This is just for fun. We have other wedding related threads going and I’m sure there are a lot of different opinions on what makes a wedding fun, memorable, enjoyable, etc. Someone posted on another thread going to a wedding recently and not having a good time. So, what makes a wedding good in your opinion? Tell me about weddings you’ve been to that you’ve really enjoyed and why…or not. There are so many different styles out there.
To me, it’s all about the people. If the bride and groom are having a great time and the people I mingle and sit with are friendly, I have a great time, whether I knew the people I am seated with or not. I go to very few weddings these days and treasure each of them!
It’s nice if the food is at least decent. Everything else is “gravy.”
It’s nice if the wedding ceremony itself is reasonably personal to the couple, and not all about the religion of the officiant, which is often not shared by at least half of the attendees and couple. I’ve been to Catholic and Jewish weddings that fell into both categories. This doesn’t mean couples have to write their own vows: in fact I think most people should refrain from the attempt. 
Being reasonably physically comfortable at the reception is helpful: a place for everyone to sit is a good thing! Having pleasant people to sit with is nice. I’ve been to friends’ weddings w/o a plus one where the table mates were mostly couples who ignored me and the other singles completely. Not even making pleasant conversation, much less asking the singles to dance or whatever. (Whenever I attend a wedding w/H I always prod him to ask the other women at the table to dance. What ever happened to that concept?) Speaking of which, please forget the “head table” concept and seat the wedding party with their S/Os!
The best is when the bride and groom are obviously in love! All the rest melts away.
I like weddings on a smaller scale when it’s just friends and family. Although I’ve been to some big weddings that are still just close friends and family. So I guess feeling it’s a “good match” is the most important thing.
Cake! Lots and lots of cake!
Very interested in this thread. My D is getting married in January. We went to one of her best friends weddings on Saturday. I had a very nice time. I wasn’t really expecting to since it was a very lavish wedding and H and I didn’t know too many people. They had a very traditional Catholic mass. I thought the priest was so excellent at making everyone very comfortable with the traditions of the mass. The priest had spoken to the bride and groom ahead of time about each other and spent a lot of time telling us what they loved about each other. It was very sweet and gave me such a good feeling about this couple. Basically, it set the tone (filled with good positive feelings) for the rest of the day. Everyone was very friendly at the wedding. Maybe the open bar helped. haha
The main thing is obviously the people – a guest list consisting of people who truly love the couple and who wish them only the best is the single most important element. A guest list consisting mostly of cohesive groups of friends or relatives – instead of a lot of singles or couples who don’t know anyone else – makes for a very fun wedding. Obviously, this will be more a matter of happenstance than something that can be strictly controlled for.
A close second is a relaxed and happy set of hosts. If the bride and mother of the bride appear stressed, the wedding will not be fun, period.
I personally believe that interesting, unexpected, or beautiful details make a wedding more fun. Almost like an icebreaker. If you have a reception in a natural history museum, say, those sorts of things will be built in. Things to notice and comment on put people in a good mood. A beautiful natural setting serves the same purpose.
You can create this kind of atmosphere in a space without a built in wow factor by strategically using personal mementos. It can be as simple as having slideshows or photo albums of the bride and groom from childhood to present day, and maybe photo albums (with copies of pictures) of the weddings of parents and grandparents of bride and groom. You can set these up on laptops at different stations around the cocktail area, or if budget allows, you can project them on screens or walls around the room it gets people talking and moving.
Even quirky details that don’t really make sense as “wedding” can add to an icebreaker atmosphere that adds to the fun. My friend had a wedding at a small hotel that for some reason had parrots on the property. During cocktails outside they had the parrot handler walking around with the parrots and somehow that was enough of an icebreaker that it got people talking that normally wouldn’t chat with one another.
Other ways to inexpensively personalize a wedding or other party is to make place cards, table cards, programs and other paper items that incorporate images that are meaningful or interesting to the couple. For placecards for example, the images can be xeroxed onto postcard-sized card stock with an inch wide border at the bottom. The guests’ names can be written in the border either by a calligrapher or someone with nice handwriting. The key is to use different images within a themed category at the table so everyone at the table gets a different image. This is just an example of something unexpected that again helps to get people talking.
