Best bits of a wedding

[Teaplease29]

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!

@professionalnomad

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]]

That’s the kind of wedding that I’d love to attend, and you look amazing!

Going home
even better, declining the invitation.

The absolute best bit of a wedding for me is sitting next to people I already know.

I hate when couples split people up to 'mix up the tables/introduce new people'. Literally never going to speak to them again in my life and my husband has been the best man/usher so many times that I'm often left alone. It's no fun. Please don't do that to your guests.

I bloody love a photo booth with props. Everyone a bit merry, piling in together with props and you get an instant photo to keep, rather than just another camera pic. Wish they'd been a thing when we got married - we had disposable cameras on the table instead!

I tried this, too. But the best but were the bits that I hadn’t planned. Anything too orchestrated doesn’t come off as memorable.

Things that have made a wedding really enjoyable:

• Warmth. I’ve been freezing at a few weddings, because the B&G insist on drinks outdoors even though it’s 12 degrees, or the marquee is open and unheated in April

• Not too long. Agree with a PP that mid/later afternoon ceremony is perfect.

• Food, early. Especially if most people have travelled a fair way that morning and may have missed lunch. Plenty of chairs, and substantial canapes for any hanging around bits.

• Sitting with friends. Totally agree on not trying to mix people up.

• Dancing. We had a DJ (no space for a band) but have to admit a band creates a great atmosphere. I will dance to anything though!

Honestly I enjoy any wedding where I’m warm, fed and not on my feet too long (except for the dancing)!

Great food and a ceilidh into the wee small hours. Not too formal and loads of fun.

My friend's wedding was brilliant, she had a 4pm wedding ceremony. Then drinks & Indian starters like kebabs, samosas, bhajis etc while she had photos done. They had a magician providing the entertainment & dinner was at 7pm. In between courses they had speeches so not too long & only three in total. Then it was cake cutting and teas & coffees with a disco afterwards. There wasn't a separate buffet & evening guests and it was all finished by midnight.

Having to go to weddings is a pain in the arse.

The best bits of a wedding are the champagne and the cake.

Now that the world has moved on, proper old-school cake has become unfashionable ... so now there isn't really anything good about a wedding (apart from champagne).

If you have a buffet invite the vegans/veggies to help themselves first. Meat eaters will help themselves to everything leaving little to choose from.

Weddings where the photographer is unobtrusive

Live bands as long as it's not a jazz band. Went to one where the B&G were in a band and they were the evening entertainment - great fun

Weddings that have clearly put effort into thinking about their guests. Like the example of the guest photos and seating friends /couples together.

Any wedding invitation that avoids cheesy poems and telling guests they're giving them a day/night off from being with their kids is always good

Great food and a great band!

The best bit of mine was it being over. And i was so glad once the last of our friends were marred and we didn't need to go any anymore. I love all my friends dearly
But find these sorts of formal organised events painful-even my own!

Particular lows at weddings -

Very controlling couples who stress about details, to the complete detriment of the spirit of the event.
People who needlessly spend a lot of money you know they probably don’t have, it’s very uncomfortable.
Weddings with formal pictures
Ceremonies - I’d prefer that part to be private but if I can’t have that, as brief as possible.
Any jokes or speeches about consummating the marriage
Actually just - speeches. Anything where people stand up and try and embarrass one of the couple about their promiscuous past especially (of course in practice this is always aimed at the man as that’s funny, but a promiscuous woman isn’t)
Women being given away, or the arrangement where a groom waits for a bride to enter with a male family member.
Long lectures in churches about the sanctity of marriage and the terrible sins committed by cohabiting couples, divorcees or homosexuals (when half the congregation are cohabiting couples, divorcees, homosexual or some combination, particularly nice was the wedding ceremony that referred to my children as bastards, I have also attended a church ceremony in which women were not allowed to speak at all inside a church building and a big fuss was made about the fact of allowing her the only two words in church she would ever be allowed to say in her lifetime (I will).
Anyone promising to love or obey anyone else
Anyone who insists on having staff in their wedding photos because it makes them look fancy if the hotel butler and waiting staff are hanging around in the background.
Expecting guests to just somehow know what they are supposed to wear, and then getting upset if they arrive in something you don’t approve of when you never specified a dress code.
Weddings that cost me a lot of money - taxis, accommodation, drinks.
Weddings with dancing.

Expecting wedding gifts and not understanding that not everyone knows that you are expecting something or how to navigate the whole wedding thing, and holding it against them that they don’t know.

I’ve been to some really weird weddings though, so I might not be representative of the general population.

Nothing. Weddings are dire.

