NOTE: This is an article I wrote a few years ago for an online publication aimed at people who have larger weddings. I decided to re-post it here for you, because I guarantee you will see every item on this list.
I have been in the wedding industry for over 12 years.
I have officiated over 4,000 weddings. In my career, I have attended, and have had a hand in planning/coordinating, approximately 5,000 weddings.
In short, I have seen some……. things.
Before going further, I want to make a distinction: There is a distinct difference between an incident that happened and you creating an incident. One creates a good story. The other you hope nobody ever remembers it.
There are things that, if you do them, you will never recover from. When the divorce comes, and it will, this will be dug back up and thrown in your face at how idiotic you always have been.
What’s worse is that these things sound like a good idea at the time you decided you would do them.
Trust me. I’m an expert in my field.
Don’t. Do. These. Things. (With the occasional exception, of course.)
1. No Surprises
On your wedding day, surrounded by those you love the most, it seems like such a cool occasion to spring some kind of life-altering surprise.
This doesn’t even only apply to your soon-to-be betrothed. Mothers, grandmothers, and best friends also fit under this warning.
I did a wedding once at a vineyard. The couple told their group of 30 family friends that they were hosting an engagement party at the vineyard. The party would include wine tastings, finger foods, and an all-you-care-to-drink wine menu. They rented a couple of limos to bring everyone there. The guests were excited to celebrate an engagement over endless wine and finger foods.
Nobody knew it was a wedding – including a mother of the bride who wore, essentially, nicer street clothes.
The limousines arrived and the vineyard was obviously set up for a wedding. There were flowers, an arch, music, an officiant, and the bride and groom in their wedding attire at the entrance to meet the guests. Surprise!
The wedding collapsed before it even started. The mother was livid. She had a public meltdown in front of everyone and started walking down the street to escape this hell that had happened to her.
We still had the wedding and wine. If you’ve ever been to a Thanksgiving meal where the matriarch of the family was highly upset, you know how the rest of this evening felt. It wasn’t the fun event the bride and groom had expected.
At the beginning of my career, I had a few grooms who thought surprising their fiancée with an actual wedding was a good idea. I have since made it a policy where we don’t offer surprise weddings. It never once has turned out well.
Here’s the thing: brides have been daydreaming about a perfect wedding day since they were little girls. Mothers of brides have been daydreaming about their daughter’s wedding since their daughters were little girls.
We are talking 20–30 years of daydreaming has gone into this single day. Springing a surprise on someone who has put this much emotional investment in an event will not only go not as planned, but it will put you in a hole you will likely never get yourself out of. It will be unforgivable.
Also… weddings are also not the place to announce a pregnancy.
The Exception
The only exception to this rule is the surprise upgrade.
“I know you thought you were getting the simple gold wedding band. But I approached your grandmother and made a ring using the diamond that her grandmother gave to her. Here is your new wedding set! Surprise!”
“I know we could only afford a photographer, but I was able to sell a few things and work a few extra hours, and I upgraded to photography AND videography, just like you hoped for. Surprise!”
“I know you wanted your best college friend to come, but he couldn’t afford to fly out here. I got him a ticket because I know you wouldn’t have wanted him to miss it. Surprise!”
If you can put together a surprise upgrade, this is the only acceptable way to break this rule.
2. Don’t hire friends or family
If you can afford a wedding staff, hire a professional wedding staff of people. These should be people you don’t know and have no intention of knowing after your big day.
A wedding is a huge, complex affair with a lot of gears turning. Many different people need to work in tandem to make the event come together seamlessly.
You’re going to get frustrated at your planner. You are going to get frustrated at your food service people. Your day-of coordinator is going to say something bitchy shortly before it’s time for your big walk down the aisle. Your cake person is going to be a bit late, and the rustic decorations won’t be rustic enough.
Do you want this anger, frustration, and vitriol to come down on someone you love and care about for many years to come?
I can’t count how many life-long friendships and family relationships I’ve seen crash and burned in a single day. Once your time at the venue ends and your party has cleaned up, your relationship with your planner and coordinator will also come to an end. Your frustration with them will become a funny story a year or two down the line.
If your wedding day includes a disastrous fight with your best friend since childhood – the one who said she’d be your wedding planner for free because she’s always wanted to try doing it – that relationship will be gone for good. You love her too much for that.
Even if it doesn’t lead to a fight, but she doesn’t live up to your expectations, she will ask for your opinion of how she did.
You don’t want to go through that awkward conversation.
Keep your friends and business separate.
3. Don’t ignore your planner’s advice
Taking from the previous topic, your wedding planner is an expert in planning weddings. They have planned hundreds (or thousands!) of weddings.
