Wedding tips help aid the bride, groom and guests
One of my daughters’ and my favorite shows to watch together is “Four Weddings” on the TLC channel. It works like this: Four brides attend each other’s weddings over a few months, vote on them using a scale of one to 10, and critique them on camera. The highest vote getter among the four goes on a fabulous, all-expenses-paid honeymoon with her new groom. Sure, it gets catty. But it’s not all grenade throwing, subtle or otherwise.
“Four Weddings” is a huge hit. Which made me think, given that June is the traditional season for weddings, why leave so much advice-giving to young brides on TLC?
So, yes, here are a few rules of my own I’d like to suggest to engaged couples. Whether your wedding is next weekend or next June, I hope you’ll find a few things here to consider.
Rule 1. Start with the guest list. Less is more. By many accounts, the average guest costs the wedding hosts $170 each. Reason enough to cut the guest list many times over. More to the point, 10 years into our marriage my then-husband and I looked at photos of the 140 folks who were part of our wedding day and realized we had no on-going relationships with at least half of them. Unless you are throwing a Donald Trump-level bash, the vast majority of folks you know who aren’t very close family or friends will be happy to not be invited anyway.
Rule 2 (my pet peeve when it isn’t followed). Assuming you followed the first rule, your guests are people who love you. They are not just props in your bridezilla show. So be considerate of your guests in every way possible. For instance, have your wedding and reception in the same place or nearby each other, even if the venues are not otherwise “perfectly perfect.”
And please minimize your guests’ awful down time between the wedding and reception. It unnecessarily adds sometimes hours to the whole event — typically boring hours, at that. Consider taking all or most of your photos before the wedding so you can go straight to the party. You’ll have more fun that way, too. This means the bride and groom will see each other before the wedding itself, but who cares? Most of you have been living together for years anyway. Get over yourselves.
Rule 3. Do whatever your budget will allow, but please do it well. If you want a sit-down dinner, don’t try to spread a budget for 20 to cover 200. Have a dessert or lunch instead, equally lovely. In my book, it’s preferable. (See Rule 1. — “Less is more.”) Just be clear about what you are, and are not, providing in the way of food.
Rule 4. Leave the party before your guests do. This was once standard. Watch the “Father of the Bride” movies if you don’t believe me. If instead you party down with your guests until 2 in the morning, you make it hard for other folks to leave. And you announce to the world that you’ve already had so much sex with each other that, frankly, it’s no longer anything to rush off for. (Yes, it’s OK to pretend it’s all new.)
If you cling to the party until most of your guests have slunk out simply because it’s your one big day, you likely have your priorities messed up. Maybe really messed up.
The fact is, you do have something better to get to: the beginning of your marriage! Whatever happens at a wedding I attend, when the bride and groom clearly have that orientation, I can’t help but give the whole affair a perfect “10.”
(Betsy Hart is the author of “It Takes a Parent: How the Culture of Pushover Parenting Is Hurting our Kids — And What to Do About It” (Putnam Books). Reach her at hartmailbox-mycolumn@yahoo.com.)
SHNS