I strongly, strongly believe that 60" round tables for 10 should NEVER be used. 48" tables for 8 or square or rectangular tables for 8 allow people to talk across the table and are much, much more fun.
Enlisting friends to serve as roving host-stand-ins to introduce people who are just standing awkwardly adds to the fun
I personally prefer a party with multiple spaces to one where everyone is in a single ballroom. Being able to walk around to different spaces eliminates the trapped feeling you can sometimes get in a hotel ballroom.
I also believe that it is MUCH preferable to have dancing in a separate space than dinner so people who want to linger and talk after dinner can hear each other over the band or dj.
I like a mix of indoor and outdoor space for a party where possible.
Arranging the drinks service so that everyone has a drink almost instantly during cocktail hour without having to wait in line goes a long way to contributing to fun. For this reason, I strongly prefer wine and beer only at most parties since individual cocktails just slow things down.
Lots of heartfelt toasts and speeches. At one of the best weddings I ever went to, a group of the brides’ friends wrote and performed a little parody song for her. It was so warm and wonderful.
Rooms filled to close to maximum capacity are more fun than sparsely filled rooms. It is better to be a bit crowded than too spread out.
Sorry for the length of this post – I have lots of ideas on this subject!
I forgot to mention one of the most important things – assigned seating, even for small weddings. I cannot stress how important this is. Without assigned seating people can get very weird about guarding a seat and there’s this sense you might get stuck sitting next to the last person you spoke to so people are less likely to mingle. Seriously, I think a well-thought out seating plan goes a long way to ensuring guests have a good time.
If not a seated dinner, some kind of food that is “interactive” - a cappuccino bar where you customize your flavors, a chocolate or caramel fountain where you dip the pretzels, fruit, etc of your choice.
Something fun in the centerpiece that is also interactive in a way. Maybe it lists fun facts about the couple or the venue. I could also see breaking with tradition and having some kind of icebreaker quiz about the other couples at the table. Centerpiece should be low and if you want something dramatic, extend it high so that people seated across from one another can see one another.
Or the centerpiece is edible and hence also interactive - a tower of cookies, brownies, cupcakes, etc.
“The guests’ names can be written in the border either by a calligrapher or someone with nice handwriting. The key is to use different images within a themed category at the table so everyone at the table gets a different image. This is just an example of something unexpected that again helps to get people talking.”
Yea! Great example. You have something different from the person next to you in some way.
Seating for everyone is imperative. I have been to weddings that did not have that and it was dreadful. Also, don’t have the music too loud. If you can have it in a separate room, that is good, but at least don’t have the band or dj play too loud.
Small luxurious wedding at a five stars hotel with a view. Nice excellent food, great cake, simple but lovely flowers, unlimited alcohol and food but people didn’t seem to take advantage of it for some reason. I received great compliment from my brother’s BIL for pulling such a great event despite working full time, my mom and my sister were not even involved. The weather was great as usual at that location.
We have had this discussion before. I hate assigned seating. Especially if I spent the big $ to travel from out of town for this one day event, I damned well want to sit with people I know and not strangers for dinner. If a group of old friends are coming back together for this event, they should be able to sit together. People are capable of finding their own seats, just make sure there are enough chairs.
One time at a wedding the assigned seats put my kid who is on the autism scale and was only 10 years old at a table full of strangers. Just… don’t. I know I will get pounced on by everyone who has done this in the past so Aunt Mable has someone to talk to, but I don’t want to be that person stuck talking to her when friends I see only once every 10 years are stuck across the room at a table with Cousin Elmo. Aunt Mable and Cousin Elmo can find a place to sit and someone to talk to without a place card.
Saves a lot of time and energy when planning, too. Don’t be a control freak – let your guests sit where they want to.
I’ve been to two, and I liked the 1st one much more than the 2nd.
