Eric was a groomsman in a wedding last summer, and a month before the wedding the Bride mailed a physical copy of an itinerary to everyone. When we arrived at the Iowa wedding weeks later, a lot of the wedding party appeared to even have theirs with them. Me being me, I thought this was a great idea!
As part of my valiant attempt to stay organized, I’ve put together a ridiculous itinerary that’s been emailed to basically everyone. With the bulk being from out of town, I broke things down by day & time (we have things spanning Thursday-Saturday), I also noted who needed to be there, the full address (for GPS) and a link to a Google map if the individual wanted to print one. I noted separately any times for the usher, flower girls, etc., and even threw out a disclaimer/threat to any of the groomsmen who thought it necessary to “over-indulge” before ceremony time. I made notes and instructions where I felt necessary, and I think I probably appear borderline psychotic to the outside world. To offset this, I tried to add in a little humor and sarcasm (as expected) as to not come off as bossy (or cray-cray). That’s really okay, as long as everyone is where they need to be, when they need to be.
One of my bridesmaids that got married in October suggested that I turn my cell phone OFF the day of the wedding. She said she was unpleasantly surprised on the morning of their wedding when everyone under the sun was calling to ask ridiculous questions, most of which were clearly listed on the invitation itself. She ended up buried alive with unnecessary details, and floored by the whole thing. To try to help with this, I listed our wedding coordinator’s phone number and email address on our itinerary and asked that if anyone has trouble with details, to just please please call Jill instead of Eric or myself. Fingers crossed that it actually works!
Next, to tackle logistics, and organizing the family helpers….
Crazy as the whole process may be, I guess I'd like my wedding to be something like outro of Bridesmaids.
When people know you’re planning a wedding, you often hear things like “Oh, how exciting! Your wedding is the best day of you’re life!”
I get it. I do. People are excited about weddings in general. People see weddings as a time of renewal, of hope. Hearing about other people’s weddings brings back fond memories to those who have already gotten married, and it brings hope to people who haven’t made it to that point (but would like to).
But the best day of my life? Never mind that we’re planning the biggest, most expensive party we’ll ever throw. Even then, the best day of my life?!
No pressure or anything.
It’s comments like this that make me want to hold off on getting married forever. If the day you get married is truly the best day of your life, what is the point of getting married at all? It’s all downhill after that!
Of course I haven’t had the wedding day yet and therefore can’t comment on how I’m going to feel about it (although, thanks to Disney, I’m sure I’ve developed unrealistic expectations about the whole thing), but I bet that I can think of a number of other moments throughout my life that are equally as memorable, even if far less epic. Moments like my college roommate’s 21st birthday, where I knew everyone at the 20-or-so person table and heartily enjoyed the company. Moments like our first anniversary, where were we excited our inner child and indulged the posh urban sophisticate sides of ourselves. Times like small-town shopping with friends for Christmas–complete with a gentle snowfall and horse-drawn carriage rides. Moments that make me feel surrounded by people and love and fun and excitement. Moments that are what I hope my wedding to be like, I suppose.
So will the day I get married be the best day of my life? I hope not. But at least it will be one hell of a party.
With about 106 days until the BIG DAY (but who’s counting) , I’m finding myself bogged down with some tasks that aren’t as fun as I’d hoped. With insurance out of the way, my next dreaded task– room blocks. Both Eric & I’s families are from Iowa, so rooms blocks are an important thing to get in place. We have some family members staying for longer periods of time (up to a week), some with children, some single, etc., etc. The most logical arrangement seems to be to have one block of suite-style rooms to accommodate those who may need a little more space, and a block of regular rooms for others. After a LOT of back and forth with too many hotels, we almost have everything buttoned up.
Before digging in, I found a couple of great articles that I would highly suggest reading that I have listed below. I then decided what area we wanted guests to be in, then made a list of the hotels that I thought were options. Before talking about blocks with each, I gathered regular rates for May to use for comparison. We’ve settled on a block of suite-style rooms at a Hyatt Place hotel ($119 each), and are still working on locking in a block for our single/double rooms.
Here’s what I’ve learned so far:
Location–
Our venue doesn’t have many hotels super closeby, so we’ve elected to have guests stay in the Opryland area. It’s convenient to the airport, restaurants/shopping, close to our home and the rehearsal dinner, other entertainment, and traffic can be less confusing or overwhelming for out-of-towners. The drive to the venue will be a little longer, but we’re working out some transportation options, which I’ll discuss in a later post when I have more information.
Dates–
With the wedding date already set, there’s still importance in researching your wedding date, even if it’s as simple as typing “May 12, 2012 Nashville, TN” into a search engine. In our case, May 12 happens to be the date of Vanderbilt University’s graduation, as well as Steeplechase– both are very popular happenings in our area. I wish I would have realized this even sooner than I did, as it puts pressure on prices and availabilty for rooms, the rehearsal dinner venue, and many other things.
