When I was married ten years ago, having a “wedding website” was considered relatively new. Sure, some people had them, and there were a few basic sites out there that offered some options, but it wasn’t everywhere. Now, pretty much every wedding has one. Because websites can help with a lot of things:
A place for people to do confirmations of attendance (i.e. RSVP) and indicate their meal preference in real time;
Provide links for hotel registration or maps of the area;
Post photos of the events so far (and for the wedding afterwards); and,
Links to a gift registry for the happy yet possibly greedy couple.
Nothing. Because your website isn’t about giving you something different than you would have normally, it is just a tool to help you do certain things more easily (RSVPs, for instance, or update venue information). As I said, when we got married, it was a separate “thing”; now, most people would just put it with other “tracker” tools, and depending on which website you choose to host it (there are HUNDREDS if not THOUSANDS now), they likely have modifiable to-do lists you can use too. As such, our website didn’t get going until Week 8 or 10, but now, they’re frequently up at Week 3-4.
Gifts
Lots of couples get married every year and have big weddings, and think, “Hey, wait a minute, we already own a house and have lived together for awhile, we don’t need gifts, do we?”. Perhaps not. But you still need to have a gift registry. Why? Because no matter how cool your family and friends are, many of them are going to INSIST they need to buy you a gift. In an absolutely insane world, some of them will buy you a gift for your engagement party, the first shower, the second shower, AND the wedding. No, I’m serious. Someone close to you might get invited to all of them and think they HAVE to buy something every time. What if they’re also in the wedding party? Like a bridesmaid? So potentially FOUR gifts PLUS a dress, shoes, makeup, blah blah blah? And fend off drunk Uncle Ernie’s sexual advances? Wow, what a deal.
Wedding gift registries started long ago as an easy way to avoid everyone getting you a toaster. Register somewhere, make a list of things you like, and then people can just ask, “Where are they registered?”. In the distant past, this was a good way to get your “good dishes” or silverware or place settings. Now, you can have registries at Walmart, Canadian Tire, sporting goods stores, etc. Some even are website-based and have options to “help us buy a house” (i.e. give us cash to save for a house) by helping buy a virtual “door” or a “window”. Some make it more mercenary — like “help us pay for the wedding”. Or pay for miles on a trip for a honeymoon.
But ignoring the old and the really greedy new, most registries at department stores tried to make it simple and “fun” about 12 years ago. Let’s face it, most stereotypes of grooms had them preferring to have their eyeballs shaved with lasers rather than help pick out a china pattern, so places like The Bay, Sears, Eaton’s (yes, I know two of those are gone), etc., tried to make it easier by giving you a bar code reader. So here is what you would do — walk around the store. See something you like. Zap it with the gun. Voila, it’s on your registry! So stores would say to the woman, “here, give this to your husband so he can participate too and have some fun”. Zap, you have towels chosen. Zap, luggage. Zap, some tools. Zap, some lingerie. Wait, zap, zap, zap. Stop! Cuz everything you zap? It SHOWS on your registry. Where your MOTHER can see what you’ve chosen. Delete delete delete. Okay, good. Now people can go there, or on the store website, look you up by last name of groom or bride (or both), look at your registry, choose something, buy it, and BAM, it’s removed from your registry so that you don’t have the four toasters problem again. Of course, now, you can have that delivered to their nearest store, and instead of multiple deliveries or taking it to the shower and them having to lug it home, they can arrange for a single pickup or delivery at some point. Very orderly. Not as much “fun” as opening 40 gifts at a shower and feeling stressed that you have to not only keep track, keep smiling, keep opening, etc., but also write them a thank you note later too. And try not feeling overwhelmed that you’re cleaning up like you were the best or only kid in the world and it’s Christmas morning.
But wait, you’re not done. Because not only are YOU getting gifts out the wazoo, you traditionally buy something for each other (bride to groom, groom to bride). Besides the rings. My suggestion? Go for something small but meaningful. Not a tie for the groom, unless he’s wearing it to the wedding. Not earrings for the bride unless she’s wearing them to the wedding. Lots of people do watches (snore). Know what? I”ve asked people and TONS of them have no memory of what they got or gave five years later. Right now, I confess, I’m totally blanking. Just saying…wait. I think I *asked* for a watch. Sigh.
You also need thank you gifts. For your wedding party members. For the Minister. Maybe for the cake decorator or logistics people if they are friends/volunteers. And last but not least, you often do party favours for EVERY GUEST. Back when I was younger, many brides would MAKE something. A sewn wrapper with the names and dates on it, and pieces of wedding cake inside. Some do little candies inside mesh lace, which traditionally, were HAND TIED. Whackjobs. A much more civilized if boring option is to make a donation to a charity in lieu of party favours (no one wants them anyway), and then just put a small note in the program or mention it at the reception. [Week 20-24]
What else do you need to know about gifts? You also need to know that you often have to cart them around on the day of the wedding. Some people didn’t attend party x, or see you within a month of the wedding, so they bring the gift TO the wedding. Which is great, thanks everyone, but oh, now I need to TAKE THEM WITH ME WHEN I LEAVE WITH MY BRIDE???? No, I didn’t, my brother piled them all into his van and looked after that for us. But someone has to. And not for nothing, particularly in some cultures (I’m looking at you, Greeks and Italians!), it’s quite common to stuff cash in an envelope and give THAT at the wedding. So someone has to look after all those envelopes. In some cultures, in lieu of gifts, it is quite common for that total amount of cash to exceed $10K, $20K, even $30K. Not something you want sitting in the back of your car overnight. So someone has to look after it all. Just saying. [Week 25-26]
Invitations
Until you have a wedding, you have NO idea how stressful invitations can be. Why? Because the options are endless. Absolutely endless. Here are some questions:
Do you want printed “save the date” advance notices?
Do you want them to match your later invitation?
Do you want special RSVP cards with matching layout and design?
Have you decided on the date, location, blah blah blah, all of which has to go on the invitation?
Are children invited?
Are all the singles invited to bring a +1?
Have you even DECIDED WHO IS ON YOUR A-LIST AND B-LIST???????
Oh, and by the way, you’re SNAIL MAILING THEM LIKE AN OLD PERSON, so you need EVERYONE’S MAILING ADDRESS WITH POSTAL CODES.
And then you have some other basic questions:
Are you designing them yourselves?
Are you printing them at home on a laser printer?
Are you having some place like a basic printer do them?
Are you hiring a special invitation-design person?
Once you get through those, you are pressed for advanced questions:
Is there a theme?
Have you decided on your colours yet?
Are you also doing orders of service to match?
Do you want your guestbook to exactly match?
Are you printing enough to have extras in case you mess up an invitation? Or in case you invite 100 people on your A-list and miraculously people respond right away to let you know you only have 90, so you can invite the first 10 off your B-list? Don’t forget too that you want extras to save as souvenirs.
I’m a great believer in farming out as much as you can, if you can afford it. By luck of the draw, we knew someone who did invitations. Andrea reached out, she was interested, we were only inviting 100 people, manageable. But then the questions started (see above). Even with someone else doing it, it’s still a lot of questions, many of which you haven’t thought of yet, until right that MOMENT, and time is ticking away.
You need to know how many people are coming; in order to know, they have to RSVP; in order to RSVP, they need the invitations and some time to think about it; to even get the invitations, they need to be received because they were sent; in order to be sent, they have to be addressed, stamped, prepared; before that, they have to be printed; and before that, THEY HAVE TO BE DESIGNED WITH ALL THAT INFORMATION THEY’RE ASKING ABOUT. All in six months. Acccccccccccccccccccccccccccccck! 🙂
Invitations are a GREAT way to turn yourself into a squirrel in the first couple of months. Lots of young’uns will cheat and send their SAVE THE DATE note by email to everyone (you can’t post it on FB because lots of your friends on FB are NOT going to be invited!). But that doesn’t save much work, just delays the timing a bit.
For me, I think one of the brightest things we did early on was relax a bit about the protocol features of the design. Sure, we wanted it to look nice, but we didn’t want all of the printed materials to exactly match down to the cardstock and filigree. Instead, we decided on a theme. Pandas.
You see, my name is Paul and her name is Andrea. So our initials are P and A = PandA. Early on in our relationship, for a story too cute to tell here, we started calling each other Panda. And it stuck. So we knew we wanted a PandA wedding. And, early on, we had an idea of a logo that we might want to use on the invitation. Something cute, a bit campy, not formal at all. The invitation person took a couple of examples we sent her and did some graphic design with them, and voila, we had a design:
We thought it was cute, but I didn’t realize how brilliant it was. Now we had what the marketers call the basis for branding. For EVERYTHING that we were going to print, all we had to do was slap the logo on it, and it would MATCH our theme. Simple, straight-forward, and matched our informal styles (well, really, mine more than hers, but well, I’m part of the party too). We didn’t want hams and hots with a bag of chips, but we also didn’t want people drinking tea with their pinkies out. And we wanted the wedding to be fun. It is amazing how often throughout the six months that the logo cropped up. On cakes, on boards, at the wedding, not all of which we did, others used it too.
