So, we're getting married, best ways to irritate all our guests here please

[Madascheese]

Well DP pitched up with a very pretty bit of jewellery yesterday and proposed! How excited am I?

Even better Suncottage ask your guests for cash contributions to something really really special to you, a piano, a rug, a beautiful painting and then don't bother to buy it.

Just because you are asking everyone to pay hundreds of pounds to see you get married abroad don't think they won't also want to buy something from your fabulously expensive tasteful wedding list.

Of everything mentioned here I really think this is the most grabby and shocking thing to do

Have a wedding list at somewhere like John Lewis. Let everyone go into the stores and buy things off your list, with the requested 'delivery after the wedding' option. Then contact John Lewis the week before and cancelled all actual gifts, requesting gift vouchers to the value of the presents you would have recieved and then buy other things not on the list with said vouchers.

Tell your guests at the wedding you have done this. They won't consider this to be rude, or think you should have just asked for vouchers in the first place. they won't mind the time they spent deciding what to get you off the list, they'll think you are in no way irritating and totally reasonable in deciding you'd rather have 2 large chandeliers in your normal sized home rather than plates and glasses.

This has appeared several times but I really must add to it.

Have your wedding at a remote location (a stately home say).

Get married there at 1 pm and then leave the guests for two hours in a freezing lobby while you do the photos. Do not supply food or drink. You will be spoiling them. Some of them may have been up at the crack of sparrow fart to get there - DO NOT BE TEMPTED BY THEIR TIRED AND DRAWN FACES - this is just emotional blackmail

Wedding breakfast to start at 3pm and finish at 4.30pm

After the wedding breakfast go to your room for a nap to recover for the evening reception

Leave your guests in the freezing lobby again for three and a half hours with the door to the bar locked before the evening reception starts at 8pm.

Make sure there is no where for them to escape to like a local pub with heat or drinks. Guests can be cunning and devious like that.

Anyway, they are so delirious with joy over your nuptials they will not care either way!

My personal favourite - pick a venue with an expensive wooden floor and put on the invite "No High Heels" to be worn.

I am 5'1". Without heels my DP has somewhere to rest his pint.

Whatever you do, don't have a quick chat with your bridesmaids before booking the wedding to make sure that there aren't any dates that are completely out for them - say the date of another wedding at which their partner is best man.

Make sure you have your ceremony in a church that is slightly too small for all your guests, then get the ushers to make everyone stand "unless elderly or pregnant" and watch as the 11 week pregnant, tired and vomiting woman who is trying to wait till the scan before outing herself is dragged to her feet...

Invite someone who only knows you or the groom, and nobody else at the entire wedding, and then put them on a table with 6 other people who are all old friends going back years...

I am very anti the B-list ceremony and evening do only invitations. I think it's possibly worse to be invited to those than not to the wedding at all. Especially when the event is miles away. Either have people you want at the reception or not.

Please make your guests join in with a congo round the hotel.

They really, really love that.

I actually envied my friend who had a broken ankle and was exempted from that particular jollity.

Here's one. If you can't afford the catering, and two of your mum's sibs offer to pay for it for you, simply don't respond at all to this offer. Screw them, how very dare they!

Sorry meant CONGA.

Still distraught at the memory...

What's all this about the groom's mother wearing white/a wedding dress? does this actually happen?

Arrange the whole wedding in a country house at least 4 hours drive from where you or any of your friends or family live. Make sure that there is no other accommodation near so all your guests have to stay there. Make sure it is somewhere with one lovely 4 poster bedroom and en suite waterfall shower for you...the guests won't mind paying 100 pounds a night to be crammed into the other un-renovated rooms with broken bathrooms.

At this miles from anywhere country house ensure that only one meal is provided (at 5pm) for the entire 1pm - 2am wedding. This should be a buffet, ensuring that guests have to queue for food and that everything has run out by the time the last table are allowed to start queuing.