Cost (obviously)–
Living in a tourist destination, May is when tourism starts to pick up. Being a BSB, I of course wanted a good bang for my buck and think we did okay, but there was more to take into consideration with the dates we’re dealing with. I tried to not ONLY weigh cost, but also what the room rate included, such as breakfast, parking, airport transportation, hotel bar, etc.
The Contract–
As always, do your homework and read carefully. If you’re not familiar with the lingo, ask someone who is, or research. Some contracts may contain attrition clauses that make you responsible for covering the cost of unused rooms, or a percentage of unused rooms– I really suggest avoiding this and reading closely. In our case, there was a clause to cover 80% of unused rooms in the block under 28 nights booked (each room each night counts as “one night”). With a little talking, we were able to cut this down, but also have a few days before our official cut-off date where unused rooms can be dropped without penalty. In other words, if we’re under 28 nights at three days before the cut-off and five rooms are left, I can drop those five rooms and pay nothing.
It seems like as soon as you announce an engagement, you’re instantly flooded with questions and unsolicited advise, as well as opnions that you may or may not want. I thought it would be a fun project to reach out to family and friends for thoughts on things that they would have done differently with their own weddings. I’ve gotten some good food for thought. I ended up getting several responses and wanted to share them with the BSB World!
I’m happy Nick and I opted to do things our own way and not to feel obligated to do things the ‘traditional’ way. Instead of a DJ and the dance, we had a charter bus and went to a bar and then picked up the tab. We had visited the bar prior and agreed w/ the bar to flag us when the tab got to a certain amount so we would be surprised We also didn’t have a wedding cake because we both hate cake. But, we did have a dessert bar and then our own personal cheese cake. We got a lot of flack before the wedding because of some of the things we cut out but afterwards received so many compliments on how nice it was because it was obvious it was about us and what was important to us. We also got the idea from ‘Friends’ to have our friend, Peter, get ordained to marry us. I think more people do this now,but 7 years ago it was a bit usual. Oh, and I had Taylor (my daughter) AND my dad give me away. With so many second marriages or children born first, it was something nice and I know she remember is vividly even though she was 5.
-Jessica, Iowa
I definitely have one thing that has bothered me ever since my wedding almost five years ago that I wish I could go back and do over. We decided to skip the receiving line after the ceremony (for the sake of taking pictures/saving time), and greet the guests at our reception instead. However, our wedding was in our local town, and the reception was about 20 minutes away, downtown. Some of our older relatives decided not to make the drive on the interstate downtown, so we missed even being about to thank them for coming. I really regret that.
-Lindsay, Indiana
We didn’t have a helpful wedding party. My wedding party was more concerned about themselves than helping me – so be careful who you pick!
– Janet, Ohio
I would have NEVER have picked the colors I ended up with – it was a bad compromise & a long story but I hated them (sage & butter). Something I DID do that was super cheap & effective was look at dresses in stores, write down the designers & styles and then ordered mine online (so naughty!).
-Jennifer, Missouri
I would have had a larger wedding. We were given a generous budget by my parents, and chose to use part on a smaller wedding, and the other part to buy a new car. I don’t remember a thing about the car now, but wish we would have had a larger wedding.
-My Mother, Iowa
I would not have had my sister-in-law stand up with me. She was a pain, hated the yellow dress, and complained the whole day.
-”Don’t put my name on this”, Illinois
Photo By Image Trick Photography
I wish I would have taken more time making some decisions. We got engaged on April 17th and got married on August 15th, so that literally left me with 4 months to plan a wedding! A short engagement is definitely do-able but I wish I would have thought a little more about what I wanted certain things to look like. Don’t get me wrong, I am very happy with the way everything turned out, but if I would have had a little more time I would have probably chosen a few different things: I would have discussed (in details) with the florist what my bouquet was going to look like. I would have gone over the final look of the cake before the wedding. It had too much ribbon and stuff on it, I would have liked it a little more simple (but it was delicious!) I would have liked more pictures done outside too.
-Stefanie, Tennessee
If getting married in a facility where you have to use their food and beverage (unless you are tied to a sit-down meal), offering buffet style heavy hor’devours or food stations in a reception style, can many times be more economical than a plated meal. If your reception time is “between meal times” –plan on approx. 4-6 pieces of food per person. And…if you are tied to a plated meal….negotiate serving a lunch portion rather than dinner. For hotels, the per person cost can be as much as half the cost for a lunch portion meal.
-Jill, Tennessee (also works in event planning)
No moonshine!
-Lisa, West Virginia
Things I wish I had done differently are researching/asking around more about my photographer and caterer. Wish I would have gotten a bigger venue. Wish I would’ve waited a couple more months to get married to we could have a little bit nicer wedding. Things I’m glad I did are starting and maintaining a binder with pictures of things I liked and ideas I got about decor, etc. Glad I stuck with the vision I had for the actual ceremony even though some people seemed to think it wouldn’t work. (It did work!) Wedding was January 2006.