Now, we also wanted to have some fun with the invitations. We didn’t simply want “Mr and Mrs parents of the bride and groom invite you to witness blah blah blah…”. We wanted a bit more, well, personalization. I’ll be honest. I *loved* our invitation. It was fun writing it, it was fun sending it, it was fun doing it ourselves. Here’s the original text that was suggested to us from varying sources for a more traditional invitation:
A light approach, combining our venue (the theatre), the idea of a “play” with galas and read the reviews brunches, and a touch of us. Exactly what we were looking for, rather than a formal invitation. Is our approach for everyone? Of course not. It just fit us rather perfectly. Even re-reading it above, I feel the excitement I felt when we drafted it and sent them out. People LOVED the invites, and those who didn’t, who thought maybe it was a bit too “light” for such a solemn undertaking, didn’t share their views with us. Is this the right approach for your 90-year-old grandmother who has always wanted to dance at your wedding? Probably not. She needs a proper letter or decorative stationery. But everyone else? They loved it.
Later, for the actual ceremony, we printed the programs ourselves (well, at Staples actually, on better quality semi-gloss cardstock) and then folded them ourselves. And we did it up like play bill with the list of cast members, etc. It looked something like this:
It all fit on one page, double-sided, and if you folded it down the centre, it looked like a program. Easy peasy lemon squeezy? Not really, it took a bit of work to make it all look decent, but it got there. And at a fraction of the cost, while also letting us personalize it much later in the schedule than a professional designer would have been flexible enough to handle.
However, you will still need to:
Choose invitation person
Meet with invitation person
Draft invitation text
Decide if children will be invited / will attend
Assemble addresses
Draft order of service
Print invitations
Print mailing, return address labels
Buy stamps
Send invitations
Participant tracking
Call any guests who haven’t responded
Buy guestbook and pen
Print orders of service
And last but not least? You’re going to want to save copies of the invitations and order of service for your wedding scrapbook.
We did our SAVE THE DATE message somewhere around Week 4-8I think (?) and the actual invitations went out in week 12-13. By most standards, that is considered LATE.
The next three items are relatively easy, but there are a few little nuances here and there. But since they’re not complicated, I’ve lumped them all in the same post.
Accommodations
The accommodations question comes up if you have many out-of-town guests — they need somewhere to stay, presumably. And most people organizing a wedding will suggest location x or y, somewhere near the venue (or if you’re in a traditional banquet hall, perhaps the attached hotel itself). Hotels will sometimes be helpful when you book these rooms. If you’re doing a wedding with them in their ballroom, they know you’re spending a ton on food and alcohol, so they might give you a small group rate on the rooms. You can negotiate for better rates than they first offer you, but often they’ll only give you a better rate IF you guarantee the rooms. For example, they’ll offer you a special rate of $150 a night, but if you guarantee all 25 rooms for that night, they’ll reduce it to $125. Great deal, unless of course you end only needing 20 of them. Then your guests are paying for their individual rooms and you’re covering the extra 5 empty rooms yourself. Most couples don’t want this, and so it’s hard to get a great rate. Which means most couples set up a preferred/recommended hotel, a basic group rate that isn’t guaranteed, and tell people to “book early” to secure the rooms.
We visited three different hotels as we were trying to decide which hotel to recommend — one was in a good location downtown and would be the location for Sunday brunch after the wedding; the second was right next to the theatre where we got married; and the third was closer to the boat where we were having the reception. Everyone opted for the first one, which was the best option anyway. [Week 5-6]
However, we had some extra accommodations needs too:
Andrea went to the main hotel the night before, stayed with her mom, and then got ready the next day at the hotel (so I wouldn’t see her before the wedding), so we needed that room the night before (however it was her parents room, so no “extra” room required, but some people get a separate room for the bride for that night);
We went to a small inn for our wedding night, a little more intimate and romantic than a room with the cast of dozens at the main hotel, and therefore a bit more private, but we needed that booked, with EARLY check-in since during normal check-in times, we’d be at the CEREMONY and late check-out the day after [Week 15]; and,
Since Andrea was going to the hotel for Friday night, wedding all day Saturday, inn for wedding night, and then Sunday brunch the next morning, she had to pack for both the pre-night and the wedding night, including all her jewellery for the ceremony and extra events.
You know what else often goes into this category? Identifying any extra things to give out of town guests, like suggestions for other entertainment during their stay…after all, the wedding only ties up part of their weekend.
Flowers and Decorations
Guys, I know you probably don’t give a rat’s butt about flowers or decorations. Stereotypically, this is also where a lot of people get stressed and end up fighting. One person (often in the stereotype, the bride) really wants to debate all the floral options; the other person doesn’t CARE. And after already dealing with a couple of dozen decisions around venues, and ceremony elements, flowers can often be the breaking point for discussing wedding stuff. I know three couples who got along fine about just about everything, regardless of everyone turning into squirrels, but they fought about the flowers. Because one person was “whatever”, and the other was “do you like this or this flower?”.
The half-saving grace on this element is that regardless of whether you are using a non-traditional venue or a straight-up church plus banquet hall, the florist is usually the same outside contractor doing it. Pick your florist of choice, tell them you’re getting married, and they’ll say, “Great, option A or B or C or D…or Z”. They have a FULL menu, and just like with traditional venue, they will guide your fully through all the options. Some will upsell the crap out of you, others will keep within your budget. Depends on the florist. But you know what? The florists at Loblaws can do it too. Seriously, they have options. And they’re quite reasonable. [Week 8]
We chose a florist that Andrea knew near Peterborough, and I wasn’t completely convinced it was the best of ideas. It would mean that the parents of the bride would have to do pick-up and bring everything with them to Ottawa. So we supplemented some of the “bigger” pieces with Loblaws and we picked them up ourselves. However, we did get the personal bouquets from the first one.
What are your frequent options?
Bouquets for the bride, maid of honour, and potentially each bridesmaid (although they may be more corsages)…we did two bouquets, for the bride and maid of honour;
Corsages for the mothers of the bride and groom, and potentially for other female members of the immediate family (we didn’t do those ones);
Boutonnière (lapel flowers) worn by the men, which some people do for the groom, fathers of the bride and groom, all the groomsmen, and then often any extra “men” helping — brothers, brothers-in-law, ushers, etc…we did them for myself and the father of the bride, and we somehow missed doing one for the grandfather;
Pew bows — flowers to go on the sides of rows of seats at whatever venue you have (i.e. the sides of pews if you’re in a church, to line the main aisle); and,
Free standing floral displays that combine colours and flowers with the boutonnieres and corsages and bouquets, oh my.
We did the last ones through Loblaws, using some of the same flowers as the others items from the other florist, and it was all good. We had them at the theatre when we were doing the ceremony and then at the boat.
Do you see a small catch there? Someone has to get them to the theatre, and put them up. Then someone has to take them down and move them to the reception and set them back up. And then after the event, they have to take them with them too. Particularly if the stands are returnable to the florist (often they’re loaned bases). So you need people to volunteer to pick up the materials for the decorations, pick up the flowers, deliver them to the venue, decorate before the ceremony, clean up and transport to venue 2, redecorate, cleanup at the end, and take the flowers home. Fortunately, I had siblings and their young adult children who helped with all of this.
Transportation
While guests are usually on the hook to get themselves from venue to venue, there are some people who often have different transportation needs:
Groom has to get to the ceremony — if he drives, will he be driving away later, or going in a limo? Where does his car stay? Does someone take it for him?
Bride has to get to the ceremony — often, if you have a limo for the day, the limo is with the bride since the bride has all these extra layers of dress to deal with, and a limo makes it easier (or a mini van with a wide loading door and the middle seats removed), otherwise someone has to drive her…in short, she’s unlikely to be driving a car in a wedding dress;
Wedding party is likewise potentially limited for movement — do they all meet at the venue, or as is tradition, do all the bridesmaids attend the bride for initial makeup, getting dressed, getting to the ceremony, etc., and how do they get around the rest of the day?;
If there are formal photos somewhere, and the wedding party plus immediate family are going off to do that, how are they all getting to the same place in time?;
After the photos, how is everyone getting to the reception?;
After the reception, the bride and groom would most likely leave by themselves — so if anyone came with them, how are they getting home or back to the hotel or back to their cars?;
If there is alcohol at the reception, are there arrangements for designated drivers to get everyone home safely? Are there buses back to the hotel?;
If the bride and groom are driven to a hotel by a limo, for example, how do they get home the next day?; and,
If anyone super important (i.e. parents or grandparents) have mobility issues, is someone responsible for helping them get to the event?
Few of these issues are insurmountable or difficult but they can be a bit nebulous to nail down. And no one wants grandma left at the church while everyone drives off to the reception. [Week 14-18]
I said at the start of the previous post that the ceremony was one of the two biggest challenges in planning, and the other is the reception. If you have more time, you might go with something like a hotel or a banquet room, and the likelihood is that you may be the 5000th reception they have ever done, or perhaps even the SECOND one THAT DAY, if they had an afternoon one. So what does that mean? It means that, like any traditional venue with lots of experience, the conversation with them will be along the lines of:
Hi, welcome to our planning session. We’re so happy you’ve decided to have your event with us, and to make us part of your day as you start your life together! We’re so excited!
Before we start, do you have any particular theme in mind? No? Okay, well let’s start with the basics.
We have four rooms available, all of different sizes. One that holds 50 for dinner, two that hold 100, and our largest will hold 200. How many people do you think you might have? 125? Okay, that means you’ll be in our biggest room, the Champagne Room.
