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What exactly is a rehearsal dinner for anyway? I've been to plenty of weddings, but only one rehearsal dinner which was for my sister and all we did was go for dinner. We didn't even talk about the wedding or anything. She also had a rather non-traditional wedding so I don't actually know if that's the norm or if that's just the way she did things. We also didn't have any sort of rehearsal for the ceremony itself, we just saw the venue the night before and she pointed to where things would be set up.
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Sep 6, 2013 04:14
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Ok, so I guess in my sister's case it was more that everyone in the bridal party/family was already in a city away from home and it was a chance for us to all meet and have dinner together the night before the wedding, since there was essentially zero rehearsal. Which brings me to my next question. How important is a rehearsal anyway? My sister's ceremony went fine without any rehearsal, except for the fact that we all should have walked in slightly slower. And even if we'd practiced that I imagine nerves on the day of would have made us speed up again. Her officiant hadn't even seen the location at all until the day of. How much of the ceremony do you actually do at a rehearsal anyway? And since I've become an active part of this thread instead of a lurker, I suppose I should add that we're getting married 2 years from today. We technically haven't booked our venue yet because they are currently working out a new catering contract and can't make bookings until it's sorted out, but we've already met with the woman and she knows what date we want. Additionally if anyone wants a great deal on a potential engagement ring we're selling one to add to the wedding fund!
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Sep 6, 2013 16:57
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Jet Set Jettison posted:Quick questions: My fiance proposed to me on my birthday. He didn't intend for it to work out that way, it was supposed to be the first night in our first place together. But when trying to move in, our first night kept getting pushed back due to various reasons and eventually ended up being the same day as my birthday. I don't see anything wrong with it, I just told everyone I got a fiance for my birthday. Of course, we had also gone to see the Wizard of Oz stage musical earlier in the week as my gift (and I got to hold a Toto afterwards!) so I wasn't expecting anything other than a nice dinner which he insisted on cooking for me.
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Sep 30, 2013 22:38
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Planned wedding date is still almost 2 years away but I'm already tired of looking for a venue. We found a place we both really loved, but it's rather expensive and we were just told that due to a by-law (because it's a municipal building) we can't have our friend perform. She's a fire dancer, insured for $3million, but they won't even let us have her out in the paved parking lot. I guess we're back to looking at other places.
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Nov 24, 2013 18:18
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Yeah, we're thinking of even just having her perform at a stag and doe or something (which we didn't really even want to have, but a bunch of our friends are insisting we do). One of the venues we've already looked at said it would be ok to have the fire dancer, but that was just when we went for an initial tour, I'm not so sure it would be ok if we actually started going through official channels. I think we'll take a look at some other places anyway, just because the place we love is so expensive and we haven't really been blown away by any of the other so far.
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Nov 24, 2013 21:21
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couldcareless posted:Anyone have any suggestions for groom's wedding band styles and/or a good website to look at for custom work? We are just under a year out right now and I need to start thinking about what I want my wedding band to look like and what materials I want it to use. My fiance wanted his own engagement ring so we got one from here. The best part is that they will do one free "resize", which actually means you send the one ring back and they send you another one that's a different size. You can ask for customized work too, I had asked about making a hybrid between 2 styles and she explained to me how it could be done but ultimately I ended up taking her advice that it would be far too wide and opted for one of their regular styles.
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Nov 28, 2013 01:30
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My fiance asked me yesterday whether or not we could consider cash gifts as part of our wedding budget, and I'm rather torn on the issue. I know that I can't necessarily count on getting cash gifts, nor have any idea how much it would actually end up being (don't count your chickens before they're hatched), but I also know from prior weddings that most of my friends and family would prefer to give cash rather than gifts. I'm hoping that before Sept 2015 we can actually save up the entire amount to cover the wedding costs, but my current job is a contract that ends in April, and fiance is currently going to school full time until 4 months prior to the wedding, so I can't really predict exactly how much we're going to be able to save. The venue that we really really love is about $5000 (including food and beverages) more than our 2nd choice which is "ok", but they'll only hold the date for us for the next 4 weeks. Would it be a terrible idea to get the place we love with the assumption that even if we can't save that much extra we might be able to recoup some of the cost in gifts?
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Dec 18, 2013 23:25
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Loving Africa Chaps posted:I want to propose to my long term girlfriend pretty soon. I've been thinking about what to do for a ring and remembered she bought this lovely glass ring just after we got together that she absolutely loved and is now all busted up. I think it'd be pretty cool to get a copy remade with shiny stuff as an engagement ring. No idea how much it would cost, but that is an amazingly sweet idea.
