Good and bad things you have learned from past weddings

View Quoted Comment That sound very poorly planned!

View Quoted Comment How can one score an invitation to 1 of these zoo weddings you mention? Asking for a friend😙

My fiance's sister and her (current) husband got married 3 1/2 years ago on Labor Day weekend 2017. It was a beautiful wedding, and I took mental notes of what to do or not to do. The key thing that stands out of what not to do is to have better organization of the seating. The wedding was supposed to start at 5:30, but it got to be 5:25, and NO ONE was in their seats! People didn't start heading for their seats until 5:30. The invitation hadn't specified that seating began at 5:30; that was supposed to be the wedding start time. Thankfully, there were only maybe 80-90 guests, so it didn't take *that* long for them to get seated, but still, a little more organization would have been nice. My wedding's start time is 4:00 PM, and we're starting the music, aka the seating, at 3:00. If anyone isn't in their seat at 4:00, they're gonna have to sit outside till cocktail hour.

View Quoted Comment I agree with this 100%. Releasing the rows goes by so fast and the couple gets to see everyone. Trying to talk while eating is awkward and uncomfortable.

View Quoted Comment Hmm it sounds like the crowd is largely not used to weddings or other social gatherings. A lot of people understand that the time on the invite is when the bride makes her entrance.

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Interesting that you mention no menus for buffets because so many people insist that buffets don’t need menus of any kind. Especially on the wedding forums. But when they are there, they give guests a heads up before getting up to fill plates so that lines are able to move quickly. In addition to having each buffet dish labeled.

As far as ceremony ‘fillers’ with the mini rituals and readings, they tend to go much faster when the officiant does the readings rather than have to wait for someone to get up and make their way to the front. But yes one set V of vows is sufficient.

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I found one of these curious - table visits. Why have people not liked these, in your experience?

I've always understood the purpose to be ensuring that all the guests get to at least briefly see the bride and groom up close, so I'd have thought people would like them?

View Quoted Comment This is interesting and somewhat concerning to me, so I have to ask you to elaborate! Were those long, tortuous vows you’ve witnessed in addition to a long ceremony? Or did you just not like hearing the vows? I ask because I am planning a 15-20 minute ceremony and I’d planned on 3-5 minutes for each of our vows (making room for potential emotions); maybe 5 minutes for a unity ritual (probably an overestimate); and then the ring exchange. Officiant will have some welcome remarks & ring exchange, but we are not having any sort of wedding speech or sermon.


I don’t want our guests to get bored, but I am definitely focusing on the vows since that is the most important part of the ceremony. I’ve only been to weddings with traditional vows and that is something that bores me to tears, especially when it follows a sermon.

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It's actually so the bride and groom can greet and thank all their guests personally. But in my opinion and those of others i've chatted with at weddings, It interrupts the flow of dinner, and it makes dinner take FOREVER. If there's 10-20 tables and you spend a few minutes chatting with everyone at each table, that's 30-60 minutes extra that is just wasted while people sit at their tables because B&G never seem to start table visits until they've eaten and everyone else is almost finished.

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I agree with this perspective. Also it can feel like that awkward moment when you’re at a restaurant and the waiter takes the opportunity to ask you questions as you have a mouth full of food.

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Agree with all of this!

A couple of weddings I have been to served you a glass of champagne as soon as you arrived, while kind of mingling before the ceremony starts. LOVE that. It helps the waiting feel less awkward and also sets the stage for it being a special event.

I love personal touches and lots of photos. I'm a big dog lover so I think it's great when people include their well trained and properly socialized dogs in their weddings. I like desserts that aren't just cake (one wedding I went to had an ice cream cart and it was awesome).

I think it means a lot when the seating assignments are carefully thought out and you are placed at a table with friends or people you have something in common with. I always find it really awkward when one couple gets left out of a table with their friends, and if you are going to a wedding where you know few other guests it makes a huge difference when the couple takes the time to match you with people you can find common ground with.

I dislike really long ceremonies in general and don't love anything overly religious. A few religious traditions are totally fine, but it is kind of awkward to force guests to participate in stuff like sacrament, and at one Catholic ceremony I went to all the guests needed to raise their arm out to bless the couple and if we had all raised our arms by just a few degrees it would have looked exactly like a Nazi salute and it was SO uncomfortable. Also I've been at a couple weddings where the horah (Jewish tradition where the bride and groom are lifted on chairs) has probably happened too late in the reception and my husband (he's a bigger guy and quite strong) has had to jump into to prevent some drunk dude from dropping the groom. Horahs are usually fun but not when someone gets hurt. So if you are going to do a horah, do it when people are sober enough to do it safely.

