Best wedding you were ever at & why?

CaraMay

I find it amusing that everyone thinks their own wedding was the best. Wonder if there is anyone out there who will say they didn't eNjoy theirs?

Baggy Trousers

CaraMay wrote: »

I find it amusing that everyone thinks their own wedding was the best. Wonder if there is anyone out there who will say they didn't eNjoy theirs?

Mine wasn't the best I have been to; I enjoyed it alright but the day flew and I kinda wondered what all the fuss was about. We didn't go mad on finances so I was glad about that. Some people must hit an awful anti-climax. It was a traditional Irish wedding which I have grown to dislike with a passion.
Having said that, the honeymoon in Italy was fantastic.

MelanieC

26sdrawkcab wrote: »

Best wedding? Are we allowed vote for ourselves?

Prior to my own wedding I had only ever been to big family weddings when i was a lot younger, you know the type, your parents receive an invitation addressed to the whole family and you get dragged along. My own brother's wedding being a perfect example, 250-300 guests, a whole load of random people that they hadn't seen in a million years, the usual rubbish.
My idea of hell.
I knew when I was getting married that I didn't want any church involvement and I didn't want a big show.

We got married in Waterford Castle, we had a spiritual ceremony at 5p.m., the ceremony took about 20 minutes and we pretty much designed it ourselves. We had 11 guests at the ceremony itself. My sister was the only family member there. Later on a few more guests arrived but there was no more than 20 people there altogether. It was a scorcher of a day so after the ceremony everybody stayed outside to get started on the drinking and we went for a little walk around the grounds to take some photos.
They have 2 rooms that they use for their breakfast rooms and these open up into one big room so they set that up for us to use privately. They decorated the room, not very well but it didn't really bother me, I don't think anyone really notices decorations and the rooms are very grand anyway.
We sat down for dinner at 6:30, we got up from the dinner table at around 9 as they wanted to clear away everything and move the tables for us so everyone went outside as it was still roasting. There was a door out to one part of the garden from the room we had and they put chairs and a few tables out there for us.

My husband has a pretty good sound system at home so we brought out his amp and 4 speakers and set them up in the room. We had playlists set up on his laptop and a few of his friends, who love music, handled the music during the night too. There was never a lull in the music and all of our friends are into the same music so everyone was happy. I can understand if you are having a big wedding with people of all ages how this sort of set-up might not suit but it suited us very well as everyone liked all the music.
We weren't bothered at all about noise (not that we were being noisy but it's a risk you run when you're taking care of music yourself) and stayed up dancing until 5a.m.

Everyone had a great time, it was more of a party celebrating our marriage than a "wedding".
Nobody was put under pressure to take a day off work and nobody was put under pressure to stay the night.

It was just very relaxed and laidback and it was exactly what we wanted it to be.

The next day we had a get together at our house, got pizza and I rang my parents to tell them I was married and then they spread the word. The funniest part was posting it on facebook, lots of shocked reactions :pac:

This sounds perfect!

Our finances wouldn't stretch as far as Waterford Castle but the set-up sounds lovely. We too will only have app 30-40 guests so intimate & individual appeals to me.

Congrats!

twillerbee

Love this thread!
Its lovely to see everyones views and ideas, I definitely think the people makes the day. After that, I really do think you should think about what you like doing and if you were throwing a big birthday party, what would you do. And then think about what special extras you could add to make it "more wedding-y"

Andrewf20

For our wedding we got some inflatable guitars and hammers for the dance floor in woodies. Great craic. People bashing lumps out of each other with them as well. We were all like kids again. The photographer brought along zany hats, wigs and glasses etc and the guests got photos taken with them (before the band started) which we sent out with the thank you cards. Think it was 200 euro extra for the hour but it got a great reception.

Good food, drink and music and most importantly people who know others well at the wedding also are the most important elements imo. Seat pals together. I was at a wedding once stuck at a table with complete strangers once while other I knew were at other tables. Truely bizarre. Black tie is a waste of money it seems - most people hate having to shell out for this, especially when weddings are as pricey enough as it is.

