Your Wedding Day should be a time to relax and enjoy all the hard work you’ve put into its planning. As a control freak myself, I know how hard it can be to hand the reins over to someone else, but it has to be done if you’re to have your dream wedding day.
I spend a lot of time talking to Coordinators at the venues we work at. It’s a great way to get their take on where couples help or hinder them on the day.
So, during a recent wedding set up, I asked one very lovely lady, who is also planning her own wedding, what tips I should pass on to couples, to give them the smoothest day possible, and what advice she can give from watching so many other couples say ‘I Do’. I thought that these tips, coupled with my many years of experience in the wedding world (I will leave you to guess on that one…!), would make a super helpful blog so here it is!
Who’s taking the long walk with you?
Have you considered where the Groomsmen and Bridesmaids are to stand or walk to for the ceremony?It may be that this is the first time your bridal party have had this role and invariably, they won’t have a clue what to do, where they need to walk to or where to stand (if that’s what you want) once they’re at the end of the aisle.
Talk to your ceremony venue, ask them what works well normally in that space. Explain to your entourage where they’re to walk to and stand, or if there will be a seat reserved for them on the front row. Reserved seating is a great way to make sure that those escorting you down the aisle have a place to aim for, and won’t delay you making your own way down, if there’s a specific part of the music you want to start at (another thing to consider perhaps).
Ultimately, you want the walk down the aisle to be one where you are focusing on your partner to be, that first glance, not getting bothered by the fact that your bridesmaid has stood in the wrong spot!
Who are you marrying?
When you do reach the end of the aisle, whether you’re in Church, your Venue or in a Registry Office, remember who it is you’re marrying. When you exchange your vows, look at each other… not the Registrar or Vicar
Your partner is the one you’re exchanging those important words with
Take it from me, it means so much more when you’re looking into the eyes of the one you love while you say your vows, it’s a promise you make to each other and no one else.
In that moment it can feel like it is just the two of you, even though there may be 50 sets of eyes looking at you. This is a really special moment, THE special moment so absorb it all in. Every. Second.
Help everyone help you!
If you are planning to set the space up for yourself, rather than hiring them from a supplier (hint hint…us!), and you aren’t able to put your centrepieces, place cards & favours out as there’s a wedding at your venue the day before and the timings on the morning of your wedding just don’t allow it, here are some suggestions and requests that will help your venue and suppliers to help you
#1
Having everything packed into bags or boxes, one per table, so it’s easy for anyone taking responsibility for putting things out for you. This also helps you in checking you have everything you need too. There’s nothing worse than the mad panic of being a centre piece short on the day. No one wants to be that person, calling the bride & stressing her out with questions.
#2
Sort your place cards into table & seating order. It will help your venue out no end. Having to sort out names into table order takes time… time your coordinator could spend on more important on the day jobs.
#3
If you’ve decided to do the table centres yourself, help your coordinator by doing a mock up of what you want your table setting to look like. . Don’t worry if the table isn’t round, or if you don’t have a white cloth, just take some detailed photos of what you’d like where and how, put these images onto a document to print out, or email them to your coordinator so that they can make sure it is how you imagined. This is something we always do for our clients when we are setting up for them, to make sure the centrepieces on the day are just as they dreamed.
#4
Whatever pieces of decoration you’re supplying yourself, make sure you:
- Check that there are no broken items. There won’t be any way to replace a chipped or broken item on the day
- Take off all labels and tags and ensure the items are clean, streak free and ready to use
- Put batteries into the little battery box… check things work while you do this too.. this is vital, in case the little battery pack needs the smallest screwdriver on earth to open it
- Make sure the photographs you want for your memory table, if you’re having one, are in the frames. Honestly, I’m not kidding here.. forgetting to put the photos into the frame has happened more than once
I promise you, if you follow these guidelines, your venue will love you forever and your day will run smoothly. If all of this feels quite “faffy” and something that you just don’t want to do, then that is when you hire someone to do all these pieces for you.
To hire or to buy?
Planning a wedding is a very big deal. It takes months to find the perfect venue, then looking at the decor to see if the style or theme you have in your head will work. Depending on the direction your style will go in, is it better to buy or hire some of the decorations?
As there are so many different ways you can add decor to your tables, my tip would be to look at both options. You could think that buying will be budget friendly, but there are many pitfalls in this.
- You need a lot of each item to create a specific look on every table.
- There are different grades of glass available to buy, some of which won’t stand up to the heat of a candle (I’m talking glass cylinders here, which are currently very popular). The lower grade ones can explode!
- What do you do with the pieces after the wedding? Selling on is an option, but it’s doubtful that you’d get your invested amount back
- You have to check, de-tag & clean each piece so that they look just as you want them to. This all takes time.. time you could spend doing fun things with your entourage
It can often seem cheaper to buy than to hire, especially if the supplier you are using is including set up in the hire costs. We, for example, don’t hire out our pieces, we only provide them when we set them up because we want to keep the quality high and that is the business we have built. So when looking at first glance, it can seem more expensive to hire but this saves so much time and hassle for you before and on the day so you are paying for the admin, the set up and all the “faffy” bits as part of that hire cost. It is important to think about how you want to feel on your wedding day when thinking about doing the setup on your own – here are a couple of blogs that may be helpful: https://www.icedandspliced.com/thefeeling/ and https://www.icedandspliced.com/onesupplier/
Everything has a pro or a con, so my advice is to look into how much buying it yourself is going to cost, and then sorting and getting the items to your venue before the wedding, while asking if the Venus is willing to put the items out for you versus hiring from someone who has everything you need, will make sure it’s all clean and ready to go, and will deliver on the day and collect the day after
There’s a lot of information here, and I don’t mean to overwhelm you with advice and tips, but these ones really are worth their weight in gold when it comes to the day itself. Little snippets of advice that will help you have the day you’ve dreamed of and planned for so long.
If you’d like more advice on how to have a magical day, or would like to know more about what we do at Iced and Spliced, then please get in touch
Let’s start your very own #icedandsplicedexperience journey