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Dec 30, 2013 03:18
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Sent in our signed paperwork and deposit for our venue. It's really happening! Not until September 2015, but still, it's happening!
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Feb 5, 2014 22:39
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Death of Rats posted:
My old roommate and I are each getting married about 6 weeks apart. They actually chose their date first, and once we got engaged and were trying to figure out the best time for us, it just worked out best that way (and they were fine with it, no Bridezilla moments thankfully). There's probably about a dozen people who will be invited to both. Even if it's closer than 6 weeks I don't really see it being a problem. We have 3 weddings to go to this summer, and as long as they're not all the same weekend, it wouldn't really matter to us how close any of them were because they're all weddings that are important to us to attend.
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Feb 27, 2014 19:05
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Is it possible to have her suit dyed to a different colour if it matches too closely?
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Apr 14, 2014 23:00
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Evil Sprite Can posted:So I'm getting married this Saturday (2 days). I was just informed by the girlfriend of my fiance's best man that they just picked up his tux and he's ready to go. This normally wouldn't be an issue except my fiance is wearing a suit. I, being very wedding etiquette naive, didn't see this as a huge deal. When I spoke to my mother about it, she almost passed out. How screwed am I? Any suggestions? Is it actually a tux though or do they just not know the terminology? My fiance was best man in a wedding last weekend and the groom/groomsmen kept referring to "tuxes" when really it was just pants/shirt/vest/tie combo.
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May 9, 2014 00:09
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Robot Mil posted:Do many wedding dress shops have unusual styles and colours? I'm in the UK if that helps at all The other alternative is something like a bold coloured sash belt, coloured crinoline under the skirt or something like that.
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Aug 14, 2014 14:03
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Aquatic Giraffe posted:Alcohol. A small bottle of each of their favorite liquor usually goes over well. If they don't drink you're kinda stuck though. Careful with that one if you're gifting them at your actual venue. Sometimes having any outside alcohol on the premises is grounds for being kicked out, even mid-event if it's in the contract you signed.
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Aug 14, 2014 22:28
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Sharks Below posted:Plus it's fancy-rear end jam! I wasn't looking for shoulds/shouldn'ts really because it's all decided and booked! Just making a joke because everyone thinks something is tacky and mehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Haha, we're planning on making apple butter and giving those as wedding favours. We made some as Christmas gifts last year and a bunch of our friends are anxiously awaiting more (though the wedding isn't until Sept 2015, so they'll have more this Christmas anyway).
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Aug 15, 2014 16:22
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It's getting to the time where I need to send out Save the Dates especially as I have relatives and friends traveling from pretty far distances and people have started specifically asking me to verify the date. Since my fiancé and I have our own small business with an office-sized printer and cutting machine, I was going to just design, print, cut and magnetize some myself, until I discovered that the place we get our business cards from (Vistaprint) also does "magnetic business cards" for less than $10 per 25 magnets. Since I was designing my own in Photoshop anyway, all I have to do is upload my finished design as a JPEG and they'll do the rest! I'll report back when I actually get them, but we've used Vistaprint for business cards and our store banner before and been really happy with them. They almost always have some sort of promo code available as well, and if you specifically do "magnetic business cards" it's cheaper than their "magnetic save the dates", though I didn't compare sizes at all since if always planned them to be business card sized.
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Feb 19, 2015 21:09
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jemsy posted:
Have you ever tried Shoes of Prey? It's a site where you can design your own shoes. There are obviously limitations but there's a pretty wide variety. I don't know what size they carry up to though. Actually that site is probably a good resource for a lot of brides, either for themselves or specific bridesmaids shoes.
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Feb 25, 2015 03:38
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We went to a friend's wedding last summer where they had a $2 bar as opposed to entirely open bar or cash bar. I'd never seen that before so I don't know how common an option that is, but it's certainly another idea to consider. (ie all drinks were $2 for the guests, and they paid some sort of rate to keep drink costs lower for guests).
