Even if you’ve planned everything perfectly down to the tiniest detail, your wedding day isn’t going to go smoothly if you can’t actually get to the ceremony or the reception. Some locales have more complicated layouts than others, construction and road closures can screw up the best laid plans, and some addresses are just plain difficult to find. You may be surprised at how difficult your venues are to find for your wedding guests – or even your limo driver! Knowing where you’re going and what’s local can make your wedding day that much less stressful for you and your guests.

How can they have closed every road leading to the chapel?!

Wedding Directions Aren’t Just for Guests
Maybe you’re getting married in your hometown, but lots of couples don’t. And to those brides and grooms I say do a few test runs so you know the lay of the land. Do you know how to get to your ceremony venue? Can you navigate from the ceremony space to the reception venue? Even in the event of a road closure? If you needed to send out your MOH for emergency, last minute supplies, could you tell her how to get to an ATM, a drug store, or a florist’s shop? Unless you just can’t get there prior to the big day – because you’re having a destination wedding, etc. – drive around the locale you’re getting married in until you no longer need a map.

Will Your Wedding Maps Be Accurate?
Speaking of maps, have you actually driven the routes you’re suggesting your wedding guests take from the ceremony to the reception? As mentioned above, if you can, get in the car and check the accuracy of your directions before printing them up and putting them in your wedding invitations. When that isn’t possible, is there someone local who can do it for you? Couples having destination weddings may be able to call their venues to confirm the accuracy of directions. Don’t assume that your limo driver will be 100% sure where your wedding venue is – your knowing how to get there may make all the difference!

Your Wedding Maps Are Here – Double Check Them
You’ve driven around the city or town where your wedding will be held. You’ve driven the routes that make up your wedding directions. And now your wedding maps have finally arrived! Time to assemble your wedding invitations? Not quite. First, you need to proof your wedding map one last time. Mistakes happen! For example, my wedding invitation proof were error-free, but my wedding invitations arrived in the mail with a really lame typo. Your wedding maps may contain some slight oops, and reputable companies will replace them for free as long as you catch the error.

What steps are you taking (or did you take) to ensure your wedding guests can find your ceremony and reception?

It’s been a while since we’ve talked about that white elephant in the room, wedding gifts.

I know the thought causes an amazing range of emotions from absolute joy to abject terror to… well… whatever it happens to stir up in you. Some people think gifts are the best part of getting married, while others would rather discuss having public rectal surgery than consider the possibility of more stuff in their lives.

Honestly, I don’t care which camp you’re in or whether you’re somewhere in between. This is not my concern. After all, I did my thing. It’s done. This isn’t about how you should feel about wedding gifts or whether it’s okay to want or not want them. This is about the practical aspects of handling this particular part of getting married. If you want pressies, that’s great. If you don’t want them, that’s great, too. But the fact is you will have to deal with the question, and with people who make choices that don’t necessarily match your wishes.

Here’s the deal.
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I did promise a while back that I’d have a look at the royal wedding hats before too long. Mostly because I myself love a good hat… and a bad hat, if it’s fancy and flashy enough! The royal wedding hats that played a starring role on the heads of Kate and William’s wedding guests definitely fall into both camps, from Princess Beatrice’s wild Cthulhu number to the Queen’s cheery yellow cake-like hat. If nothing else, some of the more spectacular royal wedding hats were gorgeously over the top and definitely eye-catching!

Would I wear them all? No. Do I love them all? Yes.

And had my own invitation to the royal wedding not gotten lost in the mail – damn the USPS! – I do believe I would have opted for something a bit more conservative than the head wear above. Perhaps something like this:

I'd be the bee of the ball!

Or this:

Maybe the bow of the ball?

Is everyone in this photo on the guest list?

So, unexpected wedding guests. Word on the street is that there are more of them than people thing. And I’m not talking about professional wedding crashers who are just looking for a good time. I mean friends and relatives who RSVP’ed no but decided to come anyway, invitees who never bothered to send back the stamped reply postcard, and wedding guests who arrived at the reception with one, two, or more people in tow. As far as I know, there was no one at our wedding who wasn’t supposed to be there, but since ours was a backyard family affair, I didn’t pay all that much attention once the day got rolling.

