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?

If I had known, when I got married, the strange effect a dance floor has on young boys, I would have positioned the cake table along with a tower of champagne glasses at one end.

Having french doors to crash into as they slid across on their knees didn't really exploit the small children/broken glass scenario to it's fullest potential.

The following has been gathered from weddings I have attended:

1. Have your ceremony in a church that apparently means an awful lot to both families (despite the fact that neither of you are religious or attend church), then have your reception at a venue absolutely miles away. Your guests will love you for having to organise the transport, especially the out-of-towners who will obviously know how to navigate round the country roads that even sat-navs can't handle. Also insist that overnight guests stay at said venue, even though the rooms are overpriced and the staff rude and moronic. A nice extra touch would be to invite some guests to only the ceremony and the evening do, which means they have about eight hours to kill. This will obviously include those who have travelled hundreds of miles to be with you on your special day.

1. Allow hideous stepmother of the groom to sit at the top table to keep the balance right. This will be in stark contrast to the feelings of almost everyone in the wedding party, but because it 'looks right', this is the important thing. Make sure she bitches and moans through the whole thing as well, this is a nice touch. Ensure she tells all the guests how awful her stepchildren are (groom included), whilst simultaneously singing the praises of her waster biological children.

1. In extention of (2), ask stepmother of the groom to dress like a demented blue parrot. Having a collection of ugly feathers coating her entire head will complete the look. Ensure her dress is at least two sizes too small and that her make up is caked on with an industrial tool.

1. Have your wedding breakfast at least six hours after the ceremony. Fill the six hours with outdoor photos (even though it's scorching hot). Provide only Pimms and an extortionately expensive private bar for refreshments. Treat any fainting guests as an inconvienience.

1. Ask for money as a wedding gift. If you can, think up a cringeworthy poem to request said money.

I probably have more tbh, I've witnessed some truly bizarre sights at weddings....will come back if I think of any additional good ones!

May I suggest the following text in your wedding invitations:

We invite you to share our joy
For we shall not elope
We'd like to ask you to help out
With this pink envelope

Please help provide the wine, the shoes
The sausages and mash
For weddings are expensive
So please do send some cash

We wouldn't dream of asking
toasters we have plenty
But perhaps a couple of fivers
Or if you can, a twenty?

@ popeonarope OMG vomit.

I am particularly proud of that one

I did indeed make it up. The one I received was worse and three pages long.

And to continue the theme Pope (you've been awfully busy recently- glad you had time for a bit of poetry...)

We really would have loved to
Invited you all day
But you see, you're on the B list
So you really cannot stay

for the wedding breakfast
but come back in the eve
ning to dance the night away

To a local shite DJ
Who really knows his stuff
By that time, after pernod,
The groom's family get rough
And like to have a word
or two with anyone they think
Might not see the world like they do
Or even like to drink

Ok - v shite compared to the Pope's efforts but I think there could be a theme coming on???

Only serve water at the sit-down meal because your DH's friends can't be trusted not to get embarrassingly drunk and loud. (yes I really know someone who did this.)

We thank you for your invite
In which you ask for dosh,
It's just a bit damn cheeky
And quite a lot of bosh.

So sorry, we won't be coming,
We'd rather give a present,
But your mercenary demands
Are really quite unpleasant.

A lavish wedding is the thing
For which bridezillas hanker,
But really, have a bit more pride,
You materialist wanker!

V V good Unquiet. Come on everyone else?

Not poetic, but my cousin complained madly that someone sent her a succinct email reading:

'We weren't planning to get you a toaster anyway'.

I wish I had the balls.

Include the following on your invites

(1) ROAR*
(2) All guests must wear keep nipples covered at all time.
(3) You are reminded that the poles in the marquee are not for dancing on.
(4) Entry before the church service free, after 7pm £10 per adult.
(5) No fat chicks.

(*Right of Admission Reserved)

Invite guests for an evening do then ensure your day and meal over-runs so badly that the evening guests are left to wait in a cold room, talking quietly without any DRINK as the bar isn't open........

Make sure you invite the only overseas guest for the evening do only (carriages at 12!) and make sure the venue is as far away from any airports as possible.

Have the uncles of the groom do a karaoke version of 'Old MacDonald Had a Farm'. Ah, who am I kidding? That was an awesome wedding

If you organise coach transport between the restaurant and hotel make sure that 5 guests think it's leaving 1.5 hours later than everyone else. Everyone will enjoy sitting around waiting for them to turn up. You can heighten the pleasure by asking the coach driver to put on a video of the regional heats of last year's 'Britain's Got Talent'.