They’ve been through this before. Questions that will follow will be what type of meal (sit down or buffet), time of day, whether there will be dancing, do you already have a DJ or band, do you want to use theirs, etc. For the meal, they’ll present you with a menu, and suggest one of three or four “packages” to pick from, which is basically going to be basic, moderate or deluxe, with different price points. It might even seem overwhelming, but it’s a bit false. Because in the end, while you’re making a series of decisions, each one is quite narrow in focus, just as it was when you told them how many people you wanted. It limits your choices as you go. And while you might dither on chicken breasts or tender beef, or some combination of the two, plus a fish or vegetarian option, basically, it doesn’t matter. You’re choosing “food” from a small menu of choices.
That’s what traditional venues give you — experience and a preset series of choices, similar to what 100s of couples have chosen before you.
Are they likely to suggest flaming desserts for everyone? No, because they tried it once and it was a disaster. So that came off the list of choices.
Will they recommend cramming 75 people into a small room designed for 50? No, because they tried that once, and it wasn’t great.
But if you go back to what I said at the beginning, being inflexible on one thing (getting married in six months) meant being flexible on another (the venue).
Because we didn’t want a hotel banquet room with four walls around us, and a lot of the “nice” venues with windows and views would already be booked a year in advance, we went with an out-of-the-box option — a cruise on the river. We weren’t sure at first if we would even be able to do it — how far in advance do the boats get booked? How many companies would there be to choose from? In the end, there was really only one, and they had two different boats to choose from…basically, as with the example above, depending on how many people we wanted (100) and whether we wanted dancing (we did), we narrowed our choices to one. Great. Nice, easy, good to go.
Except when we met with them to plan all the elements, they basically took out a pad of paper and said, “Okay, what do you want?”. No menus, no preset packages, nothing really to guide us in our choices. Just an expectant look on their face that we would magically tell them everything. We DEFINITELY weren’t prepared THAT much! So we kind of made some of it on the spot. But it got us worried…hadn’t they done weddings before? What did they do last time?
They had indeed done weddings, but it wasn’t super common. In fact, most of the time they did corporate-type events. Aka booze cruises. And the food consisted of hamburgers and hotdogs served on the dock. And that was our image for awhile. All of us dressed up in elegant clothes, with my wife and I having a receiving line at the gangplank, passing out hams and hots to people as they walked by, and saying “Thanks for coming, don’t forget your bag of chips too!”. Not the image we had in mind.
So we started getting nervous. Triple-checking the plan and arrangements, making sure they knew EXACTLY what we wanted because it wasn’t like they would think of it on their own. Plus, they had napkins and everything, as long as we wanted blue or red. The blue was the exact shade we wanted, so no issue, but if we had wanted everything pink to match a bridesmaid outfit, we would have had to bring those 100 napkins ourselves.
In short, the out-of-the-box venue didn’t come with the same level of hand-holding we would have had with the established traditional venue. For me, the boat was fine, the tables would be fine, the alcohol fine, which left me with three worries.
First, the food. They basically said, “We do our own catering,” and it made me REALLY nervous. Sounded like cousin Bob whipping up a crock-pot. So we said approximately what we wanted, and we asked for a tasting. This is common with ANY venue, they’ll usually prompt YOU to ask when you want to do it, and they’ll make a dish or two or four of the offerings, and let you sample them to make your final selections. At least a month before, preferably at least six weeks before, if not sooner. Partly because your choices determine the cost and they don’t want surprises for anyone. But when we asked for a tasting, they were like, “Huh?”.
We had to explain it to them, and then they weren’t sure how or when they could do it, and were even leaning towards “if” they could do it. Considering we were writing them the largest cheque of the whole process, after the wedding ring, I told them there was a tasting or no event. Oh, sure, they could arrange a tasting. They had something else booked about six weeks before our event, and they set up a tasting. We arrived, nobody was really expecting us except the head of the catering crew, and it took a few minutes to find him. We explained who we were, and he was like, “Oh, right, I forgot. Here, we’ll set you up here.” Gave us some food from the buffet to try. It was all really GOOD. So we’re chatting with him and the reality dawns. He’s a sub-contractor. He does 500 events a year. When they said they do their own catering, they meant they arrange it with an outside contractor they already had a contract with…as soon as I realized he did 500 events a year and was running his own business, my stress disappeared. He knew what he was doing, he would deliver, and it wouldn’t be hams and hots on the dock. Problem solved. BUT the venue should have told me that upfront. The basic element for any couple to know. Yet, they didn’t tell us the right details.
Second, the music. They said they had their own DJ who had all the latest music. Ummm, okay, but when could we meet with him? They couldn’t figure out why I wanted to do so. Again, it wasn’t normal for them. I had a backup in any case, I was going to bring a whole bunch of burned mixed CDs with the music I wanted, plus the special music for our special dances, so I didn’t force the issue. When we arrived, same deal as the caterer. It was a sub-contracted DJ, not quite as established as the caterer but still experienced, and he had all the music except the 2-3 songs that were “unique” to us. Again, no problem, but if the venue had more hand-holding built into the process, I wouldn’t have been worried at all.
Third, the weather. We were basically choosing a floating banquet hall. And so I wanted to know what they did in case of bad weather. And again, not very comforting answers. They told me that we could have the event on the boat, regardless of the weather, but it could only leave the dock at the Captain’s discretion, and if the waves were more than a specific height, he wouldn’t go. I had worries this would turn out to be some scam that they booked it, didn’t leave the dock, saved the fuel costs, and claimed the light rain prevented them from going. Later, I found out that they would go almost in gale-force winds, as long as the wind wasn’t going sideways and the waves weren’t giant whitecaps rocking the boat too much. And even then, they would likely be able to go for part of the time, as a storm wouldn’t likely last for the five hours we were going to be on the boat.
While not a big part of the above, and not worthy of a separate heading, we did ask for references. Which they were really reluctant to give us — this is extremely common for any traditional venue, but it was “new” to them. Again, I said, “No references, no contract”. And they reluctantly coughed up some names. One of them emailed me back and told me they had done their wedding there in May (he was emailing me on his honeymoon, the whackjob!), and he sent me about two pages of comments. All of it was “positive” in the outcome, but basically reaffirmed what we had already discovered — using the out-of-the-box venue meant we were doing a lot of extra leg work to “self-organize” what we wanted to happen. They had actually been the first cruise of the season, and you know what the boat forgot? To stock the bathrooms with toilet paper. So picture 75 guests, including a BRIDE IN A WEDDING DRESS, trying to share various sources of Kleenex and paper towel to get through their “special” night. I could tell the guy had been as stressed as I was, because he sent me close to two pages of venting and explanation of their saga, despite saying he would be brief because he was on his honeymoon. He was releasing all that extra energy. And he was clear — in the end, it would all go well, but there would be more hand-holding required of THEM to the organizers than by the ORGANIZERS to them.
But we wanted the cruise so we stuck with it. And in the end? Everything was awesome on the logistics side, or close to it. One small wrinkle, and I’ll cover it below.
So, what will you need to do…
A. Choose and book a venue — pretty obvious, but again, timing and availability will be the enemy of “perfect” [Week 1-4] but the main challenge will be numbers. It is a HORRIBLE experience deciding on your guest list (more on that under invitations), but you’re going to have to basically figure out numbers to decide how big a room you need. In our case, it went almost the opposite — we chose our venue, and the limit was around 110. So that was our maximum size. We figured out immediate family (siblings and parents), extended family (cousins, nephews and nieces), and then figured out how many spaces were left for friends. That part was BRUTAL. Really good friends get relegated to B list just because somebody else was a fraction closer to you or you saw them more often than you saw the other couple.
B. Plan schedule for event — decide in advance how long you want the reception time to be…if you’re having dinner, how far in advance it will be open to people to enter the site, what time it will close down, how long a band or DJ might be playing if you want dancing, how long you’re allocating for speeches (and double that item) [Week 4-8];
C. Decide on a menu — It’s not rocket-science to realize that you will likely have two main options…a sit-down served meal where everybody orders in advance when they RSVP to the invitation (“Bob wants beef, Marie wants a vegetarian option”), or a buffet with a variety of choices for people. We went with a buffet, with a beef, chicken, vegetarian and pasta options. Plus a plethora of side dishes. Not super extravagant, not super fancy, but good solid food. And a step up from hams and hots at the dock, with a side bag of chips. And then you’ll have to confirm numbers to them. [Week 20]
You’ll also want a tasting probably in Week 16-18, which will help finalize the menu. If you’re having children at the event, figure out a children’s menu too.
I’m glossing over something really big, or really small, depending on your situation. If you go with a big hotel, your caterer is the hotel (usually). If you’re somewhere else, you may need or want to hire a separate caterer. Same timelines apply, but know this — outside caterers usually charge significantly more because they have to transport all the food to the location in hot plates, etc., AND they’ll also likely have to provide the cutlery and plates, which they also have to transport. Each item they bring is a charge to you. Plus the hotels and banquet halls often give you a reduced rate on the room rental because they plan to gouge you on food and drinks. If you have an outside caterer, they may charge you full commercial rates on the banquet room. Just know your costs will be much higher, most of the time. On the other hand, if you have a truly out-of-the-box venue that works for you (like a meeting room at the local municipal building), then that “outside” caterer may be your only choice.