-Lauren, Kentucky
I would have never had an open bar. The cost ended up being a LOT more than we had anticipated because we paid on a per-drink basis. I felt like we were secretly looking around to see who was drinking a $15 glass of champagne. We also had a few people “overindulge” and cause drama, which may have been avoided.
-Nicole, Tennessee
Keep things about the two of you– My wedding was more my Mother’s than mine.
-Annonymous, Ohio
Photo By Henderson Photography
I would have asked my bridesmaids in a more creative way. I would also recommend a venue that does not make you cater from them alone, but allows outside catering. They get you with that!
My next few posts will probably bounce back and forth between pre-wedding, wedding and post-wedding, since I totally dropped the blogging ball the last few weeks before my wedding….
Let’s talk wedding disasters. You know how in your wedding planning, when you’re stressing that something is going to go wrong, and eeeeeverybody insists that the things that always go wrong are the tiny little things that no one notices? Ignore them when they say that. Sometimes you have a disaster, or even two, and all 150 people notice. However, when those same annoying advice-givers tell you that everything will work out in the end and people will have a great time, listen to that part. That part is actually correct.
My wedding ceremony was perfect. Absolutely, down to the last detail, perfect. Which was funny, since I really hadn’t put a ton of thought into the ceremony except slaving over our choice of processional and recessional music. The reading choices took about 10 minutes. But for now, I’m going to skip over the perfect ceremony and jump to the partially-horrifying reception.
Call me old-fashioned, but I didn’t see Dave before the ceremony. So after the ceremony and big family group photos, the wedding party had about 45 minutes of late afternoon winter sunlight to get all our pictures. We took our pictures and then very haphazardly told each other we’d see everyone at the reception (Mistake #1: not organizing transportation better).
There was a 40-minute drive between our ceremony site and our reception site. When Dave and I got there, after being what we thought was a few minutes behind the rest of the wedding party, we were surprised to find very little of our wedding party waiting for us. We had completely lost one of our groomsmen, who had ridden with a non-wedding party friend, and that was cause for a bit of a stress, because we were slightly behind schedule and wanted to get into the reception. But that wasn’t nearly as stressful as finding out where most of the wedding party had disappeared to- they were in the reception room, trying desperately to fix the two full kegs that weren’t working At All. $250 worth of beer, trapped in non-functioning kegs. Dave and I found this out through his very blunt grandfather, who came out to the lobby to tell us that everyone was cranky because they wanted food, there was no beer and no music was playing. I found my father and asked him how bad it was, and he very reassuringly said, “Oh, it’s bad.”
At this point I’m already in a panic, and I haven’t even figured out why there’s no music. Dave’s brother/best man told us there was a problem with the music, so the playlist we’d slaved over had not been playing for the last hour and a half. As we finally gathered all of our wedding party and our emcee got ready to announce us, Dave’s brother turns to him and said, “So I might as well tell you this now, Dad spilled a Coke on your laptop and that’s why the music isn’t playing.”
Dave just sat on a chair with his head in his hands. I almost punched his brother right then and there. Not exactly the most opportune time for us to be told this. So while most newly wedded couples walk in to their receptions dancing and pumping their fists, we walked in with fake smiles and slight grimaces. With all the pressure our male relatives were giving us about everyone being hungry, we just kind of walked to the head table, didn’t sit down, said screw this and I just walked over to the buffet line to get it started.
It was a miserable start to the reception. I was trying not to cry or scream, nothing was organized, Dave’s poor cousin who was supposed to be emceeing and dj-ing was in a panic; it was a horrible mess. As Dave and I started to eat, I looked at him and very pathetically said, “This is not how I want to remember my reception.”
To make a long story short, we got my laptop out of Dave’s car (Thank God I had grabbed it at 3 a.m. when I left my house, with my exhausted bridesmaids asking me why I needed it), and a dedicated groomsman and bridesmaid’s boyfriend sat together and downloaded music and logged on to Youtube to get songs. The beer never did get fixed, so less than half of one keg was salvaged from the two kegs we had. Luckily, the lodge didn’t have stringent alcohol rules, so I had told all my friends that they could bring their own liquor if they wanted it. Some of them did, the rest became wine drinkers for the night. I don’t know how the wine lasted- as my dad said, “Loaves and fishes,” i.e., somehow it kept multiplying.
So in the end, everyone had a great time. Most people knew there was no beer, and a lot of people knew there was a music problem. I don’t think anyone remembers the awkward march to the buffet line. We ended up doing the toasts, cake cutting and first dances all back to back, instead of having some informal dancing between the first dances and the cake cutting, like we’d planned. While the awesome playlist that Dave and I spent weeks on was not used, and a lot of my favorite songs were not played, everyone danced and had a great time dancing. When I hear a fun song that was on the original playlist, I get a little wistful that it wasn’t played, but in the end you just gotta let things go.
My reception was far from perfect, but it was a blast. My brothers tossed me in the air in my wedding gown, the boys had a mosh pit over catching the garter, and Dave and a couple friends had an impromptu concert toward the end of the evening.
As they say, at the end of the day, you’re married, and nothing could be better than that.
