My daughter, a ballet dancer, was always told when she got married, I wanted her to walk down the aisle to Canon. One of my favorite dances of hers was to Canon, so it brings such happy memories. Once she was engaged, the first thing she said to me was, “Before you ask, the answer is no!” What did I do; I changed my ringtone to Canon up to the day after her wedding. 
Instead of hearing it once during her wedding, she had to put up with it when we were together every time my phone rand!
Zoos, I’ve been to Bar Mitzvahs where each table had a camera, and those were collected towards end of evening. Another idea is for DD or fsil to ask a friend comes no to the wedding to take pictures.
Why would fog pull out at this point?
We had the wedding processional from The Sound of Music …
I think the newest thing is to set up a hashtag and have people tag their wedding photos to it. With everyone having an iPhone and most people on social media, no need for cameras on the tables.
@Marian Wouldn’t the DJ use whatever recording they want. Heck, they could send them the files. I think favorite classical music maybe as performed by smaller ensemble (minus brass for smaller group/venue) or even classical as played acoustically. Maybe spend some time on YouTube! Even though my nephew had band for reception, the same site wedding had recorded acoustic music and in fact the first dances were recorded - they definitely weren’t in that bands repertoire.
Trumpet Voluntary by Purcell will definitely be used in DDs wedding (her brother will be the trumpet player). Brother is a professional musician so he will help choose!
@thumper1, that’s great. It really personalizes the ceremony.
Well, I went for the tasting with MOB yesterday and we had a lovely day. I was far more concerned with accommodating the vegetarian (and one vegan) guests that she seemed to be (since she remarked at least three times that these were “all my S’s friends”), but we worked it all out. There was a significant miscommunication between what the couple was told by the venue and what was intended re: predesignated menu choices and that remains to be worked out. My S and FDIL were told table side choices, and yesterday MOB agreed to predesignated…but the invitations have already gone out. I asked how she intended to inquire of the guests their preferences, and she said, well, I’ll call everyone. She doesn’t know 3/4 of the people coming to this wedding (our 1/4 and the kids 1/2) - it will fall on the couple and me and I don’t want this responsibility. I spoke to my S last night and he’s going to call the venue and see why they are not standing by what they had discussed - of course my lawyer S does not have it in writing.
When dessert was discussed (if you remember, I am now in charge of dessert), she point blank asked me to bake the desserts. I thought she was kidding, but no. I was very proud of myself and said, no, I have no time for that. I have baked/decorated all the desserts for the engagement party here this weekend and that is my gift of love to S and FDIL. I am not doing it for the wedding. So, I was able to work with the venue and we will have a wonderful dessert buffet of bite-sized treats. We tasted some of the venue’s offerings yesterday and they were fine…not exceptional, but fine and easy.
Other than those two issues, she seemed to enjoy sharing with me all the details and plans for the wedding day and while I now see what my S means by “over the top”, I’m sure it will be lovely. MOB clearly loves her daughter so much and while it may not exactly be the wedding of her daughter’s dreams - it will be a dream wedding!
Our food tasting is in November…well before we need to order the invitiations. Since there will be 4 dinner choices, it is essential that the venue have a count prior to the day of to prevent over ordering, and waste.
Honestly, I have never been to a wedding where table side orders were taken…with no advance indication as part of the response…for a sit down dinner.
Where we are…if you want open choices the day of the event…you have a buffet and guest can choose when they go through the line.
@runnersmom isn’t your wedding sort of soon?
Yes, like Labor Day weekend. I have no idea why this was done so late, but it creates a logistical nightmare. The choices are fish or chicken (plus vegetarian option), no meat, so my guess is they can probably guesstimate pretty closely what the split will be - actually all the events I’ve planned (bar/bat mitzvahs) with sit down dinners were table side choices. This too will work out, just one more detail to worry about.
Yeah, this is going to be a royal pain. I would be tempted to serve everyone the same entree (except for those with special dietary needs) to avoid all those phone calls and e-mails.
Even though my D and FSIL knew in advance that their guests would have to choose entrees (and got the information onto the RSVP section of their wedding website in time), there’s still a lot of work associated with entree choices. It means that you must assign people to specific tables (maybe even specific seats), have place cards and table numbers, and perhaps also have a big chart showing who sits where. And someone has to communicate all the information to the venue or caterer and get all the “stuff” (place cards, etc) into the hands of the right person. All of these things are going to have to be added to someone’s chore list, @runnersmom.
Yup…and my S adamantly fought against specific place cards (by seat). They are going to do table assignments, and this will mean designating the dinner choice somehow. We did discuss having the entrees trayed by table with the correct number of the requested options and the waiters just asking - not what I would have done, but better than assigning seats. MOB kept repeating, “I always do place cards for my dinner parties” with me responding, “So do I , but then we’re talking 10-12 people, not 200.” Like I’ve said before, she’s wonderful at big picture items - actual details, not so much. I think the kids (and they are still kids to me at 33 and 35) are considering sending a follow-up Paperless Post note asking for menu choices and transportation opt in/out. For a small cost it would dramatically reduce the number of phone calls/emails that would have to be made. Still a service issues, but we’ll figure something out.
For D’s wedding, the guests gave their meal selection on the response card. We had to give those numbers to the event place about a week or so ahead of time. At the actual meal, the wait staff asked again for your meal choice when they served the salad course. The event person told me they always have extras of each selection because people forget how they’d originally responded. We had one guest tell the wait staff that he was having the chicken. Fine, except that chicken wasn’t one of the choices!. FYI our meal breakdown was 60% beef, 30% fish, and 10% vegetarian.
You can still have the guest preselects their meal with assigned seating. Once the venue has the numbers so they know what to prepare, the wait staff will go by each seat and ask the guest which main course they ordered. They will notate which guest gets chicken and who has fish; let the venue deal with that.
Most venues will of course have extra of each in the event someone changes their mind or forgot what they ordered. I remember one wedding where I had selected fish, which the MOB, my cousin, had originally planned on salmon. When we sat down at the table, where the dinner menu was printed, I saw they were serving swordfish which I do not like. When the waiter came around I asked for the steak instead and was told no problem.
My SisIL and her son and FDIL did something I hadn’t seen before regarding entree choices. We were given choices on the response cards (not something new), but those choices were communicated to the venue and waitstaff by the color your name was written on the place card (red for beef, blue for fish, green for vegie). It did mean that everyone had to have a place card, not just one for a couple, and that everyone had to put their place card on the table by their seat, but there were no mistakes or delays in getting the correct meal.
Interesting option - could put a sign on the place card table asking everyone to put their card in front of their place setting.
Recent invite and rsvp card I received had us indicate our choices by initialing either a cow, chicken or carrot icon… and I believe D’s place cards will have cow, fish and chicken symbol. (Can’t remember what they are doing for the kids meals). There will be a second set of place cards on each table, in case someone misplaces theirs, and the venue has an alphabetized and table listing as well.
good ideas, thanks so much!
Yes…our venue will give us the seating template for the event. We just have to put how many of each entree at each table…not the specific names of the guests who will be asked at the table what their entree choice was. Hopefully people will remember what they ordered when asked…but there is a margin of error for that issue.
@gosmom -That is almost exactly how the entree choice was handled at my kids’ weddings. No problems at all.