Congratulations by the way - being married is awesome!

Congratulations!

I've loved reading all these - brings back many happy memories :)

Insist on having every guest appear in a photo. Hold this photo shoot outside the chuch (i.e. with no sustenance) on either a very hot or very cold day. Each photo is a particular group e.g. groom's family, bride's uni friends etc. Start with the most important (work colleagues of yester-year) and leave families till last. Have the photographer take several versions of each photo to make sure it's just right.

Disappear with new DH for 2 hours after drinks. Send half the guests home and await the arrival of the next lot. Those who are priviledged to stay for the whole event should be evicted from the marquee/hall with no food or drink until your return.

Put the very obviously gay couple on the same table as your very homophobic great aunt.

Would really love to be a fly on the wall at your wedding MAC :)

Oh and another thing - make sure you pick a date that coincides with loads of big sporting events. My father's been married twice, both times on big cricket days. My uncle was his best man on both occasions and had a pocket radio with ear piece. He spent most of his speech updating the guests on the score.

Have a mid week wedding, preferably straight after the 6 week summer holidays. Hold the wedding mid-day so it is difficult for people to get time off work/school having just been off for 6 weeks.
Tell your guests that they must wear clothes conforming to a set colour theme and offer to provide part of this uniform to all the men, then when a guest explains they will struggle to attend the service but can come along straight after work,take the said clothing away and make them attend in "normal clothing".

Definately do the "oh please don't buy us a gift as we have everything we could possibly need, our love is all that we desire." Then in the invite put in one of those delightful poems asking for cash.

Remember no children- except those of "special friends".

Please shove at least 2 families along with a few random guests into another room/annexe preferably one where they cannot see or hear the more important guests.
It is essential that these guests are served their food LAST and only get the left overs once the more important guests have been served.

OOh and spend lots of time moaning about prettier guests in stylish outfits who have deliberately worn such clothing to outshine you.

Serve a bizarre series of almost identical salads, varying only by the occasional addition of a few nuts, for the sit-down meal. (A French wedding I went to!)

Invite all your hard-partying/regularly fornicating/Jewish mates and make them sit through an endless fire-and-brimstone sermon about how everyone who has turned up at the church ought to convert to Christianity forthwith.

Get drunk and moan loudly about how crap your cake is (the bride)

Make your guests trail through a soggy garden bedecked with duck shit and stand in the rain to watch the ceremony, with the perfectly good stately home that you have hired 20 yards away.

Congratulations Madascheese !

The best man should have ideally never attended a wedding and should make numerous references to top shelf magazines throughout the speech.

Male members of the bride's family should appear halfway through the reception in wellies and Jimmy Cricket hats to drag the groom into an impromptu singalong.

The bride's father should profess astonishment in his speech that she ever found a husband as she never really managed to get boyfriends.

The bride and groom should request meaningful suggestions for songs beforehand, which the DJ will ignore in order to play Whitney Houston's greatest hits.

If you are the bride, you should greet all wives of your husband's lifelong friends with the words " I don't know you !" ( including the ones you've met several times ).

Make sure your guests know that their small children are more than welcome at the event. Then organise the reception at some small place MILES out of town, lay on a bus, then lie about the return time so that everyone is forced to stay there until 3am!

Be too stingy to actually lay on any entertainment for said 9 hour long drinking session and get the groom to make a mix on his iPod and borrow some speakers. Make sure that the groom has a very crap ecletic taste in music.

Be extremely precious about having your photo taken by guests in case any of them end up on FB.

Congratulations:
Apologies if this has been said already, but be sure to sit your divorced parents together at the top table then sit their spouses together at the back of the room. They will love comparing notes about how crap their first marriages were and if you are lucky there will be a fight to entertain the other guests.
Also, sit your evil SIL next to your DHs son from his first marriage so that she can tell him what a bitch his mother was and how his dad is so much happier with his new family.

Have your DP's brother, who has a crush on the bride, as Best Man. Get him extremely drunk and then let him loose on the speech. Ensure he repeats 'She's really really lovely' enough times that no-one misses it. Even better, have friend announce that she'd like to say a few words which indicate that she has been holding a torch for the bride for several years.

I second the long gap between wedding and reception idea. Also ensure that you don't invite friends who got you together in the first place but get married in the centre of the town/village in which you all live.

Once had 2 weddings on the same day so went to ceremony of first and them drove 60 miles to ceremony of the second. Decided we needed food etc so stopped off at cafe. Rolled up to reception venue about 2 hours later to find guests 'waiting' for the bride and groom!