Lastly, you also need to decide if you want a cake. Traditionally, this was a big deal. The “big moment” for the bride and groom to cut the cake together, pieces were handed out to all the guests, sometimes pre-wrapped to be taken home and thrown out, or taken home and frozen, and then thrown out later. But it was a photo op. Then, it morphed into this “playful” moment where the two people feed each other a piece with their hands and trust the other to not smear it all over their face. Some couples love it, some couples hate it, some couples grin and bear it.
Initially, my wife-to-be and I weren’t super excited about a cake. We didn’t really feel like a generic cake would be that exciting to us, and there were other desserts available. I confess part of my lack of enthusiasm was knowing that if it had been 20 years earlier, when my father was alive, he probably would have offered to make the cake, and it would have been this old-school three layer stacked cake with columns (secret trick — the lower layers were actually styrofoam and iced to look like cakes, only the top layer was actual cake). He did it for my two sisters, and probably would have offered for me too, if I had wanted it. So we kicked it around a bit, and sort of realized that if it was just a generic cake, or a slab cake from Loblaws, we’d just skip it. It wasn’t like it would have any real meaning to us, since it wasn’t made by anyone we know…but wait a minute. We knew someone. Someone who LOVED to bake. A friend who considered doing it for a living. With parents who were bakers. Could we ask? Would that be a huge imposition? We floated the idea tentatively, just looking for a simple little 8-inch round cake we could cut for the photos. For the rest, we would just go with slabcake from a grocery store. She was willing, hey this would be great. A tasty cake made by a friend we admired, how awesome is that? Totally personalized.
Except we forgot to take into account who we asked. We asked an over-achiever. She was SO excited, she took a COURSE in fondant. She researched the crap out of ideas. She enlisted her best friend to help, because she wasn’t just making one cake, she was making CAKE for EVERYONE. Two different kinds in fact. It would be her gift to us. While we felt suddenly really guilty, because it was WAY more than we asked for, we couldn’t exactly say no since it was a gift. Plus, it would be…AWESOME! 🙂 So she was onboard as of Week 7, and we met again at week 14 or so for a small tasting and discussion. She was worried…she’d never done anything like this before, and after talking to her parents, they had warned her that we might have too big of expectations and would be devastated if it didn’t turn out. I think I actually laughed. We weren’t looking for perfection, we were looking for personalized meaning, and we already had that because she was making it. That was more than enough for us. She was incredibly relieved and still wanted to do it. We did a formal “cake taste testing” with some friends in week 20 or so (a bit of a delayed engagement party with some close friends) and tested out a couple of cake choices. Did we need multiple cake tastings? Heck no. But who says no to fantastic cake? Plus, it was often an excuse to have FUN with our planning.
Did the cakes turn out? Yes, absolutely. She even did one in the shape of a PANDA, which was our theme. Amazing. Plus 8 other cakes for guests. Stunning. But here’s the thing. She was making the cakes the day of the wedding. So she couldn’t COME TO THE WEDDING CEREMONY. Well, that was poor planning on our part. Plus we had made a small mistake on which dock the boat was leaving from, and while we updated it on the website, we also handed out notes to everyone at the ceremony to make sure they knew where the dock was…except she wasn’t at the ceremony. As we drove to the boat in our limo, I suddenly realized SHE HAD NO IDEA THE DOCK WAS CHANGED. ACKKKKKK! I had a sudden panic attack for about 20 minutes as I tried to figure out if I had her cell number with me to tell her where we were. Turned out, her best friend’s husband had been handling transport duties and had checked the website that morning for the latest directions. He saw the change, knew where we were going, and crisis was averted. About ten minutes after we got to the boat, the three of them showed up with the cakes. All good. Whew.
So lots of little tidbits in there…the time factor for who’s making it, handling deliveries to the venue, taste testing if possible. Or eliminate it completely.
Know what else you’ll need for the cake? A knife to cut it with. Apparently most people forget this at off-site venues, and suddenly they’re using a butter knife. Just so you know and plan ahead, as someone may have to bring it with them.
This leaves me with four last things to mention for the “menu”. First, somewhere in all of this, you’ll have to pay the caterer. Maybe it’s all part of the bill for the venue, with deposits in advance, etc. Don’t worry, they’ll tell you when you need to pay them. It’s common for 50% in advance, and 50% the day of the event. Some places want it ALL in advance.
Second, you’ll have to decide on a seating chart for everyone. Remember that Great Aunt Gladys can’t be at the same table as Great Aunt Bethany, because of that whole “sugar in the cake” incident back in 1954. Yep, it can be that confusing. In our case, we tried to keep at least some people at each table with other people they already knew. And if not, then at least with some people of similar temperment and age. It wasn’t too hard in our case, but there are stories out there…small tip? Keep the parents and siblings involved in other things, don’t let them see the seatings ahead of time, because dollars to doughnuts, someone will have a view. And there is NO end to that kind of accommodation. 🙂 Don’t forget if you’re having kids attend, you might need high chair or booster chair options.
Small aside — I didn’t mention this in the ceremony part where it is often the bigger issue, but whether or not to include kids is often a huge issue for people. Some brides and grooms are adamant that they don’t want crying kids misbehaving and disrupting the wedding. Their wedding, their rules. So they won’t invite the kids unless they are, perhaps, over 8 or 10 or 21. But know this…like everything else, if you’re inflexible on this (no kids), you have to be flexible on something else (your favorite cousin may not come). Because they may feel it is a family event, their kids are part of their family, and they’ll choose not to come. You weren’t trying to be rude by not inviting their kids, they’re not trying to be rude by not coming. In some cases, maybe they have a 2 year old who has colic, and they don’t feel comfortable leaving them alone for 8 hours with a babysitter yet. Or they’re from out of town, and have no easy option to leave the kids behind. Maybe you can facilitate things a bit by offering up a bridesmaid to arrange a group babysitter or two for several people’s tots, at the parent’s expense of course. In our case, I was totally fine with any and all kids being there. It’s a family event for us, and all were welcome. Some parents preferred to have the time off instead and ditched them with grandparents. Some of my favorite photos from the day are with the kids.
Third, decide if anything is being served before or after dinner as appetizers or late evening snacks.
Finally, decide what you are doing about alcohol. The three aspects to decide are generally:
will there be a bar or not;
will it be an open bar (i.e. free), use drink tickets with two for every guest or so and they can pay for their own after that, or it is guest-paid the whole time; and,
when will the bar be operational (before dinner, during dinner, after dinner?).
Most people serve wine or something during dinner, but often restrict the service during dinner (i.e. the bar is closed), but don’t forget not everyone drinks wine, even if they drink other alcohol. And others don’t drink at all…do they have to pay for soda drinks too, or is that included? You’ll basically decide on this early on.
In our case, we had some attendees who have a history of over-drinking at events. Enough said. So we didn’t intend to use drink tickets, seemed too complicated to me but others have said it worked well for them (noting that some cultures would be offended by ANYTHING other than an open bar), but I didn’t want it to be paid the whole night either. So my intention was that it would be paid up until we finished dinner and our first dances, and then open i.e. free bar after that…it would restrict the number of hours of “free bar”. Except someone forgot to tell the bartenders that, and they didn’t know what they were supposed to be doing. It quickly became mixed up, one bar was charging, one wasn’t, etc., and in the end, I just said, “Screw it, open the bar fully.” I didn’t have time or energy to fix the “screw-up”. But if I was at a standard venue, it wouldn’t have been an issue…it would have been part of the standard “tick this box for drink tickets” type choices, or tick that box for open. With the less-experienced venue, it wasn’t clear to them (we also had a small english/french barrier, which also made me less inclined to deal with it when I was supposed to be mingling with guests).
D. Speeches / Master of Ceremonies / Dances
When we were planning the night, we got two things right and two things wrong.
For “right”, first, we chose my brother-in-law-to-be as the MC. Gave him a basic program, asked him to help keep us on track, keep it light, and he was good to go. Perfect guy to do it.
Second, when my wife and I wrote our speeches, we divided up who would thank whom to ensure we didn’t repeat or miss anyone. My wife would thank the guests who traveled to get there, my family (including my sister, nieces, brother in law who helped with setup at the dinner and theatre), Minister, the wedding party (i.e. her sister), those who did the readings, those who helped with other decorating, some logistics people (such as transporting gifts, cakes, etc.), her parents, her grandfather, and me. I got to thank the cake makers, the caterers, a bunch of extended family members on both sides, friends, the wedding party (again), my mother (but not my father, too emotional), and Andrea.
For “wrong”, we had too many speeches. If I was to do it again, I would ask several of the people to write a brief message instead, and I would put it at every place setting for people to read at their leisure. Or include it with the program at the ceremony. Something short and pithy. And then only do a couple of speeches at the actual reception. Instead, we had:
Intro by the MC;
Words from the bride’s family from great grandfather;
Words from the groom’s family by groom’s sister (groom’s mother didn’t want to do it, so I had her help me get ready at the ceremony at the theatre instead);
Words from the bride’s parents (who, with maid of honour, had helped her get ready before the ceremony);
Blessing from the Minister;
Speech from maid of honour (actually read by the MC, her husband);
Toast from the groom’s brother to father who died years before (toast helped out by another brother).
