Wedding Tactics

If you have already chosen a date for your wedding you know firsthand what a delicate little woven web it is to avoid offending people, trying to make people happy and manage to get married before the end of the decade. For all you recently engaged couples who are still “thinking it over” and “not yet settled on a date” … here are some tips, pitfalls to look out for and general complaints you can expect to hear.

The wedding over a holiday weekend debate meant that travel would be more expensive but people wouldn’t necessarily have to take as much time off from work. I thought I would feel guilty for taking someone’s intensely coveted three-day weekend. Although, in hindsight, I didn’t think much about it once the date was chosen and the invitations were in the mail. What seems huge today will be a faint memory tomorrow.

I got engaged in July, and I always knew I wanted a Fall wedding. That meant that we either had a wedding in December (yes, I know, not so much autumn anymore and also soon) … or we waited a year and a half.

I was not going to wait a year and a half.

Marc also said NO to December for that whole too soon reason. Men! If you can train for a marathon in four months; you can plan a wedding in four months.

When we finally decided where we wanted to get married, we just looked at the dates they had available and the openings began in early May. I did not want to get married on Mother’s Day or Memorial Day. May 20th was the earliest that our venue was available, so, that’s how we decided on our date.

I had friends beg me not to get married in December because they had another wedding to attend the week before, also in Florida and that would have been a lot of traveling for them.

My brother-in-law-to-be also asked me to move my wedding date, after I had put down a deposit, because his girlfriend’s sister was getting married the weekend before, and that’s just a lot of wedding-time for them. Sorry guys, you’ll get over it.

So much for my Fall wedding, or my December wedding.

We chose our date based on what was available at our venue. This was really just the beginning of the flexibility I would need to extend for wedding planning.

The magical links of the interweb have brought my attention to this. A bachelorette gift basket packaged in a trash can that is marketed as a BARF BUCKET. I’m really kinda at a loss for words on this one, so rather than pontificate about what I think is appropriate public behavior, I think I’ll take the high road and be gracious and just pass this photo along to all of ya’ll.

WHAT!?

While recently reading a bridal website, I saw that a bride had posed the question that her bridesmaids had asked her to come up with a shower theme that she might like. It is common to have a kitchen shower, or a linens shower … and the gifts then correspond with the theme.

A theme can help with decorations and help the bride get gifts she might need rather than things she doesn’t so much need as just want. However, a bridal shower can be totally successful without any specific theme.

If you want to have a bridal shower with themes to make sure the gifts are diverse consider having certain guests responsible for different areas of the “home”. For example, your shower can have the theme “Around the House” and each person or a few people can be assigned to each room. Thereby, the bride will get gifts for the kitchen, the bathrooms, the dining room and the bedroom. The bedroom gifts can be linens or lingerie … depending on who is invited and how er, uh… *exciting* you want to make the shower.

At any kind of shower, you can add some special meaning and memories to the day by asking guests ahead of time to contribute a favorite recipe. If you include the recipe cards in the invitation guests can fill it out ahead of time and at the party, you can put the recipe cards into a recipe notebook.

For more bridal shower ideas and to see some photos from my actual shower this past Spring, click on this link.