My Wedding – Part 1
Over the years I see younger and older couples planning their weddings and have often thought about how I would plan my own if I had to do it again. Jeffrey and I got married twenty years ago when the wedding industry was different from what it is today. Over the next few weeks I will write about the various things you have to think about when planning your wedding. Keep in mind you should plan a celebration that reflects who you are and how you want to celebrate. You can make it as simple of complicated as you wish, keep in mind that you may spend countless hours and months planning your wedding day, make it fun and enlist the help of your friends or family or a professional depending on what your lifestyle is. Although this will be the primary focus of your life until your wedding day don’t assume that it should also be that for your close friends and family. Before I delve in to what I see happening in the industry now I wanted to share the details of my wedding plans.
Our wedding was anything but ordinary starting from the way Jeffrey proposed and how we, primarily I, went about planning it. In hindsight I would have sat down early on with Jeffrey and asked what was important to him and let him have free reign on those parts. In a way he did, but after a few weeks of intense arguing he just told me to do what I wanted and he would show up as the details weren’t that important to him. I selfishly was happy to be able to plan my dream wedding, but wish I were more mature at the time in order to include him in more of the planning. He did have definitive ideas in regards to how he wanted the ceremony to be, who he wanted at the wedding, in his wedding party, how they were to arrive and the music for the day, the rest he acquiesced to me.
His mother offered to host the rehearsal dinner at her home, which she did a lovely job at. For weeks prior to the wedding she added beautiful flowers to her garden and catered a wonderful dinner for all of our guests. It was very comfortable and all of our guests and family members were able to get to know each other just a little bit before the wedding day.
Our wedding list was very easy to manage, since Jeffrey was paying for the wedding, we didn’t have the burden of feeling that we had to include all of our families friends because they were footing the bill. Instead we asked them to limit their list to their closest and dearest, who turned out to be important people in our lives too. About one third of our guest list were in our wedding party. Jeffrey has always had oodles of close friends where I have always had a few really close girlfriends. So my six girlfriends had the priveledge of being escorted by two guys instead of one. Not a bad deal in hindsight. Instead telling my girls what dresses I wanted them to buy I asked them to choose their own white dresses. (Why I wanted everyone in white I don’t remember but I did.) They were able to choose dresses that they wanted to wear again some other time. The men, on the other hand, had to rent white jackets and black pants, and were in more traditional garb.
In regards to decorations we didn’t have that many. For whatever reason I thought it would be smart for us and our close friends to set up the ceremony platform, tables and decorations ourselves. I vividly remember our first guest arriving and me running into the house in my sweats still needing to shower, do my hair, and make-up! Of course I did it all myself which sped the process up a bit. But the ceremony started late, but people didn’t seem to mind since we had an open bar. We had bought all of the alcohol ourselves and hired an aquiantance to be the bartender. Offering drinks before the wedding is really a great idea. It starts the party rolling early on and everyone is able to relax and enjoy themselves for the whole day. I was in photography school and asked both of our families for photos of us and them while we were growing up. I copied them myself and made enlargements that I hung up all around the B&B so people could feel like they were in a more homey environement and see some of our families histories. We didn’t do flowers on the tables or any decorations for that matter except for the dessert table. I don’t know what the heck I was thinking but I bought some black streamers and hung them from the table! Luckily there aren’t that many pictures so I don’t have to remember that detail too much.
More about that in part 2…