That made the flow and dinner really long, with constant interruptions. None of them were bad, mine was probably the longest but apparently entertaining (my new brother-in-law thought it was one of the best ones he’d ever heard). And yet at the time, it seemed ludicrous to cut any of them — they were all added for very specific important reasons. Still…
Equally, though, we didn’t handle the dances right, although again, for the right reasons. Now picture it, we had a pre-dinner walk around on the boat, lots of mingling. Then buffet so people were getting up and moving around. Then sitting for a LOT of speeches. Then it’s time for the dance. We thought about doing a big dance and taking dance lessons in advance (hard to do in six months of hard-core planning), but still, we wanted our first dance.
Plus a few others:
Bride and groom’s first dance;
Bride dances with father, groom dances with bride’s mother;
Bride dances with her grandfather, groom dances with his mother;
Bride and groom dances with all the couples who have gotten married in the last five years i.e. the weddings the bride and groom attended; and,
Bride and groom open it up to big fast paced dance to get the party started.
Most songs are 3-4 minutes long. So there’s 15-20 more minutes watching while other people do stuff. We could have easily made do with just the first two and worked something out. Overkill.
I flag all this because while it made perfect sense to us, it was really bad for our guests who were sitting for a REALLY long time. Sure, this happens at most weddings. Do you want it to happen at yours? I wouldn’t do it the same way if I was doing it over. And a standard venue or DJ might make a different suggestion — like do one dance early, another one later, etc. Something to break it up.
E. Miscellaneous
There are a ton of extra little things to think about, particularly in non-traditional venues. Some things to think about:
Music playlists (for the dances and generally afterwards);
Are you having place cards for seating? If so, who is printing them, and who is placing them on the tables in advance? Will someone be “seating” people or will there be a master list people can consult to see where they’re sitting?
Are there tables for the cake(s)? Guestbook (with chair)? Memorabilia? Gifts? Who is carting all this stuff from the site to home afterwards?
Do you have audio/visual needs for speeches? Be warned that when people often do “montages” as tributes, they are often three times as long as anybody sitting wants to see or listen to. Anything longer than about 3-4 minutes is TOO long and usually nowhere near as interesting to the general audience as the person who makes it up thinks it will be.
One slightly bigger issue is the kissing part of dinner. Usually, someone will try the old stand-by from days of old where they tap the glass with their spoon until the bride and groom stand and kiss. If you have relatives older than sixty, this was their OLD TRADITION. They all did it, they all had to do it at their wedding. Even if you say don’t do it, someone will. And putting in place some “penalty” like making that table get up and kiss won’t stop them from doing it, even if you think it is stupid. Often people come up with a great party game like themes or love songs that have to be sung as a table. But bear in mind that some people would rather be buried alive with ants than do stupid things in front of people. So forcing them as a table often means your “extroverted” guests think it’s a hoot, and the “introverted” guests are ripping their eyeballs out of their sockets.
We thought we had a great solution. A trivia game — someone could go up to this “Jeopardy” style board, pick a question about us, and ask their table for help in answering. If they got it right, often with help from the crowd, we would then kiss. It was an easy way to have “anecdotes” about us. Did it work? I think three people went up, out of a total of about 20 questions. We should have just put one question on each table. Or suggested they come up with their own ideas of anecdotes, and they had to tell one to get us to do something. Something simpler with less rules. A funny story or moment, or the best first meeting, or something else, and limit one per table. They could therefore talk among themselves and come up with something to use as an example.
Or just let them clink glasses.
Most of these last elements can all be decided at Week 20-24, although some will come up earlier when booking the venue.
Since the actual ceremony doesn’t happen until near the end of the six months, it may seem a bit odd to treat it as the next of the 16 headings. However, the reason I do so is because so much of the planning that goes on and the tasks that have to be done in advance are related to figuring out what your ceremony looks like for the big day. As such, I’m going to walk through this one early as it is one of the two biggest components (the other is the reception). Let the games begin.
Decide on a maid/matron of honour [and what role you want them to play! (overlap with the Planning category)]
Why start with your bridal party? Partly because you may want them involved in a few of the early things you have to do RIGHT NOW, like buying a dress, and if you do want their help, you need to decide right away who it will be. In our case, it was easy, my wife only has one sister, she was her first choice, and she said yes. Done. [Must-have: Week 2]
Decide on a best man (and their role)
Very few of the early tasks for men are ones where they are likely to ask for help from their best man. Not saying you can’t, just not common. So deciding on a best man often isn’t super urgent.
In my case, it became a bigger problem than you might think. I had three brothers, two brothers-in-law, and another brother-in-law-to-be after the wedding. Six choices of key family members to be my best man? At different parts of my life, I’ve been close to all of them. I didn’t feel like that was something I wanted to decide. I also had other ways to engage them for other tasks without being singled out as best man.
My first choice would have been my nephew. We’ve been pretty close over the years, but he hates anything formal with a passion, and asking him to put on a full suit, stand around for all the photos, a bunch of other things that generally go with being best man, and it just wasn’t an option. I asked, to be sure, but he confirmed he would love to, but not really his thing. Fair enough, and no surprise.
My next choice was my best friend. We had worked together, hung out, been friends for close to 12 years at that point. And he too was willing with one simple problem. When I called to tell him the good news of our engagement and wedding date, he also had news for me — his wife was pregnant and would be due the same week as our wedding! Not great timing for him, and in fact he missed the wedding because his son was born that week and he brought them home from the hospital that day.
It seems really weird to have to triage “best man” candidates, as all of them are different. It’s not really a ranking, but that’s the job of groom, I guess, ranking your friends and family.
Anyway, I had a third choice, a female friend I had known for almost 13 years. Except she was going on posting and would be overseas then. Strike three.
That took me a few weeks to run through, and by the time I got to the end, I had realized that I didn’t really need a best man, it had moved from the “must-haves” for me to the “nice-to-haves”, and if I still wanted one, I was now starting to get into either areas where I would have to choose among a group of friends that were all the same “rank” (as much as I hate that term) or back to the family members to make one “first among equals”. In the end, I decided I would simply stand for myself.
And not for nothing, what we really needed a “best man” for is to have someone act as one of the two witnesses for the registry. I chose my mom to do that.
Nevertheless, if you want to choose a best man, now is a good time to do it, even if only to be able to answer the question when someone says, “Oh, she’s maid of honour, cool. Who’s your best man?”. [Nice-to-have, Week 2-4]
Buy wedding dress
When we started this article journey, I mentioned that the biggest thing to realize is that if you are inflexible on one thing, you have to be flexible on something else. For a lot of people, the dress is a deal-breaker. Some women want the perfect dress, which they’ll know when they see it, after trying on 400 other dresses over a five-month long search. Guess what? If you want to get married in six months, you don’t have five months to do a dress search. You have about two weeks. ** Spousal edit — My wife points out that we told the parents, chose the Minister and bought a wedding dress at week 2, all in the same weekend.
If you are a guy reading this part, I’ll tell you straight out that the wedding industry for dresses seems nuts to me. They’ll say, “Sorry, it takes 18 months or 12 months or 9 months to get THAT dress.” Unless of course you are willing to pay extra for a “rush”. Uh huh. Let me ask this…how many women do you hear say that their dress wasn’t ready for the actual wedding date and they had to wear something else instead? Not that many. Like close to zero. Sure, aunt Martha’s friend’s sister’s husband’s cousin, twice removed, had it happen, but that’s it. There may be problems with alterations, it may be a crush to get it right in the last few days, but I don’t know a single person who didn’t have their dress when their wedding happened. It almost never happens unless something else wonky happens which in turn causes a problem with the dress — a boat sank that had the shipment on board, a fire hit an alteration shop with the dress inside, the dress shop went out of business. Problems, but not simply because of normal business delays.
Yet when my fiancée was talking to friends in Ottawa, they all said, “OMG, six months, you’ll never get a dress, it’s a nine-month wait in Ottawa at least, closer to a year.” I admit I’m skeptical, even if that’s just what some of the stores say. Most of them, if given a choice between having it ready in six months or not making a sale, seem to find a way to have it ready for the date.
In Andrea’s case, she went to Peterborough. Three hours from Ottawa, a small handful of dress shops. She spent a weekend there in Week 2 or 3, found a dress in a day, relatively off the rack, alterations planned, she was done. ** Spousal edit: My wife points out that it was the first dress she tried, though she did try others after that, before returning to her first one. But it wasn’t “off the rack”, it was ordered. And there were issues with alterations/fittings though so it wasn’t ready when it was originally supposed to be, which was stressful. Her and her mom ran around to do it. Was it stressful? Sure. Any more stressful than any woman buying a wedding dress? Nominally yes, but overall, not really, and I would argue probably less because she knew she didn’t have five months to turn herself into a squirrel while she was looking. And were they going to make the six month deadline? Oh sure, no problem. Not for nothing, most of the stores all have the SAME supplier, but the people in Peterborough could get it in six months but the stores in Ottawa were 9-12? Really? Okay, sure. Anyway, let’s add it to the tracker. [Must-have, Week 2-3]
This is also the time for a slightly different reality check. You have six months. You have a maid of honour. How big a wedding party can you afford in terms of time? In our case, we wanted a very small wedding party (us plus one each, although it turned out to be us plus just the maid of honour). If however you want to add six groomsmen and six bridesmaids, you are going to have a nightmare for getting dresses for them all, or at least, getting all the SAME dresses for them. Because you’ll need to corral them all right away, go pick dresses, get fittings, book it all, etc. Not very feasible. However, IF you are flexible on the dresses — such as telling them they all should pick a blue dress, even if they don’t match — you can be as insistent on the numbers as you want. Again, it’s the trade-off of which piece is most important — having six bridesmaids or having all the dresses exactly match or not turning yourself into a stress squirrel? [Nice-to-have: Week 2-3]
Of course, the dress isn’t everything. You’ll also want shoes, lingerie and accessories. Which means you should have a picture of you in your dress while you look for those things. [Must-have, Week 4-13] You also might consider wearing the shoes in advance to break them in so you don’t get blisters the day of the wedding. [Weeks 22-26]
Often this is where people start going for the “something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue” traditions.