In general, I despite weddings where there are a long stretches of time where you just need to sit still and observe some tradition, so I prefer shorter ceremonies and a limited amount of non-participatory wedding traditions during receptions. Often when these things are happening during the reception at least some guests are twisted/craned around in an awkward position so they can respectfully observe whatever event they are supposed to be watching, and this gets really uncomfortable quickly. IMO, there is no need for more than a couple speeches, elaborate choreographed dances, and layers upon layers of wedding rituals. Let your guests mingle, interact, move around, and enjoy themselves!

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Nope, not in addition to long ceremonies. Literally listening to the couple drone on to each other. In my personal opinion and from experience filming many weddings, 3-5 minutes is way too long for vows, no matter what the length of the ceremony. No matter how much someone loves the couple, no one wants to listen to them prattle on for 3+ minutes about how much they love each other, and they stop listening about halfway through that.

Pick a page out of a book and read aloud for 3-5 minutes. Time it out and see just how long that actually is. On average, people say about 130 words per minute, so at three minutes you're looking at 390 words, and at five minutes you're looking at 650 words. That is a lot. Like "college essay" a lot. Look up any expert advice on writing your own vows - there's a ton out there - and nearly all will say two minutes, max.

Vows should be the focus, but "focus" doesn't mean "long." Make sure you are focusing on what vows actually are: promises to your future spouse. Whenever I've seen these long vows that bore everyone, they were a dozen or more bullet points of "cutesy" things they "love" about the other person ("I love how your nose crinkles when you laugh, I love how you wear socks to bed, I love how you always grab a box of animal crackers when we go through the grocery store,") a two-minute story from their relationship, a bunch of fluff that could have been said in private, and then 2-3 actual vows. When writing their own vows, couples often approach them as if they are love letters. Imagine being a guest listening to a couple basically read love letters to each other for 3+ minutes. Boring at best, uncomfortable at worst! Save the love letters for private exchange the morning of the wedding.

My personal advice for effective vows: focus on 3-5 things you truly love about your spouse (you can toss in 1-2 goofy/cutesy ones, but try to make these mostly real things that make them a great person and partner) and then 5-6 genuine promises that you will bring to your marriage. You don't need to tell a story (save it for speeches), you don't need a laundry list of everything you adore about them, and you don't need a dozen vows. Keep these to the absolute most genuine, deep, truly meaningful thoughts, and they will naturally be shorter - and your guests will actually listen to all of it instead of zoning out waiting for you to get done.

ETA: and remember, you probably read to yourself faster than you speak, so you should read your vows aloud to time them. Two minutes of internal monologue reading is completely different from two minutes of spoken word.

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TOTALLY agree on the menus for buffets... maybe it's just my anxiety, but I hate having to wait until I'm in the line to read the tags on buffet items. I feel pressured (there are other guests lined up behind me! The people at the serving stations are waiting for me to tell them what I want!) and I usually end up either not getting much of anything, or getting a little of everything (and not eating most of it) simply because I was frantic.

View Quoted Comment Interesting. I can see that really does bug you 😂 I speak for a living, so I would not be reading my vows. However, I am well aware of how time is different when you’re speaking in public, which is why I allotted 3-5 minutes. I’m sure if I read my vows they would not be that long. But I do intend to pause, and I do anticipate some emotional breaks. Calculating for that, 3 minutes would be minimum & I would rather over estimate my time than underestimate it. I certainly can’t imagine trimming down to 90 seconds, but it’s definitely something to be mindful of. Thanks for responding!

A minor detail from a vow renewal I attended: the couple didn’t like the chairs provided by the church which were comfy but not aesthetically pleasing. They went for spandex covers that didn’t stay in place which made sitting uncomfortable (no dancing, strictly religious with just dinner and mingling). So most guests removed them.

View Quoted Comment Ahh that does make sense! I hadn’t thought of it that way. Good to keep in mind for our own day!

View Quoted Comment That makes perfect sense

View Quoted Comment These are good to know. I agree with you on unnecessarily long ceremonies and speeches or uncomfortable situations in general. The pre wedding drinks sound like a lovely touch.