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Mar 15, 2015 22:07
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C-Euro posted:Did anything like this come up with any of you during the planning process? We had a birthday party a few weeks ago for my fiance, and it happened to be a few days after our save-the-dates came in. He was handing them out to a bunch of our friends as they showed up, which was working really well. Until he'd had a bit to drink, and a few hours later walked through the party saying "Did you get one? Did everyone get one?" and made sure every person in the room had gotten one. Luckily there was only one person at the time who wasn't already on our guest list, and he realized shortly after what he'd done and stopped handing out any more for the rest of the night. One person's not a big deal, except that it's one of his sister's roommates so now we feel obligated to invite the other, and there were already people much higher on the priority list who we'd decided weren't going to be invited.
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Apr 20, 2015 01:00
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ilysespieces posted:I love the look of mismatched bridal parties, but I also love it because it allows more freedom in dress choice and you can buy something you'll hopefully be able to wear again. That's exactly why I have my bridesmaids picking whatever they like as long as it's in the realm of the wedding colours. Also designing your own wedding invitations is frustrating, especially when your partner has no idea what they usually look like or say. Everything I showed him had "too much white space" so as of now we have a 6" square rotated to a diamond with a photograph that I have to somehow put all the text over. I'm sure I can make it work, it's just that both the shape and the photo are making it a lot harder to design than a standard invite.
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May 17, 2015 01:50
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A Proper Uppercut posted:Funny, I was just about to post this. We did this exact thing. Our date is set the Sunday before Labor Day in 2016. It cut $1500 off the venue cost. We did that as well, but for 2015. Our venue technically isn't supposed to give the Sunday discount when it's a long weekend, but either we booked so far in advance that they didn't realize it was the holiday weekend or they just didn't care cuz we signed the contract for the discounted price.
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May 22, 2015 00:01
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I'm starting to freak out because we have our invites and everything ready to go except that we bought a custom wax seal stamper to close the envelope that hasn't arrived yet. We already sent out a Save the Date so everyone knows when it is already, but if I have set that I need responses by August 5th, is a month long enough for people to get invites and respond?
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Jun 27, 2015 18:17
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bathhouse posted:Our deadline is 8/1, we sent out invites on 6/9 and have gotten 22 out of 85 back. Be sure to put postage stamps on your RSVP envelopes, we didn't We do have a website set up for it, and also helps that more than half of the guest list are people we see at least every few weeks. The wedding itself isn't until a month after the day I'm asking people to respond by, simply because it's the same date our block booking for the hotel expires and it seemed easier than having 2 different dates for people to remember, so I'll have lots of time to track people down who hadn't answered yet. I'm feeling a lot better after reading multiple websites suggesting invites be sent 6-8 weeks in advance, and I'm still within that window of time.
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Jun 30, 2015 03:11
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Aquatic Giraffe posted:Your vendors don't require a solid locked down guest list a month out? Both my venue and caterer had a month out as their hard deadline for head counts. Ours is 15 days before. Which still leaves me with 2 weeks to track down people who haven't answered by our deadline, and finish a seating plan (everyone has choice of meal so the venue needs to know exactly who's sitting where).
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Jun 30, 2015 21:57
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What about for a stag and doe? Ours is this weekend (and yes we're in an area where these are common and expected so please no arguing about the simple fact of having one). Unlike most stag and does, we aren't getting any cut of the bar sales at all, it's completely separate and being run by the venue. Instead of a tip jar, we want to put a "wedding fund" jar and just tip the bartenders ourselves in advance. There are 2 bartenders for 5 hours, is $50 each reasonable?
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Jul 15, 2015 01:47
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Hutla posted:Absolutely not. I work as a bartender and my hourly tips average $25 per hour. You want to give them $10 per hour for what promises to be a busy night. Tips are what they pay their rent and bills with, its not beer and pizza money. Ok, that's fair, we'd originally been planning $100-$150 but then I saw someone else in this thread say something about $20-40 being reasonable. This is actually really helpful, thanks, that's why I asked. I think we've decided to just leave tips as tips and put our wedding fund piggy bank over on the raffle table anyway so that it's one less detail we have to think about. People can just tip as normal and whatever will be will be.
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Jul 15, 2015 16:21
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Tenacious J posted:I just bought an engagement ring (first time!) and have slowly realized my plans around rings aren't traditional - not that her or I are especially traditional people... Do you think these plans are ok? It really depends on your lady. My fiancé bought my engagement ring for about $300 and we have no plans to upgrade it at any point. But we are getting custom wedding bands made for about $1300 each because we felt they were more important to splurge on than the engagement ring. So your plan sounds great to me, and frankly it's possible that she won't even want to upgrade her ring, but you know her better than us so it really depends on what you think she'd like.