Toots

Andrewf20 wrote: »

Seat pals together. I was at a wedding once stuck at a table with complete strangers once while other I knew were at other tables.

Oh god, this +10000! There's nothing worse than 'forced socialisation' at weddings. I get the sentiment behind it - encouraging your guests to get to know each other, and mix - but a lot of the time it just ends up with everyone at the table trying to fill uncomfortable silences with awkward small talk while waiting for the next course to arrive.

Milly33

Id be half and half with this the seating. I think tis great to mix it up a bit as there is nothing worse than seeing guest stick to their groups, I hate it when people don't mingle.. I think lets say half friends hand someone new is great, gets people out of their click

Gatica

I dunno, I wouldn't feel it was my responsibility to train my guests' social skills... at most I'd like to know the couple of people who don't know anyone else were looked after, but other than that, it's not a school playground and there's no need to enforce some way for adults to "play" with different folk...

wuffly

Milly33 wrote: »

Id be half and half with this the seating. I think tis great to mix it up a bit as there is nothing worse than seeing guest stick to their groups, I hate it when people don't mingle.. I think lets say half friends hand someone new is great, gets people out of their click

I can see where you are coming from and we def did this when we didn't have enough people from a certain group to fill a table but would not do this to a larger group of friend's. I wanted my guests to have fun so put them together where possible and personally I prefer to sit with people I know at weddings. The whole getting to know new people over dinner at weddings thing isn't really fun for the guests, its the couple wanting more of their friends to be friends, nice in theory I think lots of us would like that. I traveled home for a wedding before and our whole group was divided up. The people we with were fine, don't remember at thing about them, chatted away but we all went to hang out with our friends when the meal was over. After a lot of effort to get there, I was genuinely bummed out to not get to spend the meal with my friends.
If people want to mingle they will, we told everyone we were going for drinks in our local the night before and most of the people that were travelling went there and we introduced them to people we thought they'd get along with but nothing was forced and we were able to introduce people ourselves as opposed to lumping them together in a situation they are stuck in for a few hours. To each their own... do you genuinely like making small talk with new people in that type of situation?

CarpeDiem85

I never get to see my immediate family that much. When we were all invited to my neighbours wedding, I was looking forward to sitting with my family and catching up with them. We weren't seated together, it was a free for all to grab seats anywhere you could and it really took the enjoyment away for me. I had to circle the tables quite a few times to get a seat on my own with my 14 month old child. I'd always have a seating plan, especially with a big wedding. People like to catch up with old friends and family.

PhoenixParker

wuffly wrote: »

I can see where you are coming from and we def did this when we didn't have enough people from a certain group to fill a table but would not do this to a larger group of friend's. I wanted my guests to have fun so put them together where possible and personally I prefer to sit with people I know at weddings. The whole getting to know new people over dinner at weddings thing isn't really fun for the guests, its the couple wanting more of their friends to be friends, nice in theory I think lots of us would like that. I traveled home for a wedding before and our whole group was divided up. The people we with were fine, don't remember at thing about them, chatted away but we all went to hang out with our friends when the meal was over. After a lot of effort to get there, I was genuinely bummed out to not get to spend the meal with my friends.
If people want to mingle they will, we told everyone we were going for drinks in our local the night before and most of the people that were travelling went there and we introduced them to people we thought they'd get along with but nothing was forced and we were able to introduce people ourselves as opposed to lumping them together in a situation they are stuck in for a few hours. To each their own... do you genuinely like making small talk with new people in that type of situation?

In general, I do, and some guests will.

I think it depends on how often groups of guests see each other. I know that when I've been seated with my cousins at the third family wedding of the year, I'd have been delighted if my cousin had mixed it up and stuck me in with a few of her friends. The best weddings I've been at, I've been at a table with a group of people I've met a few times, gotten on well with but never gotten to know properly.

