Wedding events

[Laurenj915]

How many days or how many wedding related events are you having over the week or weekend of your wedding?

I am starting to feel horrible about how our wedding weekend is working out for everyone else. Doesn''t matter for me, my week is going to be all about the wedding regardless.

First, we booked and summer evening reception and then later found out we had to get married at the church at 1 pm. So that is more like two events people have to attend. Then right after that I found out that the church has booked a wedding Friday so we have to do the rehersal Thursday. Annoying to me but doable. Today I found out that my future mother in law booked the rehersal dinner for Friday not Thursday when I assumed she would do it. She wants her out of town family to be able to attend. I understand but each of the girls in my bridal party have babies at home and its starting to feel like alot to ask of them.

Events
Thursday -rehersal
Friday -dinner
Saturday -wedding 1pm reception 7pm
Sunday -post wedding brunch

I am thinking about just letting my bridesmaids know that they should not feel any obligation to attend the rehersal dinner and the day after brunch which was never important to me other than as a thank you for coming to out of town friends and family.

Is there any reason that I NEED my bridesmaids at my rehersal dinner? I guess there might be some sort of toast that they make (is there?) but other than I can''t think of anything.

I''m sure some of you have been annoyed or overwhealmed with the amount of stuff that was asked of you as a bridesmaid. What would have helped? I want my friends to enjoy being part of my wedding.

 

[Sabine]

I don''t think the bridesmaids NEED to be at the rehersal dinner. I think the purpose of the dinner is to say thank you to all the people involved in the wedding. I''ve never really seen the wedding party people make speeches, but I think the bride/groom usually give the gifts to teh wedding party and parents to say thank you during the dinner, but I don''t see why you couldn''t do this privately or during the actual rehersal if yours can''t attend.

I don''t think you''re being TOO demanding with your events because they are all sort of out of your control, but I think letting your bridal party know that while they are more than welcome, if they are feeling burdened by wedding events they can skip the dinner and brunch is a nice way to let them know that they can bow out if they need to.

 

[cara]

This is too much!!! You will be exhausted with it all as well. I know you think you woln''t but it is a lot. Start making some compromises. Can you do the rehearsal before the wedding on Friday? Or after, depending on the time of the wedding? Do you need a brunch? Is the brunch small?

The rehearsal dinner is a great time for the main players to meet each other and chat. No, the bridesmaids don''t need to be there but it would certainly be nice.

Its already a lot to have the wedding ceremony at 1 and the dinner at 7. Common, and often unavoidable, but still inconvenient for everyone. Can you move the dinner up at all? Even to 5:30 or 6 would help.

 

[Laurenj915]

Thanks Sabine. I didn''t know that was when I gave the bridal party gifts so I will do that at the rehersal.

Cara, I realize it is alot and I will be exausted but it''s too late to change caters, photographer, printed invites, dj, booked venue, church musicians, people who booked plane tickets for Thursday because of the rehersal, booked rehersal dinner country club. Actually I could still cancel or change the brunch. Maybe I will do that.

 

[cara]

If you can't change anything, why post? I don't know why moving the rehearsal itself would involve the caterer or invites, but you are right that it might somewhat frustrate people that booked tickets to arrive Thursday and find themselves unneeded until Friday. Or they might be happy to recover from their travel.

Oh, well. Best of luck, I'm sure everyone will rally and it will all be over too fast anyway

 

[Laurenj915]

Date: 3/8/2008 7:49:33 PM
Author: cara
If you can't change anything, why post?

I don't know. Maybe I just needed to vent or some support. Or hear that other people had faced the same types of issues and difficulties when planning their wedding. It seems like alot of people do that at this board.

Thanks so much

 

[monarch64]

Three days...Friday: guests begin to arrive and we rehearse; MIL/FIL host rehearsal dinner.
Saturday: bridal shower hosted by my best friend and auntie, M''s socializing (in an unorganized fashion) with OOT friends.
Sunday: noon wedding, which actually ended up beginning at 12:30 instead.

I never realized three days was too much to ask people to set aside for a wedding, I guess. We never heard any complaints and had informed people well in advance (6 months ahead of time) of our tentative itinerary. We had only 100 guests, 5 attendants on either side, and really no one had to do much the actual weekend of the wedding besides show up and hang out.

I''ve been to about 20 weddings since that were OOT for us, plane tickets, attire, gifts, attendance, we have never blinked an eye. DH was actually in a few of these weddings and still none of them were a problem for us in that they took up the whole entire weekend. Then again we both had pretty flexible schedules, so maybe that has something to do with our lacadaisacal attitude.

Good luck!

 

[bee*]

I don't see any need that bridesmaids have to be at the rehearsal dinner. We're having kind of a three day event for ours. We don't do a rehearsal dinner over in Ireland but there is about 80 people staying at the castle the night before our wedding and we're all going out for dinner together and then the girls and boys are splitting up and heading to a couple of pubs before calling it a night.
The wedding the next day starts with the ceremony at 1pm and it will go on till about 4 or 5 am in the residents bar the next morning and the day afterwards we're having a big bbq for everyone and we'll head off on our honeymoon that night. It seems like a lot but a lot of Irish weddings kind of sprawl out for a while.

