Wedding Planning Advice

[surferguy]

I just built my own photo booth. I made a giant 4ft wide Polaroid that will hang from the roof. Bonus - I painted it with dry erase paint so patrons can make there own captions on the bottom. We plan on hiding this at our reception so people can sneak away and get silly.

[Bill Bumface]

Oh, my other suggestion. Get a venue where the bar isn't outside in a hallway or anything. That way all your guests will be in the main room all night and not scattered around for booze purposes.

The photo booth is great, I went to a wedding with one of those and it was a lot of fun.

[Lt.Spears]

Weddings are so commercialized now it kind of grinds my gears.

Its not even about the marriage anymore, its about how big of a party you can have, how nice of pictures you can have... just seems so arbitrary and dumb.

[Maritime Q-Scout]

So far here's what we're looking at

- Big Church, don't have to worry about it being too hot, or there not being enough space/parking, etc. It's also nice both inside and out

- Reception hall was a bit of a struggle. We wanted close to downtown hotels but not a foolish price. The hotels themselves were expensive (yay free rental but you have to get the hotel to cater at $30+ plate). We ended up going with the Jr. Officer's Mess at the local Armoury. It's really nice, been to a reception there before.

- Bar is in the reception hall, something I think is good, keeps people together.

- We're setting up the dance floor in the middle of the reception, weddings I've been to where the dance floor is off to the side just don't seem to be as much fun

- We've got a few games and things for during the dinner and reception to help keep things loose, silly and fun

- No clanking glasses, each table will have a top 5 list to fill out to make us kiss. Honey moon locations, kids names, etc

- I want to do the photo booth, going to have to work that out with the photographer (or possibly hire another specifically for that)

- We're trying to come up with something for guests to sign other than the guest book. The picture frame has been done (but is really nice) if I can think of something else (or if you can) that would be cool

- I'm thinking of having entrance music for each of the wedding party members

- I'd also like to do a slide show before we all come in with an "opening act" of the video screen telling a few one liners about marriage (got the idea from a Jimmy Carr special)

I've been told I can do what I want with the reception as long as I don't do anything silly or foolish for the ceremony (I wanted to give the ushers flashlights and little hats)

The background music during the dinner I want to be TV themes from our (errr my) favourite shows... haven't thought of how to bring that up yet though

[Maritime Q-Scout]

Originally Posted by Lt.Spears

Weddings are so commercialized now it kind of grinds my gears.

Its not even about the marriage anymore, its about how AWESOME of a party you can have, how nice of pictures you can have.

fyp

in my view, it's the one chance you'll get to have as many of your closest friends and family together for one amazing party; to me the ceremony is about us, the reception is about having fun with them.

[Lt.Spears]

Originally Posted by Maritime Q-Scout

fyp

in my view, it's the one chance you'll get to have as many of your closest friends and family together for one amazing party; to me the ceremony is about us, the reception is about having fun with them.

Except you are footing the bill for a bunch of people to get drunk. Not exactly my cup of tea.

[Hockeyguy15]

He are having ours at a restaurant downtown, and instead of dinner we are doing a cocktail party...Should be a great time.

[TheGrimm]

It's just one day, it flies by, it's great to have fun, but don't get to carried away in the details, it's the first day of the rest of your life ;D Keep your expectations low, and then it's all good from there, it doesn't have to be perfect to be a perfect day.

I would, however, suggest that you find 15 min or so (maybe before the reception) that you can steal your wife aside and take her for a walk (or something ). Just to get away from the day a bit and reflect, talk or whatever.. It might be the only time during the day that you two have alone together... until LATE in the evening or early the next morning..

Congrats!

[Maritime Q-Scout]

Originally Posted by Lt.Spears

Except you are footing the bill for a bunch of people to get drunk. Not exactly my cup of tea.

I'm footing the bill to get people feed, this is the East Coast if you want to get drunk pay for it yourself, I'd be bankrupt otherwise :P

Originally Posted by TheGrimm

It's just one day, it flies by, it's great to have fun, but don't get to carried away in the details, it's the first day of the rest of your life ;D Keep your expectations low, and then it's all good from there, it doesn't have to be perfect to be a perfect day.

I would, however, suggest that you find 15 min or so (maybe before the reception) that you can steal your wife aside and take her for a walk (or something ). Just to get away from the day a bit and reflect, talk or whatever.. It might be the only time during the day that you two have alone together... until LATE in the evening or early the next morning..

Congrats!