The guests will especially appreciate being kicked out of their rooms at 9am on Sunday morning so that the next wedding party can come in.

You could do what my friend did and book the hotel for the reception then ask your friend's to stay there at their own expense and be 'mystery shoppers' for her.

We were expected to go armed with her checklist of anything we didn't like!

She also wrote to the hotel with her list of 'improvements' she required such as the redecoration of the loos etc etc.

They sent her deposit back with a brief note saying that day was now 'unavailable'.

She was furious.

Thank you for all the lovely congratulations, We've been a bit overwhelmed by the r/l reaction and have had a busy weekend celebrating which sort of took us by surprise!

We are over the moon and I have a very sparkly finger which I'm already boring everyone rigid with.

I'm clearly starting as I mean to go on by forgetting my manners and thanking people.

I promise I'll be back with weekly updates on hot issues such as the thread count in the table linen and the quality of foliage...

Thanks again as well for making this a classic hope you're all enjoying it as much as we are

I am looking forward personally to a plethora of full on Bridezilla FB updates! A friend of mine spent 2 years planning her wedding. This involved 2 changes of engagement ring, and 3 changes of dress. She was married for a year then left him as he was "boring".

Make sure at a wedding you have not yet been to but is getting better by the minute, that all the family are invited without children. But it's so far away from everyones home that 2 full days childcare are needed. The stag night costs a fortune and after re reading the invitation its been discovered that you are not actually going to the whole day but to the church and evening. However, some family members are now going to the whole day as people drop out. Also bear in mind this is said grooms second wedding and there is a certain amount of deja vu about the whole thing.

:) Porto, I'm aiming to please of course. Still trying to digest all this lot, I'm rather worried that what we are planning doesn't currently tick a single box here - can't fathom what I'm missing, surely there must be some way for us to do something that we really, really need but is guaranteed to piss off several people we'd previously expressed care for....

Sadly you (presumably, being on mumsnet) don't qualify for my favourite: the preachy preachy vicar who points to you as the beautiful shiny Christian couple who are doing it right, with the clear implication that everyone else is doing it wrong. Er, it's actually good genes and being 24 that makes them so pretty, nothing to do with not having sex before marriage.

Madascheese

I cannot believe you are still here and not starting your 'Bride's Blog'

Go girl shoo! Are you not normal?

Trillian,

Sadly I think with 2 divorces between us the best we can hope for the vicar can say is that he hopes we've learnt from our past mistakes....

ooo Brides blog, good idea, I expect it'll be vvvvv popular, I can sell lots of advertising and pay for the topless magician?

Madascheese

You must update it hourly remember. That is very, very important.

We need to know everything.

Anyway - I shall fall out with you right now because you have not invited second cousin Janice and her boyfriend who you have never met in your entire life!

[flounces off]

Mad, it will be wonderful! Have some faith in yourself.

Are you having a church wedding then (you mention the vicar)?

I am looking forward to regular updates where we take the piss and cry over your bee-you-tiful dress !

Miasma, it does. MIL did. But then, she looked so beautiful and stylish, now one confused her with the bride (me)!

I think it only matters when it is done by idiots who don't care about the effect they have, or who actively want to upset someone.

*no, even.

It's always worth remembering that the day is all about YOU. To ensure your guests don't forget this, replace some of the readings with poems you've written and fill the five minutes of the church ceremony during which you're signing the register with a recording of your own rendition of You Raise Me Up.

Send out the Save the Date cards nearly a year in advance, to ensure that the close members of family that you've chosen not to invite to any part of your wedding have plenty of time to realise it and feel hurt.

Don't ask your most faithful and long-serving friends to be your bridesmaids, when you could snub them completely and ask your husband's cousin's children, whom you barely know but who are much more photogenic. Remember to ensure that their parents know that they will be centre-stage for the ceremony but must not under any circumstances be brought to any part of the reception.

Congratulations!