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Jul 20, 2015 23:53
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Mojo Threepwood posted:We are currently working on our guest list and it is around 200 people right now. About what percentage of guests would be expected to RSVP yes? I know it varies from family to family, and there are a core group that I would be surprised if they didn't show, but it's the out of town cousins I wonder about. We invited just over 80 and have about 65 actually coming, so about 80% RSVP'd yes. Almost of the declined were cousins/family friends who live out of province.
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Aug 14, 2015 17:33
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Less than 3 weeks to go and I'm working on all the music for everything. My fiancé just had a mini panic attack about the reception because I'm obviously choosing songs people will dance to and he gets really self-conscious about dancing and feels like an idiot. But I love dancing and am super excited about getting to dance and have fun with some friends I haven't seen in awhile. He's got it in his head that we have to spend ALL of our time together, which I will agree to for the ceremony, dinner, cocktail hour etc but we'll have already been together for 7 hours straight and talked to probably all 70 guests by the time all of that is over so I don't see a big deal in spending some time apart doing the things we like. Though this is so far the biggest "disagreement" we've had between the 2 of us through this whole process so I suppose we lucked out there!
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Aug 18, 2015 01:44
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We're 12 days away from our wedding and haven't figured out the details of the ceremony yet. It will definitely be short and sweet, as we aren't doing any sort of unity ceremony nor any readings. We are writing our own vows, but otherwise just using our officiant's generic non-religious ceremony. Our one change is at the end instead of the guests replying with "we do" when asked if they'll promise to support us etc, we're having them say "so say we all" because we're huge nerds and it's a common way to end a speech in Battlestar Galactica  We also (*fingers crossed we can get it done in time*) have friends of ours pre-recording themselves playing both our processional and recessional songs which I really like.
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Aug 25, 2015 22:04
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Buggiezor posted:I've posted this in the thread before so sorry if you already read it, but we did a Memory Box ceremony. This is an awesome idea and totally up our alley. I just submitted the "script" for our ceremony today and included something similar to this. Thanks for the idea! 11 days (and about 300 small tasks) to go!
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Aug 27, 2015 23:08
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I never thought I'd have one of these stories* but less than a week before the wedding, a full 3 weeks after the absolute cut-off date I gave people for RSVP'ing, a friend who declined his invitation texted me today asking if he could show up for part of the reception with a plus one. First of all, no one got a plus one, only specific named significant others were invited with their own personalized RSVP cards like everyone else. Secondly, he turned down his invitation!! I honestly think he just isn't familiar enough with weddings to know that's a huge no-no, but drat. Granted it's also partially my fault for telling him that he MIGHT be able to come by for part of the reception after dinner not thinking that a) he'd actually show up and b) forgetting that the venue has an open bar and we're paying food/alcohol costs per person so adding someone for the party is like trying to sneak someone in for free booze. So we definitely can't be adding 2 people to it. *doesn't everyone think that?
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Sep 1, 2015 02:54
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OssiansFolly posted:I am at the point of hounding people because our RSVPs are due Sept 3rd which is when we owe the venue a headcount and half the remaining balance for that head count. In the last week I started calling people that all put just themselves on the RSVP and found that 5 people had planned to bring someone, but didn't care to put that down. It isn't a big number (3% of guests) but gently caress it is frustrating. Yeah, I had to track down a full 1/3 of our guests who didn't RSVP by the announced date, which thankfully I set 2 weeks ahead of when the venue needed numbers. He was actually one of the ones I talked to directly and said that after Aug 12 no one else could be added. I told him that because of the pay-per-guest we can't add anyone else who isn't already listed on the seating chart we provided. I could technically still add him to the guest list, but he doesn't want to come for dinner and doesn't drink at all so I don't really relish the idea of spending $135 for someone to just come hang out for an hour or 2. Plus my Grandpa is going to decide whether or not he's able to come depending on how he's feeling the day before, so I am already using my "please please add one guest at the last minute!" card for him.