And even with the dress, you’ll need to book first and final fittings. With a six month window, those first and final fittings are going to be a bit tight — likely the first one will be anywhere from week 18-20 and the final at week 24 although some add in a “final final” alteration the day before just to make sure. [Must-have, Week 18-20, Week 24, maybe Week 26]
Get clothes for the Groom
Just as with the bride, you need some clothes for the groom. For some, they want a tux, and while most men don’t own a tux unless they’re into galas, they can be rented easily enough. In my case, I didn’t want a penguin suit, I just wanted a normal suit. Nothing outrageous, just a couple of nice suits to choose from, a new tie or two for options, new pair of shoes. Mostly stuff I could reuse later too. [Must-have, Week 1-12, depending on tux rental or suit purchase]
Again, however, as with the bridesmaids, if you want six groomsmen all in the same tuxedos, you’ll need to pick and fit them early. [Nice-to-have: Week 1-3]
Other related activities
One of the other things people usually want for the day is to have their hair and make-up done by a professional salon. As soon as you have your date finalized, book the hairdresser [Week 3 for Week 26]. And at the same time, book them for a test where they’ll try a few different things, see what you like. [Week 3 for Week 20]. And then remember that you’re going to do that on the day of your wedding, with appropriate adjustments to your schedule. If the salon doesn’t open until 8, and it takes two hours to do your hair and makeup, or yours plus mother of the bride plus mother of the groom plus bridesmaids plus maid of honour, plus you have to get your dress on and get to the venue, you’re not going to be able to do that AND have a morning wedding, even if the church of your dreams is available from 11-1:00. [Week 26]
If you’re so inclined, you might also consider having a waxing, manicure, pedicure, and facial that week, but get it done a day or two before the wedding, not the SAME day obviously. [Week 26]
I’m also a fan of the groom doing some basic grooming that week too. Since it often takes a couple of days for your hair to reset after a haircut, I would schedule it for the end of Week 25.
One last thing we did that last week…we booked massages just before the wedding to help keep us calm and relaxed. [Week 26]
Choose an officiant and a location for the wedding
Let’s face it, with only six months to go, you’re either going to be setting the date as whatever date your venue of choice is available or you’re setting your preferred date and finding an out-of-the-box venue to match it. And who is officiating is often tightly entwined with your venue choice, so I’ve lumped them together.
Like almost everyone else, we had three main possibilities for an officiant to perform the ceremony:
A court official (judge, justice of the peace, etc.);
A registered officiant (someone who’s completed one of those online courses, quite often, and done some training); or,
A religious representative of some sort (priest, minister, pastor, etc.).
There are a few other possibilities I suppose (like a ship’s Captain), but for most people, the above three are the core options.
We had someone we wanted…a retired Minister of my wife’s church back in Peterborough. We had no real religious ties in Ottawa, and he was a good choice. He had kept his license so that he could perform ceremonies from time to time, and he had performed the ceremony for my soon-to-be-sister-in-law a few years before too. We met with him, he seemed like a good choice, and so we were set for the “who”.
I want to digress a moment however. I have heard some horror stories about people who chose a Minister that they didn’t know very well, and in the middle of the ceremony, as part of the open part where the Minister addresses the guests somewhat informally, the Minister proceeded to basically comment on society’s failings or some such issue, including gay marriage. If it had been me at the altar, I would have stopped the ceremony. Seriously, I’m not joking. I would have been so embarrassed and offended, I would have ended it there and kicked the priest to the curb.
And so, since I didn’t know the Minister that well, I told my wife-to-be that I wanted to grill him like a fish to be comfortable. I have very strong views about the importance of openness and tolerance, and it was the only way to make sure nothing “untoward” happened during the ceremony. Once we met, and started talking, all of my fears went away. But for me, it was important to make sure the person performing our ceremony wasn’t some closeted bigot that I couldn’t stand (I didn’t think he would be, my wife-to-be liked him after all, but I needed to be comfortable too).
In terms of the “where”, I expected the Minister was going to want to perform the ceremony in a church. I totally forgot that he had performed the sister-in-law’s wedding in the middle of a forest for them. And when we met, he said it was actually easier to NOT be in a church, since churches come with the church officials for that church, and some officials don’t play well with others (they might let the guest Minister use the church, but might insist upon them performing any ceremony in their church). Since we didn’t have a regular church anyway, it wasn’t an issue.
So we started hunting for a venue. I wasn’t that excited about having it in a hotel banquet room, too bland and generic. And we weren’t sure what we wanted for a reception, but we had the same concerns. We looked a couple of open-air parks in the area, which would have been great, but no guarantees for the weather and no easy backup locations if the weather was bad (particularly with out-of-town guests who would have to be told where to go at the last minute to change a venue). There was a decent little area at the University of Ottawa that seemed promising, but turned out to be fully booked in September (something to do with classes being back in session for university, pffft). A couple of places had little auditoriums that we could use, but nothing was gelling.
But somewhere in the auditorium consideration, we started thinking about theatre venues. Good seating, good sight lines, small area to perform a ceremony, it could work. And we did have a theatre we liked — the Ottawa Little Theatre. It was near where we used to live, we had had seasons tickets to it before, could work. My wife followed up with them to see if they even did rentals for weddings, and while they had almost no experience with it previously, they said, “Sure, why not?”. The only caveat was that they had a show opening a week later — called The Perfect Wedding, surely a sign! — and so we could use the theatre, but not the stage. We checked it out, there was a large enough area between the first set of seats and the raised stage, we really only needed room for the Minister plus us.
And so we now had both a Minister and a venue. Ideally, this would have happened in Week 1, but for us, it pushed to Week 3 and 4 [Must-have: Week 1-4, meeting with Minister: Week 5-12].
Plan the actual ceremony
From talking to a few people about planning their weddings, I realized early that there were two camps of people: those who wanted to plan every minute aspect of the ceremony and those who wanted “script A or B”. Custom tweaking or standard wording, basically.
The main elements of a ceremony are rather simple though for your planning:
Seating everyone
Processional
Intro by the Minister (or whoever is running the ceremony)
Possible: Some religious elements (service, prayers, communion)
Possible: Readings
Likely: Some general words from Minister about marriage and/or the couple
Vows
Ring exchange (maybe with a blessing of the rings too)
Kissing
Signing of the Registry (i.e. the documents)
Closing by the Minister
Recessional
Some of the order may change, some pieces (like d and e) might be larger or smaller, vows might be standard or personal, etc. And somewhere in the 26 weeks, you’ll meet with the Minister or Priest or Officiant and discuss what pieces you want in there. They may have elements they insist upon, or be completely open to whatever you want. More likely than not, they’ll have several “options” for you in terms of choosing a reading, or one of several scriptures, for example.
But let’s go through the list again in a bit more detail.
Seating everyone — Some couples let people seat themselves, some people prefer to have groomsmen act as ushers. We had one of my brothers and a couple of friends help with the seating of general people, and handing out programs (a separate category for later). However, you may also want to have a couple of “special” people seated near the end — once everyone else is seated, often the grandparents and parents are seated last, and often escorted by someone. Not quite formally part of the processional, but close to it.
Processional — When a lot of people think about a wedding, they think about a bride walking down the aisle. However, just before they do, the groom has to get to the front of the church to be waiting for them. Often they come in from the side, not formally part of a processional, but it is an option. For the bride’s processional, they may be proceeded by flower girls throwing petals, or multiple bridesmaids (sometimes escorted by groomsmen, but not always), and a maid of honour. They may be flanked by a father (traditional) or both parents (modern) or someone else entirely or by themselves or even hand-in-hand with their groom. Any will do, with two small things to watch out for…first, the more people coming down the aisle, the longer it takes. Not a huge issue, but it does add to the length of your ceremony. With everyone potentially in a hot room/church, no easy way to take a break and get some air, etc. Second, if you are having both parents escort you down the aisle, remember that the aisle then has to be wide enough for three people to walk abreast. Uh-huh, that’s as silly as it sounds…I watched a ceremony one-time (remembering that you may be in a non-traditional venue) where the bride had a father and mother on each arm, and they were were struggling to walk, sandwiched together, in order to fit down the aisle.
Intro by the Minister (or whoever is running the ceremony) — This is often very basic, thanking people for coming and saying why we’re all there (“To witness the union of Jane Elizabeth and Thomas Patrick in the holy state of matrimony…”).
Possible: Some religious elements (service, prayers, communion) — If you’re having a religious ceremony, some of the questions (particularly for Catholicism) is whether or not it will include a full “mass”. Offerings, communion, wine, the whole service. Some priests/ministers will insist, others will offer. Often, they’ll suggest some prayers which may or may not be merged with the readings. While we weren’t in a church, and we weren’t going for a full “service”, we did identify a couple of prayers to be included in the ceremony. For instance, we did the Lord’s Prayer which was a staple of my Catholic upbringing and a source of comfort to hear. But we wanted a bit beyond that.
