drink to ANY guests, all dayers or evening, not even for a toast! They had hired a mobile bar which ran out of booze, didn’t organise any table cloths for the hired wooden tables so I got splinters in my arm, there wasn’t a dance floor just the grass around the tables... it was one to remember alright! Lovely couple and good friends of ours but they should have just invited half the people, cut all the evenings guests out and it would have been less comedy more intimate. But they had the wedding they wanted and in all honesty we did have a good time Grin

Ikeameatballs · 08/04/2021 21:56

Seating. Went to a lovely wedding in 2019 but nowhere to sit in between the ceremony and meal. It really annoyed a lot of guests.

The best wedding I’ve ever been to was a massive wedding at a luxury hotel, the bride (my friend) and her family are Asian but her hubby is not. It must have cost upwards of £50k. Lovely multicultural ceremony, amazing endless food, free bar, got to catch up with old friends from uni, went to the cinema at the hotel between events, great Bhangra dancers and DJ, fireworks and free bar with endless drinks....

To be honest, and I may be a cynic here, I find a lot of weddings just very samey/scripted. They almost feel like a performance rather than being anything authentic, meaningful and personal to the bride and groom. So, if you don’t have a 50k budget, go for personal to you rather than generic wedding.

SpiderinaWingMirror · 08/04/2021 22:01

Hog roast and a country dancing caller.

Eyevorbig0ne · 08/04/2021 22:04

The food

BashfulClam · 09/04/2021 00:45

Being no able to sit and have a bit to eat a drink whilst waiting for the couple to get photos. The worst was a wedding in June and it was hit and we got bussed to receipt in then abandoned for 3 hours. No seats (in heels), no food or drink available just standing in the heat waiting..,,

BashfulClam · 09/04/2021 00:46

Oh and if you are Scottish ‘The Slosh’

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