Manolo for the Brides

In some traditions, a bride wears several outfits over the course of the wedding. In India the bride is expected to wear a different outfit for each of several different parties over the course of multiple days. In China, during the wedding day a bride may change her clothes as many as eight times.

In the west, though, if the bride changed clothes it was usually for the now rarely seen going away outfit, which she would wear to travel on the first leg of her honeymoon.

Over the last few years, though, a new trend has emerged: the reception gown.

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I wanted to play music I liked at my wedding, which meant no Electric Slide, no YMCA, and no call and response numbers. Consequently, The Beard and I opted to laptop DJ our own wedding. We had the equipment we needed, and we had somewhere to plug the whole setup in. After setting up a playlist, all that was left to do was listen to every single song to make sure every single one was family friendly.

You would not believe how many were crossed off the list because of cussin’ or unabashed adult themes. Songs I thought were squeaky clean turned out to be surprisingly raunchy when I listened to them with a critical ear! In the end, I think that ‘pee’ (in Spider Robinson’s Belaboring the Obvious) was the naughtiest word sung over our sound system.

Photo via The Consumerist

But one person’s inappropriate is another person’s A-OK. I was born into a very churchy, upstanding, “say-gosh-not-God” kind of family, meaning that even songs containing certain widely accepted euphemisms for sex or drugs were right off the table. On the other hand, Conor Friedersdorf of Culture11 recently examined how gangsta rap is making musical inroads at wedding receptions.

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Over the last few months, I’ve seen a lot of people here, on other blogs, privately discussing their own weddings in public at a volume where I couldn’t help but hear, insist they aren’t having/didn’t have a reception. They had/will have a party.

That’s when I realize that people don’t completely understand what a reception is, or how it does and doesn’t differ from any other party.

So what makes it a reception?

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Picture from British Cosmo Bride/Photo by Nick Scott

Unless you’re going to city hall to tie the knot, your wedding will probably be anything but simple. Hosting a party for 50 or 100 or 500 people is always going to be somewhat complicated. Your favorite venue may not be available exactly when you want it. The caterer you adore may not normally offer the vegan options that will placate your mother’s side of the family. And it can sometimes feel like everyone from your bridesmaids to your FFIL can’t make a single decision without consulting you!

AAAARGH!

The good news is that while weddings are almost always chaotic, you can take steps to make yours a little less so. Here are a few tips that may help you stay sane as you walk boldly toward wifehood (or husbandhood, for that matter).

Pay your own way
Taking gifts of matrimonial money from loved ones often means taking their input under consideration as well. Just like too many cooks ruin the soup, too many meddling relatives can ruin a wedding. Footing the bill yourself means that you can do your own thing without feeling an ounce of guilt. Of course, you should say no nicely, but by all means feel free to say no!

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As far as I’m concerned, Memorytube is a neat idea with a pisspoor name. I know tubes are in…we have YouTube and snarky references to the “Intertubes” (Thanks Senator Stevens!) and the extremely NSFW RedTube…but Memorytube?

The people behind the company want brides and grooms to ditch the guestbooks, photobooths, and videographers in favor of five foot tall kiosks that empower attendees to make multimedia memories that will later be stamped in a DVD for the newlywed couple. So what does it actually do?

• A built-in cam takes guests’ pictures or films their well-wishes
• Camera-shy guests can type their salutations in an electronic guestbook
• Card readers of all sizes and Bluetooth tech allow guests to upload their snapshots and videos before going home

Hiring out a Memorytube kiosk costs about £299 — oh, right, it’s currently only available to our friends in the UK.

Now I could see this being a big hit at a reception populated by tech-savvy guests, though if yours is a big wedding you may have to cope with watching your guests queuing up to see what all the fuss is about. I can’t say that I particularly love or hate the idea.

On one hand, it’s neat…sort of the upscale version of the brides and grooms who set up a laptop at the reception so guests can upload their photos before the last dance. On the other hand, people tend to be a touch more thoughtful when they’re leaving their mark in a proper book. I can just imagine the sorts of things all the kids at my wedding would have been saying into the poor kiosk’s cam!