Love this idea, perhaps after pictures on the boardwalk we'll walk up to the reception venue (still a year and a half away, but this I really like)

[Regular_John]

Originally Posted by Russic

I had a great wedding and it was a lot of fun, but looking back there was no need to go as expensive as we did. I think many have that opinion, but not until after the wedding. In hindsight it's easy to see things like the cake not mattering or the buffet having beef AND salmon. It's such a high stress event and for that reason it's over before you know it. You spend thousands of dollars and it more or less ends up being a blur.

If I could do it again I'd totally elope and then invite friends and family to a group camping site to set things on fire and play music at a high volume.

That's pretty much how I feel about my wedding as well. It was nice, I had a good time and I hope others did as well, but I'm not sure it was worth all the time/stress related to it. My sister got married about a year later and I saw her going through the same fights/stress that we had a with ours and it just kinda cemented my opinion that a small wedding with close friends/immediate family is the way to go.

[LChoy]

Something we found very useful. We put as much of the wedding costs on to our credit card as possible. Even though I paid the balance off the card the next day, by using credit, we earned thousands of Aeroplan points, enough in fact that we flew first class round trip to Hawaii with points for our honeymoon

[Rathji]

I got married while I was a student and did the entire thing, including clothing, for about $2k. (Venue for ceremony and reception was free). We did a buffet type reception, and I still like the idea of it, but we didn't have overly outstanding food. We hired an amateur photographer, and the pictures were pretty mediocre at best.

If I had to do it over again, I would get better food, but still have the buffet. I would probably still go with an cheap photographer, but choose one that actually had some good photography experience.

[yads]

Top things for a fun wedding in no particular order:

Good food
Lots of free or at the very least cheap booze
Good music
Late night buffet/Appetizers before dinner

The worst wedding I ever attended: outdoor ceremony in the middle of summer, which meant everyone was boiling in their suits. Bride/Groom were significantly late to the ceremony. Then they went for pictures which took 3 hours, during which there was no food. Then they did all of the speeches before dinner was served. The food was not very good and this is saying something because by that point we probably hadn't eaten in 6 hours. The drinks were $6 each (and this was in 2004). The music and the dj were awful. Finally to add insult to injury the bride and groom left at 9. Have fun with our relatives!

Basically if you do the opposite of that you should have a good wedding.

[Halfcreek]

Originally Posted by Maritime Q-Scout

So far here's what we're looking at

- Big Church, don't have to worry about it being too hot, or there not being enough space/parking, etc. It's also nice both inside and out

- Reception hall was a bit of a struggle. We wanted close to downtown hotels but not a foolish price. The hotels themselves were expensive (yay free rental but you have to get the hotel to cater at $30+ plate). We ended up going with the Jr. Officer's Mess at the local Armoury. It's really nice, been to a reception there before.

- Bar is in the reception hall, something I think is good, keeps people together.

- We're setting up the dance floor in the middle of the reception, weddings I've been to where the dance floor is off to the side just don't seem to be as much fun

- We've got a few games and things for during the dinner and reception to help keep things loose, silly and fun

- No clanking glasses, each table will have a top 5 list to fill out to make us kiss. Honey moon locations, kids names, etc

- I want to do the photo booth, going to have to work that out with the photographer (or possibly hire another specifically for that)

- We're trying to come up with something for guests to sign other than the guest book. The picture frame has been done (but is really nice) if I can think of something else (or if you can) that would be cool

- I'm thinking of having entrance music for each of the wedding party members

- I'd also like to do a slide show before we all come in with an "opening act" of the video screen telling a few one liners about marriage (got the idea from a Jimmy Carr special)

I've been told I can do what I want with the reception as long as I don't do anything silly or foolish for the ceremony (I wanted to give the ushers flashlights and little hats)

The background music during the dinner I want to be TV themes from our (errr my) favourite shows... haven't thought of how to bring that up yet though

Get His and Hers Flames jerseys and have them "autographed" by your guests, then get them framed.

[AMG_G]

Originally Posted by Lchoy

Something we found very useful. We put as much of the wedding costs on to our credit card as possible. Even though I paid the balance off the card the next day, by using credit, we earned thousands of Aeroplan points, enough in fact that we flew first class round trip to Hawaii with points for our honeymoon

Round trip first class starts with 160k aeroplan points...at a $1 per point.....

[MoneyGuy]

My advice: If you're gay, don't try to get married in North Carolina.

[undercoverbrother]

pick you battles....it's about winning the war. sometimes you have to lose a battle.....in fact this is useful advice for marriage as well.