Your awesome wedding idea? The one you have been planning since you were 10? Your planner did three of those “totally unique” weddings in the past month.
Don’t get me wrong. We love doing these ideas, and we get the greatest satisfaction out of seeing you enjoy your experience. We know it works well because we have likely done it several times before.
We also know what doesn’t work. Sometimes you will have a great idea that just isn’t feasible based on the limitations of your budget…
… or the laws of physics.
Time restraints, physical boundaries, local laws, or any number of factors can limit how or if we can make your dream a reality. Your planner isn’t being a jerk by telling you that something just won’t work out as you envisioned. Your planner (or one of their colleagues) has probably tried it before, and it was a disaster.
Your planner wants one thing: to give you a night you will remember fondly for the rest of your life. They don’t want to rob the joy that a lifetime of dreaming has brought you. They want to give you what you want.
However, if your planner says no, you must swallow that bitter pill and move on. If you go behind their back and attempt it anyway, you are almost certainly facing a very bad time.
4. Don’t sing at your own wedding
This may not ruin your entire wedding day, but it will be something you wish you never even thought of. You will want to pretend it never happened. You will shake your head every time you think about it.
You may have that one song that perfectly says exactly what you feel when you are around your love. You may have even written a song that says exactly what you feel. You want to sing this song as a part of your vows.
This idea has the greatest of intentions. Don’t do it.
Maybe you’ve been practicing guitar for a few years and want to demonstrate your skills. Because just playing isn’t enough (don’t do that either), you decide to add lyrics.
Don’t. Just don’t do it. Put that idea in a box and bury it in the back yard.
I have seen dozens of weddings where either a bride or a groom has decided that they wanted to sing part of their own ceremony. It’s a terrible idea. Why?
First is internal. You will be nervous. You will be high on emotion. Leading up to your song, it’s all you will be thinking of. After your song, after you fuck it up (because you will), it’s all you will be thinking of. You will not sing your song well. Believe me.
Second is external: your wedding is about the celebration of the love the two of you share. It’s you and the love of your life standing in front of your best friends and family and becoming something greater than the sum of either of you alone. Deciding you want to sing part of your ceremony will succeed in both making part of the ceremony all about you (which you don’t want) and having your fiancé standing alone for a significant part of the ceremony (which you don’t want).
It’s cringey, awkward, and never as good as you think it will be. If you want live singing at your wedding, hire someone else to sing.
The Exception
The only exception to this rule is when both of you are professional singers, and singing is a part of your life as a couple.
You can possibly make it cute, fun, and lovable. You can make it an exciting show for your guests watching. Just don’t drone on and on. Everyone just wants to go get a beer, eat some finger foods, and chat with the hottie standing up there in the wedding party.
5. Don’t shun your staff
Ok. This may not ruin your big day. In fact, this will even take a little extra work on your end. It will, however, change you from a standard client to your staff into one of the best they’ve ever had.
This is when you get to turn your great night for yourself into a great night for those who worked hard for you.
- Tip them – You don’t have to, mind you. They are charging you a lot. That charge covers their entire business – marketing, transportation, talent, taxes, and all of the other small costs of running a business. And, yes, it covers their pay.
But an extra $100? That goes to buying a bottle of Jameson on the way home. Maybe, like me, it would go directly to my kids’ preschool fund so I could get a few hours of silence during the morning hours a couple days a week. It was extra that I wasn’t expecting but was very appreciated. Those who recognize the hard work someone gave YOU – and nobody else – for an entire day are wonderful people. - Review them – Get thee to Facebook, Google Business, Yelp (but don’t use Yelp), The Knot, and any other site that your staff may use and review, review, review.
Don’t leave 2-, 3-, or 4-star reviews, even if service wasn’t 5-star worthy in your mind. You should still leave a 5-star review and talk about your talent glowingly. Then, send a private email to this person with a link to the review. If you had some hang-ups about the job they did, leave it for the email.
A single 3-star review can tank a small business. Believe me when I say that you don’t want the karma of destroying someone’s livelihood hanging over you and your big wedding day. There is almost always a solution to small dissatisfaction if you leave a 5-star review but privately ask what can be done to remedy it.
As a business owner, it’s my goal to be an exceptional service provider. In doing so, I have learned that it’s equally as important to be an excellent customer. Start out your marriage on the right foot by going the extra mile for those who went the extra mile for you.
If you are like many people, your wedding day will be the most formal event you will ever be a part of. It’s one of the biggest milestone events of anyone’s life life.
You do not want to screw it up.
Take it from someone who has seen hundreds of teeth-bearingly awkward weddings. Enjoy your time as a couple. Be good to your staff.
And let incidents happen as they may, no input from you.
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