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Sep 1, 2015 16:14
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I'm MARRIED!!! The whole wedding was awesome. Everyone kept asking me if I was nervous and my honest answer was that the being married part was fine, I was only concerned about all of our months of planning working out smoothly. Our photographers told us it was the best "first look" they've ever shot, we both cried through our vows, and after the fact even the venue bartender/wait staff told us how nice all of our guests were. We couldn't have asked for better weather, everything went perfectly. We got to eat all of our food, we got to talk to nearly everyone, we both had a blast and we've had multiple people tell us is was the best wedding they've ever been to. Of course not every wedding has an LED/Fire performer!   AlliedBiscuit posted:We are each going to pick a reading for our MOH/BM to do, and I am just racking my brain. I want it to be clever, original, very much ME, but not too out of left field. I'm a big geek (obviously), but I can't find any reading options that aren't REALLY geeky. Any tips for choosing a good one? I just want a fun statement about love or partnership that isn't super sappy and is kinda funny. Any good places to look? We ended up not using any readings at all, but I found Offbeat Bride had a lot of really fun and slightly geeky suggestions.
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Sep 11, 2015 17:03
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OssiansFolly posted:Does anyone have advice for where I can get a large board printed up for a reasonable price? I got an estimate from Kinkos and they wanted like $75 to print up a largely text based board with our seating list on it. I ordered a "lawn sign" from Vistaprint for our seating chart. It was the same price as a poster but I didn't even have to frame it to have it stand on the easel. Plus they almost always have some sort of promo code to get things discounted.
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Sep 16, 2015 21:44
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Rough budget for 60 guests: Venue/ceremony location/food/alcohol = $12,000 Officiant = 200 Dress/alterations = 1100 Photographers 8 hours = 2000 DJ equipment (borrowed laptop, bro-in-law as dj) = 300 Flowers (5 bouquets, decorative rose petals/baby's breath, 5 boutonnières, 2 corsages) = 700 Cupcakes = 275 Cupcake stand (DIY) = 30 in materials Guestbook (DIY) = 30 in materials Centerpieces (DIY) = 200 for materials Cardbox (DIY) = 20 Favors (DIY) = 350 in materials Wedding rings (custom made) = 2100 Groomsmen gifts (custom made) = 600 (more than average, for sure) Bridesmaids gifts = 450 Parent gifts = 300 Hair/makeup including trial = 320 Shoes (DIY glittered) = 45 including materials Invitations = ????? I have no idea because we designed/printed/cut them all ourselves including the envelopes and our ceremony programs. I spent at least $30 on paper alone not to mention all the ink. Seating chart = 20 (got it from Vistaprint with a promo code as a lawn sign) Tux rental = 200 My wedding was just 2 weeks ago so I'm trying to remember literally everything we spent anything on. This doesn't include the hotel we stayed in that night, or the honeymoon, and I'm sure I'm forgetting things. This also doesn't include the weeks of work we spent doing most of the things ourselves.
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Sep 22, 2015 23:33
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Rap Record Hoarder posted:All you folks spending 15-20k or more on weddings, are y'all just...going into debt for this stuff? That wasn't the plan, but unfortunately it ended up happening that way. We were engaged for 2 years and booked the venue about 16 months in advance with a plan to save but there were some unexpected periods of unemployment, landlord issues that forced us into an unexpected move, etc which all happened after paying a hefty deposit on the venue so we did end up having to cover part of the costs on credit card. Not that anyone should count on it, but we did get gifted enough cash to cover a large part of what we covered by credit.
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Sep 23, 2015 14:11
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appleskates posted:I am so excited to spend the rest of my life with this wonderful, sweet man, and our children. That's an awesome story, congrats appleskates!
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Sep 26, 2015 16:50
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Nicol Bolas posted:Has anyone had a Sunday wedding? I don't want to do brunch, I want a dance and party into the night super casual affair, and we are looking at a holiday weekend (memorial day) so that should help, but are there any details I should be aware of on a Sunday that don't come up on a Saturday? We just got married on the Sunday of the Labour day long weekend 5 weeks ago. If the next day is a holiday it doesn't really change anything except prices sometimes. Namely some venues do cheaper pricing on Sunday vs Saturday (which may or may not be held to on a long weekend, it might be Saturday prices both days). Also for hotels nearby you have to block book farther in advance because they're more likely to book up on long weekends.
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Oct 12, 2015 23:40
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Chessna posted:Does anyone have experience with booking a block of hotel rooms for weddings? We only booked with one place and it seemed to work out alright, but it also had a shuttle going to the venue so that may have been why no one opted to stay elsewhere. I've heard different stories, but when we were researching pretty much every place was similar. We didn't have to pay for any rooms except our own, but there were a specified number of rooms "on hold" for our guests at a discounted rate. The rooms were only held until a month prior to the wedding date, so people had until then to book, and any rooms that weren't taken by our guests were released back to being available to the public.
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Oct 21, 2015 21:40
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