If unexpected wedding guests are more common than I assumed, are people taking them into consideration when giving wedding vendors those precious final headcounts? Is it better to pay for a few more chairs, entrees, and slices of wedding cake than to have one to few of any of these things? It’s a question I have trouble wrapping my brain around because I’d never in a million years attend a wedding to which I had not RSVPed or switch my entree choice at the last moment or *gasp* bring a few cronies with me to the reception so everyone could get boozed up on the cheap. But I know not everyone is as polite as I am, hence the poll. I want to know how you’re handling the possibility of unexpected wedding guests and, I suppose, whether you’re anticipating any!

Image: djprybyl

My mom’s wife has this gorgeous old typewriter and I tried to convince them to have a typewriter guestbook at their wedding. It would have been perfect, I think. It was such a small wedding, so everyone could have added their warm wishes on one sheet of paper that could have been tucked into some book somewhere to be found later and read with lots of love and fond memories. But there was some issue with finding a ribbon or some other thing, so it didn’t happen. Booo.

click click click click shrrrrk!

Maybe I can convince you to have a typewriter guestbook at your wedding receptions? The typewriter owners among you, anyway. Or the brides-to-be who’ve been looking for some excuse to buy a vintage typewriter. A wedding! What better excuse? You could even have a typewriter themed wedding! And then later on you can display it in your living room with a nice white sheet of paper and pop over to it whenever inspiration strikes to jot down a few lines. Doesn’t that sound lovely?

For the bride who sews, here are two reception table DIYs that use cute vintage thread spools to give table numbers and place cards a little more ooph. The first comes from Lauren of Lauren Elise Crafted, who loves all things handmade and vintage.

Putting together a thread spool table number like this one involve a wee bit of hand embroidery, a little sewing, and cutting some cork, but that’s about as difficult as it gets.

The second DIY reception project comes from Tracey of French Larkspur and can be found here. The hardest part of creating thread spool place cards is stamping all those letters of all those names, one by one by one. So not really difficult, but a bit tedious.

The results are quite pretty in both cases, and perfect for a garden wedding or a sewing and crafting themed wedding.

I read somewhere recently that one of the next big things at weddings will be the self-serve cocktail bar. Fair enough. But just because something is big doesn’t mean it will be popular with guests (as we learned just yesterday). Personally, I have been to at least two weddings with self-serve cocktail bars, and wasn’t bothered at all. And not just because I had The Beard to fix up my cocktails for me. Both couples had plenty of alcoholic stuff, from beer to wine to liquor, along with mixers and non-boozahol for those abstaining.

Having a self-serve cocktail bar at your wedding reception doesn’t have to mean setting up a bunch of bottles of liquor, an ice bucket, mixers and glasses willy-nilly on a table somewhere near the buffet, though it obviously can. And that is how it was done at one of the aforementioned weddings, though don’t take that as an endorsement since the domestic wine came gurgling out of a box. A DIY cocktails table might have a small selection of pre-mixed custom cocktails in beautiful spouted pitchers. Or you can have a smaller selection of ‘ingredients,’ along with menus telling guests what they can make.

Keep in mind, that having a self-serve cocktail bar at your reception has its pros and cons. On the pro side, you don’t have to spring for a bartender, and you only have to pay for the basics (look into bulk order deals when you talk to liquor store owners) if you keep it simple. And you can take it all back to your hotel if you’re planning a late-night afterparty. On the con side, it’s now up to you to figure out how much of everything to buy, you may have to set it up, and if you’re not having that afterparty, it’s up to you to figure out what to do with all the leftovers. And you won’t necessarily save money on the cocktail supplies themselves, since your caterer may have inroads with discount suppliers.

All in all, the self-serve cocktail bar seems like a simple way to save a little money when it comes to your reception, provided you keep things simple and make it easy for your guests. I like the pre-made mixed drinks idea more than the put everything out and let guests go nuts idea, especially since it seems like there’s a lot more potential for style and individuality on the one hand and a lot more potential for spilled scotch on the other.

Photo by Frank Ross Photographic