Now here’s where it gets weird. Often the ones chosen are from the Bible (duh!), and are about love or marriage, or both. But remember, the Bible is the ultimate in “old school”. Some of the prayers may be quite familiar to you, but you may never have really thought about the words. Now you will. And you may be thinking, “Wait, did it just say something about the wife obeying the husband?”.
What did we do? First we googled “wedding readings” and from the results, we chose some verse that were better than others (or at least less egregious). Second, in some cases, I edited them. WTF? Yep, I edited them. I don’t mean I changed the words, I just mean that we used the upfront part, maybe some from the middle, and some from the end. Kind of an abridged version, editing out some of the parts we didn’t like.
For us, we chose a couple of common scriptures:
Notice a couple of line gaps in there? Shorter is good, in my view, and allows you to control the messaging too. If one of you is particularly religious, you may consider this blasphemy, but you are choosing what is said at YOUR wedding. Shouldn’t it reflect YOUR views?
Possible: Readings — There are three elements to having readings during your ceremony, and none of them are religious in nature (particularly as the readings don’t have to be scripture, although they often are). First, which readings will you choose — scripture or something else? In addition to our two scripture elements above that the Minister said, we had three other readings (poetry and prose choices). Second, tightly tied to the first, why are you including them? Some people do a reading because they want their third cousin who is 7 to be part of the ceremony cuz “aren’t children cute?”. Okay, your wedding, your choice. But for me, for us really, we wanted readings that spoke to us, that reminded us of different elements of faith, of love, of commitment. The whole ceremony is an expression of you as a couple. Third, the alternate view perhaps, is once you have decided on WHAT you want to include, then ask yourself WHO you want to do it, and equally, if they CAN do it. You obviously aren’t going to ask your four-year old nephew to read a difficult passage because they won’t be able to do it well or even understand what they’re reading. Equally, asking your great-grandmother who is partly senile and has very limited mobility to read for three minutes is probably a bad idea. For us, we chose three people who had special hearts capable of obvious love for others and to whom we felt a kinship of spirit.
Reading #1 by Kate, Andrea’s cousin, an excerpt from “The Prophet” by Kahlil Gibran and Reading #2, by Linda, Andrea’s friend, an excerpt from “I Love You” by Erich Fried, translated by Roy Croft:
Reading #3, by Corinne, my friend, an excerpt from “The Irrational Season” by Madeleine L’Engle:
Likely: Some general words from Minister about marriage and/or the couple — I mentioned earlier that this was my “danger zone” for the ceremony. I wanted to know what the Minister might say. The example I gave of a horror story started along this line…it was a Catholic priest noting that they were celebrating marriage. And that marriages had high divorce rates, but that at least they were even bothering to get married, and he noted that marriage in a CHURCH rather than a civil ceremony had lower rates. And CATHOLIC churches even lower. And of course he was talking about marriage between a MAN and a WOMAN because anything else wasn’t really marriage. As I said earlier, if that happened to me, I would have ended the ceremony immediately. My wedding, my rules. If you care about what he or she says, this is the place where it will come up; if not, go with it. While I had “vetted” the Minister prior to the ceremony, there was one phrase in this section that was a bit grating to my ears. An ad-lib line talked about union between this man and this woman, which we were and thus “true”, but it sounded so “off” to me when the Minister said the words, that I worried perhaps that it was insensitive to a number of our gay friends in the room. (I checked afterwards, and one told us while she noticed it, it hadn’t been done offensively in her view, just descriptively.)
Vows — The officiants all have standard wording available if you want it, pretty much the same wording you have seen on TV shows and in movies since you were a kid (“Do you take…”). And at the end, the couple says “I do”. Most of the time now, though, the officiant will ask you if you want to say the words yourself (“I take you, (wife’s name), to have and to hold…”) and if you want to write the vows yourself. Since I style myself as a wannabe-writer, of course I wanted us to write our own. But unlike TV shows and movies, there is a HUGE danger in writing them in secret. If you go by stereotype, the wife will say a whole bunch of nice mushy things, the husband will say she has a nice butt. And now you have the grounds for the first fight. Remember too that planning a wedding is stressful, and if you are doing your own vows, you have to find time to ACTUALLY write them down. Personally, I liked the fact that we did them together. We looked at a bunch of versions out there, including traditional, and decided what we wanted to include or not. We wrote them down, didn’t memorize them, and then we had the Minister read them to us a line at a time:
Ring exchange (maybe with a blessing of the rings too) — There really isn’t that much to talk about for the rings. Oh wait, yes there is… who is looking after them prior to this moment? A best man, the maid of honour, the groom? The Minister? And of course, you had to buy them earlier. Some Ministers offer to hold them, some Ministers DON’T want the responsibility. Someone who is going to be reliable is the goal.
During the ring exchange, you may have “additional” words. Simple tradition is “With this ring, I thee wed”. Others, like us, add some additional wording:
Kissing — once you say “I do”, or the vows, you’ll get to kiss (it might be after the signing, somewhat of an individual process). And you’ve probably kissed before, so no big deal, right? Except you might want to practice a bit so that you know what kind of kiss you’re both planning to do. A full-on make-out session designed to embarrass everyone or get hoots and catcalls, or a relatively chaste kiss because you’re not really into public displays of affection? Doesn’t matter which as long as you both have the same expectations. I read one story online where the woman gave him a little peck and he felt slighted…but she was in a tight dress, in a hot church, and she was feeling a bit nauseated. She thought she was going to pass out. So regulating her breathing while kissing wasn’t an option.
Signing of the Registry (i.e. the documents) — Most officiants will take the couple off to the side for a moment and have them sign the documents, no big deal, right? Except for three things. First, someone has to have the documents ready (usually the Officiant), particularly so if you have a non-traditional venue. Are you signing on someone’s back, or is there a little table to sit down at, and to take pictures of while you’re signing? Second, someone has to have a pen, preferably with a backup. Some people use special pens, some people use a little disposable pen, whatever feels right to you. Third, most importantly, two witnesses have to sign. So decide on who is going to sign in advance. Traditionally, it was the maid of honour and the best man, but in our case, as we only had the maid of honour, we had her and my mom sign. Which of course both of them had to know about and agree to beforehand so they would know where we were going and approximately when.
Closing by the Minister — The Minister will then usually “close” the ceremony by saying a few words, wishing you well, and then “announcing” to the gathered guests that he / she is presenting the new couple. About the only part that matters here is what they are going to say — Mr and Mrs Bob Jones? Jane and Bob? Bob and Jane? Husband and wife? Happy couple? Up to you.
Recessional — Usually, after being introduced, you’ll go back up an aisle and greet people at the back. However, after you leave, people tend to work it so that the first row leaves, then the second, then the third, etc. Some people want that very orderly and organized, and have an usher do it. Others, not so much. Up to you.
Whew, that is a LOT on the ceremony, right? Most of which you’ll pin down around Week 13 or so, just to get the structure, and then you’ll do the last pieces in the last month (vows, choose readings, ask readers if they’ll do it, etc.).
Musical accompaniment
Every wedding is different for location and design, it’s hard to talk with specifics about music. If it’s in a church, you probably have an organist. Or they’ll offer you the choir. Outside of that, it’s whatever you choose to arrange. We had a small trio playing music beforehand, various musical pieces while people were being seated, starting about 15-30 minutes before the ceremony. For the processional, we went with “Sleepers, Wake” (Bach). Around the readings, we had “Largo” (Handel) and for the signing interlude, “Sheep May Safely Graze” (Bach). At the end, our recessional was to “Four Seasons, Autumn” (Vivaldi). [Musicians: Week 8-10; Music: Week 20-22]
Miscellaneous
There are a bunch of other little things related to the ceremony, but hard to pin down as separate headings:
Get wedding license — yep, you have to go and get one from the city usually, often good for 30 days [Week 23];
If you write your own vows, phrasing for the ring exchange, readings, etc., sometime you’ll have to print them all out so that you have them for the ceremony [Week 25];
Plan what you are going to do for breakfast and lunch on the day of the wedding — some people think it’s no big deal, but if you’re rushing from the hair salon to wherever you’re putting your dress on, do you really want to be stopping to make lunch? Or before you go to the salon, are you going to be too nervous to eat? You need food and water through-out the day to keep your energies up, and often, even after the ceremony, there are 8 million people milling around you (or it will seem like it), just as you’re about to take a bite of something finally [Week 25];
If you are going to have a guest book (and pens!) at the ceremony or the reception, who is responsible for setting it up and moving it from one place to the other? You might have your hands full [Week 25]…oh, and if you ARE having one, you probably need to have already bought it (but I’ll mention that under other topics); and,
You’ll also have to take any payments with you for the day of the event to pay the various venues, caterers, musicians, etc., if you haven’t already paid in advance [Week 26].
The good news is, at this point, the ceremony is planned. You’re done, right?
Of the 16 categories I mentioned in the first post (Planning a wedding in six months – Part 1 – Early planning), one thing that makes almost no sense at first blush is to have an engagement heading. After all, aren’t you already engaged if you’re planning the wedding together?
For us, the answer was yes and no.