I think one of the key differences was the size. The first one was about 120 people. The 2nd was nearly 500. With that many people they have to change how a lot of the things work, for instance, for the dinner and ceremony they used tiny chairs and squeezed them together in the room in the 2nd wedding. In the first wedding they used normal sized chairs and normal amounts of spacing. There were only 4 things for the dinner of the wedding for the 2nd wedding (and I’m being generous, I’m calling white rice an item), whereas there was like 15 different things for the 1st wedding. In the 2nd wedding they brought small amounts of food to the table, in the first wedding it was a big buffet. Buffet works for 120 people but not for 500. And they didn’t bring enough food in the table, and it wasn’t clear who to go to to ask for more.
Buffet style for dinner is way better.
We had assigned seating for the 2nd wedding, not for the 1st wedding. It didn’t really make that much of a difference to me. I basically sat with the same people in both.
Also, at the time, the first wedding was about 30-40 minutes from where I lived and in the same state, the 2nd one was 9 hours and 4 states over.
Oh, be clear on how everyone should dress. This was weird in both of the weddings. In both I wore a non-black suit and tie (given no instructions, I figured that was safest), and in both I saw everything from tuxedos down to business casual.
- I’ve been to friends’ weddings w/o a plus one where the table mates were mostly couples who ignored me and the other singles completely. * I think this is a real problem today - I’ve been to weddings where we only knew the couple and no one talked to me. I love my husband, but I see him all the time.
Try not to have an obnoxious dj and think about having something quiet during dinner instead. Really consider only inviting people who are your real friends and close family. If you have a smaller wedding you can have better food.
I like a seating plan where the bride and groom really think about who has stuff in common. I also think it’s fun if people switch for dessert. Agree completely 60" tables are the worst! Can’t have a reasonable conversation at all.
We had a buffet dinner and I thought it was great, but grandparents might need help.
I agree about being physically comfortable. There is something of a thing here of having very long gaps between ceremony and reception, leaving people with hours to fill and nowhere to go. I also don’t like weddings where there isn’t enough seating either at the ceremony, cocktail hour or reception. Finally, people shouldn’t be allowed to waste away from starvation before food is served, and it’s not good for guests to have excruciating headaches from too-loud music.
@intparent – In my view, the whole point of assigned seating is to MAKE SURE that old group of friends will be able to sit together. I think it is much more likely that the autistic kid will get stuck at a table of strangers when there’s no seating plan than when there is one. It takes enormous social skill to navigate the “seat grab” with no assigned seats, and because no one wants to sit next to Aunt Mabel, it becomes like a brutal game of musical chairs NOT to be the person stuck with that seat. It sounds like the parties you are referring to had poorly thought out seating plans.
With a well-thought out seating plan, everyone should be able to sit with at least some people they like. And if there truly is an Aunt Mabel who nobody wants to sit next to, you almost have to tell the people who will get stuck there ahead of time. My father-in-law used to pay the teenagers $100 to sit next to Great Uncle Ralph. Even short of that, there are ways to arrange the seating that make it less painful for the unlucky souls who will be stuck next to her.
But if they didn’t care what people wore, then they don’t need to give instructions, right? My niece didn’t care and had everything from shorts to lace dresses/suits. She didn’t care.
I am perfectly able to make conversation when I go to a dinner where I don’t know anyone, happens fairly often as I am single. Really… I don’t need the mother ship trying to match me with conversation partners. For heaven’s sake, there is enough planning for a wedding, trust your guests to find someone to talk to and spend your time on the million other details that have to get done. Why buy more work that many guests consider to be meddling anyway? I have seen a lot of people swap cards around prior to the meal, too – it doesn’t usually stay the way you planned it anyway.
You really DON’T know who I want to talk to. I love cousin Dave and would very much like to sit with him and his wife. Cousin Bob held me down and spit on me once, so I’ll stay away from him, as he doesn’t seem to have changed much. Uncle Morey is a lech, and I don’t want my teenaged daughters at his table. And you are probably aware of none of those dynamics. Stop trying to guess at them. I bought a gift and came to have a good time. I sat through a ceremony that was very meaningful to you, but kinda long to me. I am in uncomfortable shoes. Don’t make me sit with your idea of who I should want to talk to.
Can you tell I really don’t like this custom, and that we won’t be doing it at my Ds’ weddings?
A lot of the guests may feel as if they did something wrong by under or over dressing. If the couple really doesn’t care how people dress, they should at least say then that they just don’t care.