IMO a good bar, decent sized portions for meals, a photo booth and proper loos- if the reception is on marquee and you need portacabin type loos then nice ones! :)

No cringey readings at the ceremony.

If you're going to allow kids, give them something to do. My cousin delegated the task to one of her bridesmaids who made up a little pack for each kid like the activity bags you used to get on planes. It was brilliant (bridesmaid had kids of her own). A puzzle book, crayons, snacks, stickers, those crayola colouring books that you colour in with wet 'pens', a drink, etc. They handed them out as we came in to the wedding. It kept them quiet during the ceremony, and lasted well into the meal, speeches, disco etc. It was brilliant because all of the children saw it as an early party bag, and an absolute treat. As a parent of a toddler, it made the whole day/evening so much easier.

Speeches are awful. Long periods with no food. Not enough places to sit. Not enough food. Sweetie bars and sweets instead of fucking food.

Think about what time you want the evening bit to start and then work timings backwards from there. That way there's no waiting about.

Have a videographer as you'll forget so much of it. Our photographer was shit and there are bits of the day completely missed.

My Inlaws had too much say in our day and I hated some bits so much that I couldn't look at the photos for a year afterwards without crying. I was trying so hard NOT to be Bridezilla, that I spent too much thought trying to please other people and forgot about my own needs.

Table planning - put groups of friends together on paper and THEN work out table layout to fit it. Saves all the hassle of trying to rejig names to suit table seat numbers.

Follow advice of venue and suppliers as they will know what works and what doesn't. (Within reason.)

Best bit is you get to be Mrs Person-you-love. (Not that I've changed my name, but you catch my drift.)

The cheese tower!

@therocinate
Thank you. Ironically the one thing i would have changed is what i wore.i don't think it was super flattering. Also my period started the night before which didn't help!

Asian weddings, great fun and the food has actual flavour.

I’ve been to four white church weddings and they were all very boring, long drawn out ceremonies where nothing seemed to really happen, guests played no part in it so it was pointless having people there. The food at each one was either a flavourless roast or a risotto (white veggie options are almost always risotto), rubbish wine on the table, eating in near silence and then a few rubbish speeches. The whole wedding at 12 and the whole forced starvation until 3/4pm is bizarre. The evening is a crap buffet or a ‘fun’ chip van and a naff DJ. The ones at ‘historic’ venues are often hardwork as there aren’t enough taxis locally to easily get home/to your hotel. You’re controlled like a toddler all day, sit there, eat that, don’t speak. Also why do so few churches lack toilets, this means guests who aren’t very local have to find somewhere to stop of for the loo before arriving at the Church. Parking is often poor as well, it wouldn’t be hard for the couple to set up their own park and ride.

At a lot of ‘historic’ venues the bar is very very poorly stocked, or they rely on bottles, even for mixers. So you can order a lovely room temperature and flat vodka and coke for £4.

The best wedding I’ve been to is my cousins, twenty minutes in the registration office, meal at the local Pakistani place, pub and then home.

I like taking my children to weddings. If you want a child free wedding that's fine, but don't say it's "so your guests can relax and have a night off and enjoy themselves" (I've seen this sort of thing on a couple of wedding invitations). Bollocks - it's because you want a child free wedding, so be honest about it! I dislike being told that I'll enjoy myself more without my children there.

I love big weddings with lots of people (if you have the budget for it!).

At my own wedding the first dance was an amazing moment even though we hadn't practised it at all!

The best weddings that I have been to were the less formal ones.

Best if the reception is not too far from the wedding ceremony. Not hours between the ceremony and feeding guests. Not in a place where a glass of wine is nearly a tenner! A buffet with choice rather than silver service with everyone getting the same. Not too long - very sad when guests run out of steam at 11pm and leave before the happy couple.

And DON'T mix your guests up so that it is a chore having to make polite conversation with strangers while finally sitting down and eating. If you want your guests to have fun, that is not the way to do it.

I went to masses of weddings in my 20s and early 30s including one at the Ritz in London. The best were the old fashioned ones with church and a local venue, all generations of family (as per Peter Kaye) with DC running round and great aunts having one sherry too many. Lots of warmth and love.

Some great ones in country barns sitting on hay bales doing country dancing and others in the local register office followed by a curry.

The worst were where it was all about a (stunning) venue but with expensive but boring food, over priced drinks and no soul. Absolute worst was being an evening guest at the above with very little food (mini burgers and chips bleugh), no welcome drink (nor welcome from the B&G) and nowhere to sit!

Seeing lots of people

Free bar (or at least a generous amount of drink as well as food)

Eating at a normal meal time

Not too much hanging round at any point

And I do rather like a ceilidh