So I’ve been married for about a year now, and it’s been great. But since we had such a small, private ceremony, we decided to have a separate reception so that our family members and friends could celebrate our marriage with us. We never realized how much of a hassle and pain in the butt it would be just to plan a reception! I don’t want to even imagine what planning an entire wedding would be like.
QUICK DISCLAIMER! – This is not meant to offend anyone who attended the wedding. We appreciate everyone who attended and helped out, and we were SO happy with the way the reception went. This is meant to be taken lightly, especially since the reception was so awesome! J
First off, NO ONE (old, young, family, friends, etc.) RSVP’s anymore. We purposely set up a web site thinking that most people prefer the internet over snail mail. Unfortunately, I never expected so many people to not even respond to a website. The week of the reception was spent hunting down people and figuring out how we’re going to meet our food and beverage minimum cost if all these people don’t make it. In that same note, many people will not even look at your website. My husband spent a lot of time and effort making our website look great and be easily skimmed through for any and all information they would need, but we still ended up getting messages with questions about the event.
Weddings are way more expensive than they should be. It didn’t take long for us to exceed our budget, and that was even with cutting out a lot of the stuff we wanted (I never imagined I would be doing my own hair or that we wouldn’t actually have a DJ at the reception). Thankfully everything went well, but it was still hectic getting all our DIY stuff in order beforehand.
People are not going to be as helpful as they promised they would be. When you start planning things, people will offer any help and offer to be there for you when you need them. People will say that they will do certain favors for you, and then go back on it when it is too late to be fixed. This will not always be true, but people will magically disappear when you need them most, and it will be annoying. This can (and did) include our wedding planner/venue liaison saying she would be available to us all day and night, and then us not being able to find her when we needed her.
People will also try and “help” too much. When people actually manage to try and help, they may try and stick their noses where they don’t belong or offer unsolicited advice. This happens with both friends and family, and can be difficult to tell them that they are crossing boundaries. You don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but you also want things to go the way you planned them.
Overall, family is great, but when it comes to special events, EVERYTHING gets very complicated very quickly. Situations that you never even imagined would be a big deal can become problematic. Thankfully, my husband was proactive and handled many problems before they even were noticed, but there were still a lot of bumps in the road. I’m so so happy that the wedding reception was such a success, but I am also happy to have the stress of the event over with. I truly am so thankful to everyone that traveled to our reception, and it was the most fun I’ve had in a very long time. I appreciate everyone who attempted to show up, and even those that weren’t able to make it but still sent their best wishes. I’ll be sending out Thank You cards eventually!