As I mentioned in the last post, we kind of “decided” this was the year we were both ready and we would move forward with a wedding. We’d been together six years, were already living together and had bought a house together, but we hadn’t gotten married yet. Without getting too far into personal details, my wife is a lot younger than me, and while she was ready for the rest, she wasn’t ready for marriage and I wasn’t pushing. So I didn’t want to spring an engagement ring on her if she wasn’t ready. Then we decided we WERE ready, and we were planning a date, but she had no ring, since we kind of “discussed” our way into it, it wasn’t a “fun and spontaneous” moment.
You also might have noticed in the previous post, that one of my MUST-HAVES was a ring for my wife-to-be. I wanted her to have the engagement ring, to enjoy it, to enjoy the experience of getting it. Yet I knew it wouldn’t exactly be a surprise, so some of the “fun” part of the experience — the stories that people tell for years — was missing. And I didn’t want her to miss out on any part of the “wedding” or “engagement” experience.
Choosing a ring
Lots of people go and look at rings before they get engaged, get some idea of what the woman wants to have in terms of design, the guy figures out his price range (and then often doubles it), and then the guy chooses the ring. In many ways, that process seems fun and exciting, but as it will likely be the most expensive jewellery that the woman ever owns, shouldn’t she have a bit more say in it?
In our case, my wife’s aunt is a private jeweler in Toronto. In month one, we went up to Toronto, looked at a bunch of cut but unmounted diamonds, and basically freaked myself out. There were all these stones rolling around the desktop, $5K, 10K, $20K each. A couple fell on the floor at different times. I couldn’t keep them straight, which was which. We got a feel for what my wife-to-be liked, chose something approximately, and then my fiancée (hey, cool word to use! let’s use it all the time!) left while I chose the ring and mount. All good. The aunt said it would take about eight weeks.
After we got back to Ottawa, I had a small regret. Yes, my wife-to-be got to choose her stone and have a say in her biggest jewellery piece, but would she feel surprised when she got it in two months? Would she be excited? It bothered me that she didn’t have the “real” engagement experience, the fun part, essentially. And I started thinking deviously. What if we told her it wouldn’t be available until May 24th, but it was actually available May 8? We could slip down to Peterborough for Mother’s Day or so (and her mother’s birthday), I’d work some magic with the aunt, and I’d have the ring ready to give her as a surprise two weeks early. Great plan.
Except I didn’t tell the aunt it was going to be a total surprise on timing. So about two weeks before May 8th, the aunt said in an email to both of us, “Good news, we’ll have it ready for the 8th”. Dammit! I blew it. She now knew the date again. Shoot. No surprise.
Unless…
Unless I somehow got the ring from the aunt BEFORE the 8th, and didn’t tell my wife. Maybe by courier. It sounded like a plan to me, but the shipping with the full insurance was exorbitant. Hmm…what if I drove to Toronto and picked it up? Then I would have it early, and she would then be able to show it off at Mother’s Day. Hmm…would that work?
Discussions of logistics with the aunt proved it was possible, but how would I drive to Toronto and back without my wife knowing where I was? We work in the SAME complex, she would know something was up if I didn’t go to work one day. I devised a plan. I would take a day off, but tell her I was going to a conference instead. That way, she wouldn’t suspect. We got up that morning, started getting ready, I put on my suit to go to the “conference” (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) and then when she went to the shower, I grabbed some casual clothes to wear on the drive, jumped in the car and I was off to Toronto!
For those of you not familiar with the Ottawa to Toronto trip, it’s about 4.5 hours. I got there, had lunch with the aunt, hopped back in the car, and I was off again!
It was Thursday and we were going to Peterborough on Friday. Which meant I had Thursday night to get her the ring. Sure, I wasn’t nervous about her answer, but I wanted it memorable. I called her from the car, suggested we go out for a nice dinner, sounds good, right? Nope, she said we had some leftovers we needed to eat up. Leftovers were NOT special, was my thought.
I suggested a nice dinner instead, since I was already wearing a suit (supposedly, at least, for the “conference”, nudge, nudge) and I had just accepted a new job, a little celebration. I wasn’t looking for super high-end, that would have been suspicious, but there is a Keg Manor in Ottawa that’s in a historic old house with a nice garden next to it. She said, “Okay, sure”. She wanted to change first though, so we went home, got ready, headed out.
After the plan of “drive to Toronto and back in a single day”, I didn’t really have anything further in mind. We wandered around the garden, looked at some nice flowers. I was debating what to do…one knee? Something memorable to say? My mind was relatively blank (a common occurrence, to which she would likely attest). In the end, I basically said I had something for her to celebrate our “two month anniversary of being engaged” (March 8 to May 8). When I pulled out the box, I said, “this is for you,” (I know, really memorable, right?) but she was all giggly and surprised anyway. “How did you get my ring?”. When I told her I didn’t “really” have a conference that day, she was like, “You DROVE to Toronto and back all today? How???” and then she had the ring in her hand and it didn’t matter any more how or why or when. Jackpot!
And she got the chance to call people and tell them, and then to show them the ring that weekend too. Not exactly traditional, but it worked for us. ** Spousal edit: My wife reminds that I also forgot my wallet when we went for dinner and she had to pay.
So what was on my hidden part of the tracker?
Get engaged (Week 1)
Tell parents (Week 1) ** Spousal edit — My wife informs my memory is faulty…we actually waited two weeks to tell the parents in person.
Tell family (Week 1)
Tell friends (Week 2)
Buy ring – engagement (Week 3)
Give ring / propose (Week 8)
In most cases, people would only have the “tell / tell / tell” headings under their Must-Haves-For-Us headings. Of course, while we were picking out her engagement ring, we also looked at wedding bands too. Some people might do those under the ceremony heading, or here. As long as they’re being tracked somewhere, it doesn’t matter!
But if you thought you were going to get off scot-free on this heading, you’d be mistaken. Because there are a few other things that you might need to do:
Choose wedding date — Yes, we had a notional date, September, but with only six months on the clock, we needed to choose a date immediately. With a backup in case a venue wasn’t available. September 13th would be our date, screw the superstitions of 13 being an unlucky number;
Put an engagement notice in the paper — Some families do this, particularly if it’s a small town, it’s just tradition;
Publish banns in the church — if you’re in a particular religion (like Catholicism), the churches “publish the banns” (i.e. notices) before the wedding to see if anyone objects, again for tradition if you care;
Engagement party — Some people want to have an engagement party to celebrate, but for us, that was way down the list of “nice-to-haves”, and maybe if we had a year or two, we might have done it, but we pushed it off a bit (and later it morphed into something else);
Pay for rings — I mentioned you could track the engagement ring and/or the wedding bands here or under ceremony, but wherever you track them, you also need to pay for them and put them in your expense tracker;
Introduce the parents — lots of people get married and their parents already know each other well, by circumstance, by schedule, or by planning, but in our case, they didn’t, so we arranged for them to “meet” (there were only three, it was easy to arrange a quick lunch or dinner, I don’t even remember which…or was it a BBQ? ** Spousal edit: My wife reminds me went to a restaurant in Peterborough.); and,
Discuss any big questions that are outstanding.
I threw this last one in here because a lot of people “think” it is already done before they get engaged in the first place. But many churches suggest that before you get married in their church, you should attend a pre-marriage counselling. Think of it as pre-marriage boot camp. Why? Because they want to know and they want you to know that you’ve addressed most of the big questions that can lead to divorce later on. Like for instance, how many kids do you want? If you have kids, will you take them to church? How will you handle discipline? How do you feel about who takes care of them if Mom goes back to work right away?
I know, you love each other, none of these questions are deal-breakers for you, right? Until you trip over one that is. Wait, what, you expect me to TAKE YOUR NAME? You want FOUR kids, not TWO? Everybody is different. And something you never thought about could prompt a discussion you’re not expecting or ready to have with your spouse-to-be.
For us, we didn’t particularly feel like we needed that discussion to be with a religious leader, nor did we have one handy in Ottawa to do it anyway. Nor did we feel we needed anyone facilitating the discussion, although some people we know think it was a fantastic idea. Instead, we downloaded a bunch of questions off the net and we both went through and picked a few that were important to each of us. Then, over time, we discussed a few of them. Nothing earth-shattering, partly as we had already had many of those discussions earlier.
One that was an interesting one for us was last names. But not in the way you might think. For me, I thought it was ludicrous that she might take my name after marriage. I dated her as Andrea H—–, I fell in love with Andrea H—–, I was marrying Andrea H—–, and then she would be Andrea S—–? That made no sense to me. Or her, which was the important part. When someone asked her if she was changing her name, her response was, “Yes, I’m thinking of Elizabeth.” I’ve always loved that response. Now, don’t get us wrong, we don’t care what other people do, but it made no sense TO us, FOR us. So that was normal for us.
And when it came to the possible last name of our future children, we glossed over it at the time, but for me, I just assumed they would have her last name. So no real issue for us, and in the end, that’s what we did. We stuck my last name in as a middle name, but I didn’t feel strongly about it.
Most people get spontaneously engaged for love, which is exciting, but the actual marriage is more about the sober reflection side of life. And running through some of these questions can be eye-opening, even if only for the ways in which you discuss things and communicate. You’re planning a life together, this is a good little test for yourself to see if you can work through things that are a bit more challenging than what restaurant you want to go to tonight.
However, for most of the items above, the schedule is relatively flexible. It’s up to you to decide if they are must-haves or just nice-to-haves, and when you want them to happen.