What do you think? Is it a fantastic idea…or a gimmicky one?

I like creative place cards because the plain foldover variety tends to be so dull, which means anything flashier adds an unexpected bit of zing to the reception tablescapes.

Take, for example, these “Parisian Chic” tags from Fabulous Finds Boutique. I will admit that I’ve kept place cards from weddings of people I truly care about because I’m a sucker for any and all mementos. However, all of them ended up in the recycling bin sooner or later because there’s a limit to how long I’ll keep a simple piece of cardstock with my name printed on it.

Yes, the tags pictured above are also cardstock, gussied up with a grommet and a bit of ribbon, but how lovely would one look stuck to a tackboard or propped up on one’s desk at work? If nothing else, I’d wager than guests will hold onto these far longer than they’ll deign to keep the ceramic baskets of Jelly Belly beans you’re giving out at the reception.

As a guest, I tend to tune out wedding speeches unless I’m familiar with both the object of the speech (i.e., the bride or groom) and the speech giver. Listening to 45 minutes of daddy waxing on misty-eyed about his little girl’s swimming trophies for 45 minutes a la Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason tends to put me into a fugue state wherein I eat far too much cake and the champagne in my glass keeps disappearing mysteriously.

The bride and groom, however, are typically quite interested in what everyone has to say because they are the ones being talked about! I know that I was particularly looking forward to the best man’s speech at my own wedding because he’s such a tremendously sweet fellow and I was hoping he’d say something nice about me or us. Let it be known that he did not disappoint, and the air was full of Awwws and little sniffs the whole time he had the mic.

Of course, he wasn’t the only one to take a stab at wowing the crowd, but he was indeed a tough act to follow. The Beard’s mother told a story about car thievery, and an uncle of mine saw fit to remind everyone that he’d changed my diapers when I was but a wee lass. I even vaguely remember one of my brothers getting on the mic to tell assembled loved ones that he’d met The Beard in Nam and that we’re both “slick ballers.”

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When our own delightful and wise NtB posted on the question of children at weddings the other day, it got a lot of response. Some people were pro-kids-at-weddings-no-matter-what. Some came across as definitely not caring for kiddies at the shindig. Most seemed firmly agreed (as are NtB and I) that it’s entirely up to the happy couple to make that decision based on their preferences and circumstances.

But as NtB pointed out in her article, part of the decision should be based on how kid-friendly a wedding you plan on having. There may, indeed, be those paragons of childish virtue who can sit still through a twelve-course formal dinner happily chowing down on fois gras and fanciful eggplant dishes while wearing perfectly unwrinkled tafetta gowns directly after a full nuptual mass and three hours of formal photographs…but let’s not kid ourselves that this is standard. I was a remarkably patient little one with an adventurous palate and a real fascination with weddings blessed with parents who would punish the hell out of me without hesitation if I misbehaved badly in public, and I couldn’t have done anything like that. Heck, it would still take some serious mental preparation for that and I haven’t been a child in a painfully long time.

If you do plan on inviting the little ones, you need to keep their needs in mind. Here are a couple thoughts on how to do that:

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I’m sorry to say that even though both The Beard and I would have liked to have had a bounce house at our wedding, we did not include it in our budget. Even after my mom told us that we should get one — there would, after all, be kids at the wedding — we still didn’t seriously entertain the idea. It just seemed so…silly.

Looking back a year later, I rather regret our decision. Look at how much fun the bride and groom in the snapshot above are having…and if that’s not a genuinely superb photo op then I don’t know what is. Plus, how many opportunities will I have in the future to rent my very own bounce house? Perhaps none!

The point is, if you’re contemplating doing something goofy at your wedding but you’re afraid of what people will think, forget about popular opinion and throw caution to the wind. As a friend of mine once said, no one ever tells the bride that the wedding sucked. There will always be people who will look askance at your choices — the gluten-free cake, the electric purple wedding gown, the dunk tank, etc. — but it’s not their wedding, and if they have the gall to share their negative opinions, they’ve just shown you what sort of human beings they really are.

While circumstances may force you to make certain concessions, you shouldn’t ever have to subdue your personality!