Alright friends. Now that my wedding is over I've been reflecting a lot on some of the general rule-of-thumb etiquette rules, or guidelines of what you should or shouldn't do, and how of course nothing is a one size fits all! What are some "rules" that you've broken, or just generally unconventional things that you've done, that worked out well based on your situations? Here are some of mine...
-I DJ'd my own wedding, along with our Best Man, and we had the BEST time. Yep, you read that right! We made a Spotify playlist, but were having so much trouble getting people to dance. I understand why people have DJs now rather than just putting on a playlist... you have to read the room, learn what types of music your guests are responding to, etc. Do I regret not hiring a DJ though? Nope. Best Man and I went rogue from the playlist about 10 mins into the reception. We kept running over to the iPod and queuing more songs. It was honestly a BLAST, and did not feel like an obligation or detract from my enjoyment of the reception at all! I was very glad I had the playlist to fall back on (so if the queued songs ran out, the playlist would just continue) and that Best Man was "in charge" of the iPod when I got distracted, but it was honestly really fun choosing the songs myself as the reception went on!
-We served wine only, and the bar turned into a cash bar once we hit our cap. Our venue charged $10 plus tax plus a 21% service fee for every drink, which was absurd. We put in enough money to pay for 2 drinks per person, but some people don't drink at all. We asked our friends, and they said the bar was open for the majority of the reception. I think the last hour it ended up being a cash bar, but by then everyone had already had at least a drink or two on us, and didn't mind paying for their own. Husband and I are fresh out of college and don't have much money... we really wanted to treat our guests and not just have a total cash bar, so paying for about 2 drinks per person was a great compromise based on our situation. Of course you really should treat your guests and not have them pay for anything themselves....... but it's not worth going into debt over. They wouldn't want that for you either!
-I didn't bustle my dress. I just used a wrist strap! I am not a fan of how bustles look and really didn't feel like spending the money on it. And I got tons of compliments on how my dress looked with the train being held up by my wrist!
-We had a honeymoon registry. But it wasn't just a generic "donate money to our honeymoon." We used Traveler's Joy, and registered for specific activities that we wanted to do on our honeymoon. It was a HIT. We ended up with about $1300 worth of contributions to these activities. When we got back from the honeymoon, we sent photos and an additional thank you message to the people who had paid for those activities... they all LOVED it. Some people would actually prefer to buy you a day of swimming with dolphins rather than to buy your blender! I wouldn't recommend having a honeymoon registry ONLY, because some people want to buy you a tangible gift. But if you have it in addition to a regular gift registry, if you register for specific activities and actually do those activities and send photos to the people who bought them for you, I think that's a "broken rule" that many of our guests seemed to love.
-I only spent 2 hours getting ready. People thought I was crazy, but I am just so not the type of person to want to spend the entire wedding day getting ready for the wedding. I did my own makeup in 30 minutes, and my hair stylist did my hair in a little over an hour. Plenty of time, and I got to sleep until 9:15!
-We didn't do a first look. Not sure if this is "unconventional" because a first look isn't exactly traditional to begin with lol, but it seems like at this point it's more typical for people to do them than not. I am so glad that we didn't see or talk to each other before the moment I walked down the aisle. Husband was full on sobbing when he saw me down the aisle. I wouldn't have wanted to do anything to jeopardize that amazingly emotional moment.
-I carried my phone around for a lot of the reception, and made sure to get my own photos. I knew that waiting for the professional photos to come back was going to make me antsy and impatient. I made sure to take photos of my own, to pass my phone to my mom and my father in law to make sure they got pictures of myself and husband, and I am so glad I did! The instant gratification of having photos on my phone right after the wedding, was wonderful.
-We invited a few people late. I don't mean like, day-of or anything lol, I just mean like 5 weeks to a month before the wedding, after our first round of invitations had gone out. Mostly people who we haven't been close to for a long time, who didn't expect to be invited anyway. We ended up getting many more declines than we had expected, so we had room to add some more people. This is a touchy subject because there are plenty of people who WOULD be offended by a last-minute invite... but we made sure the people we asked were people who would not be offended by this, and they were really honored to be invited and happy to come! Doing this resulted in my husband reconnecting with an old friend who he hadn't thought to invite to begin with.
-We didn't have centerpieces. This is such a silly one hahaha. But our venue put table numbers and a few candles in the center of the tables, and seriously the big fancy centerpieces were not missed at all. Of course it's a nice touch if you want, but seriously your guests do not care about your centerpieces... if you're trying to budget, that's a great place to cut that will not affect your guest experience AT ALL.
So, let's talk broken "rules" and unconventional ways of doing things, and how they worked out for you!
DISCLAIMER: I'm not encouraging people to do everything that I did, and I am definitely not saying that all these things are right for everyone. I'm just saying that it's important to remember that general rules of thumb don't apply to everyone, and to not be afraid to think outside the box to find what will work best for your wedding... you, your FS, and your guests, even if it's not what seems to be normal for other weddings!