 

[Laurenj915]

20 OOT weddings!

Bee I didn''t know Irish weddings were long sprawling events. I had always envision the wedding, reception immediately following the ceremony, and the rehersal dinner the day before. That''s it.

His family planned the rehersal dinner for a different night then the actual rehersal and the brunch the next day. They are all first and second generation Americans from Ireland. I have been warned that I should expect be to involved in some sort of pub crawl late night after the reception with friends and family. Sounds good to me since I want to wear that dress as long as I possibly can.

 

[zoebartlett]

Hi Lauren,

While three days does seem like a lot, I can understand why it''s that way. I''d recommend just giving your bridesmaids a rundown of what''s planned for your wedding weekend and then tell them that they''re not obligated to attend all of the events. You could also explain why things were booked the way they were, just as you told us. I''m sure everyone would understand. If I were a bridesmaid and the events were taking place over a three day span, I''d probably do my best to attend as much as I could (if not everything).

As for your question about what others are doing, we''re having our rehearsal dinner at 7:30 the night before our wedding. The ceremony is on a Saturday, late morning, and it will go until 4:30. After that, maybe around 6:00 or so (maybe later, we haven''t planned that far ahead), we may have guests staying at the hotel meet us in the hotel''s pub for drinks and pub food if they''d like. We were going to plan something more elaborate but it was looking like a second reception and we didn''t want that. This will be much more low key. We''re not doing a brunch the following day, however, my dad mentioned that he might want to take his two brothers out for breakfast. He doesn''t get to see them too often, and this will most likely be the last family wedding they''ll all attend.

 

[Selkie]

One thing you could think about is whether you really need to have the rehearsal itself in the church? If you could find some way to hold it elsewhere (like your home or your parent''s house) on Friday, then you could rid of the Thursday event and everyone would just stick around after for the dinner.

 

[bee*]

Date: 3/9/2008 8:14:47 AM
Author: Lauren1116
20 OOT weddings!

Bee I didn''t know Irish weddings were long sprawling events. I had always envision the wedding, reception immediately following the ceremony, and the rehersal dinner the day before. That''s it.


His family planned the rehersal dinner for a different night then the actual rehersal and the brunch the next day. They are all first and second generation Americans from Ireland. I have been warned that I should expect be to involved in some sort of pub crawl late night after the reception with friends and family. Sounds good to me since I want to wear that dress as long as I possibly can.

They used to be just the day of the wedding but in the past kind of decade, any weddings that I''ve been to have had a meet up the day afterwards as well, usually in the evening so that people can get some sleep as the wedding night ends early in the morning. There is not always something the day before and if there is, it''s usually just a night in the pub. The only reason that we''re doing a dinner is that our castle is nearly two hours away from where we live and there are so many people who want to come down the night before so we''re all just meeting up for dinner before the few drinks. It will probably not be a fancy-just a bit of pubgrub. But the wedding night itself kind of goes on till last man standing

 

[SarahLovesJS]

Date: 3/8/2008 8:04:03 PM
Author: Lauren1116

Date: 3/8/2008 7:49:33 PM

Author: cara

If you can''t change anything, why post?

I don''t know. Maybe I just needed to vent or some support. Or hear that other people had faced the same types of issues and difficulties when planning their wedding. It seems like alot of people do that at this board.


Thanks so much

I understand what you are saying. It''s nice to be able to vent. I do that in at least 50% of my posts.

 

[Pandora II]

Officially our events are:

Friday - FI & I have meeting with Officiant to finalise ceremony. In the evening, FI and all our friends who are coming down early will go out for the evening in the seaside town they are staying in. My parents will do a dinner at home for me, immediate family and some of my overseas friends.

Saturday - Ceremony & Reception: 3.30pm till midnight; we then have an all-night after-party in the beach hotel.

Sunday - FI and I and everyone staying at our hotel will all go for Fish & Chips on the beach. My parents are hosting a brunch for FI''s parents and OOT guests at their house.

We don''t have rehearsal dinners in the UK, so we''re doing gifts for the wedding-party during FI''s speech at the reception.

I don''t actually get a rehearsal at all, which might be interesting - I''m just sending everyone a running order and hope they understand how it works!

 

[EricaR]

We are having a destination wedding, so things are a bit different in my case. Our schedule is:

Thursday: people arrive
Friday: Group Outing to Chichen Itza
Saturday: Afternoon wedding, out to dinner as the "reception"
Sunday: Group Breakfast/Brunch, everyone else leaves and we go off to our honeymoon

We aren''t doing a true rehersal dinner, but thought it would be fun to have a group outing with everyone who comes.

 

[Laurenj915]

Thanks everyone!

All this wedding stuff is really overwhealming somedays. I'm ready for it to be here already. I want my normal life back.