The only time I want to be seated with a group of people I know really well and nobody else is, if it's a group of people I don't see from one end of the year to the next. The trick is to know which guests are of my opinion and which guests are of yours and seat them accordingly. Christ I'm dreading the seating plan stage.

wuffly

PhoenixParker wrote: »

In general, I do, and some guests will.

I think it depends on how often groups of guests see each other. I know that when I've been seated with my cousins at the third family wedding of the year, I'd have been delighted if my cousin had mixed it up and stuck me in with a few of her friends. The best weddings I've been at, I've been at a table with a group of people I've met a few times, gotten on well with but never gotten to know properly.

The only time I want to be seated with a group of people I know really well and nobody else is if it's a group of people I don't see from one end of the year to the next. The trick is to know which guests are of my opinion and which guests are of yours and seat them accordingly. Christ I'm dreading the seating plan stage.

You'll be grand the seating plan can be difficult but a bit of time and consideration goes a long way. You can't keep everyone happy and at the end of the day its your wedding but its nice to try and consider making some parts about the guest having fun too. I had traveled from Dubai for 2 days and only see these friends at weddings, so getting to know new people was not what I was hoping for/looking forward to. None of us complained we were happy to be there etc. I was the first of my cousins to get married so we aren't at the stage of want to break it up a bit yet. They were all loving having a day out together that wasn't a sad occasion.

BnB

IMO - Food - Drink - Dresses - Cars - etc, as long as they are not terrible, make very little difference.

The making of a wedding are the people you have at it.

The wedding that sticks out in my mind most was one that we went to down in Cork about 10 years ago. Firstly, we didn't know a single person at the wedding except the bride and groom. Secondly, we had another wedding the following day back in Limerick, so we weren't going to stay over. So we had said before-hand, we'd stay for the meal, speeches, first dance etc and maybe head off around 10:30 or 11.

Meal and all that was usual wedding stuff. Met nice people at the table and all very relaxed. The couple were quite young (mid 20's) and so the crowd were all quite young as well. Anyway, the groom was big into football and was playing with his local club (Macroom as far as I remember) and at around 9 or 10 the whole town of Macroom seemed to arrive in for the afters. And they came to enjoy themselves - The dance floor was wedged for hours - Bride and Groom bring thrown around the place - The place was absolutely rocking. Even though we had over 2 hours to drive, I was on the dry and we had a wedding the following day - It was still nearly 2am when we left.

BnB

candytog wrote: »

....;Don't separate yourself from your guests, include them as much as possible.

Don't spend hours of your wedding at some location getting photographs, you don't need a good location, just a creative photographer.....

Couldn't agree with that more with that.

If I was to do my own wedding over again, that is the one thing I would change. We were quite young getting married and allowed the photographer to bully us into his way. We will never in our lives have such a collection of family and good friends together in the one place. And yet we spent about 2 hours of the day with this gombeen.

It was only when he sodded off at the meal time that my poor wife was able to finally relax and start to enjoy the day. If we had been a bit older and a bit more experienced (i.e. having been to a few more weddings before our own) I would have told him to jump in the lake the week before the wedding with the pressure he was putting on us.

Sunny Dayz

BnB wrote: »

We will never in our lives have such a collection of family and good friends together in the one place. And yet we spent about 2 hours of the day with this gombeen.

That's what we were focussed on. It was rare that we would have all our families together. We didn't want to spend ages away from everyone. We also wanted a lot of family and group photos. We got our photos taken outside the church and in the garden at the hotel. So people could stand around, chat, step in for a photo, go back to chat and mingle. We nipped down the road from the hotel to the river's edge with the immediate wedding party for a few snaps while people were getting themselves sorted arriving at the hotel.

etymon

rainbow kirby wrote: »

A good friend of mine got married at Dublin Zoo and had the reception in a craft beer pub that did really good food too. That was fantastic

Can you PM me pub name? Thanks!