The past two decades have been an incredible time for members of the LGBTIQ+ community in lots of countries as they, their friends, families and supporters have embraced marriage equality. The long struggle for the right to marry the person we love has led to a change in legislation in approximately 30 countries, since 2001, when the Netherlands became the first country in the world to make gender identity and sexuality irrelevant in marriage law.
Many of us have been allies and supporters of the LGBTIQ+ community. We shared the pain of members of that community being prevented, legally, from marrying the person they loved. And, rightly, we shared the joy and euphoria that swept over them and us when we learned that, finally, they could.
There’s always a new trend around the corner that could make your wedding reception become a memorable affair. Frequently, you don’t have to go big, make it extravagant, or even spend a mint. There are tons of fun and new wedding reception ideas and trends could be right up your alley. Read on for our take on some themes, trends, and Knick Knacks that are sure to enhance your special day and your guests experience.
Add Some Flair to Your Programs
Wedding days tend to provide guests with considerable amounts of free time. Whether it is the anticipation of the ceremony or the sometimes awkward timing before the reception, your guests are likely to have some “free” time throughout the day. Providing programs with some added flair is an excellent way to make those periods of time more exciting and enjoyable.
Blank notebook and wild flowers on blue wooden background. Concept flowers of spring,
Adding fun facts about the couple or ceremony location, introducing the wedding party, outlining the event schedule, and adding any fun tidbits, are creative ways to make the experience feel more personalized. It’s also a great conversation starter for family and guests that want to get to know one another. You’re also more likely to have guests taking pictures of your program and sharing fun with non-attendees.
Create Small Knick Knacks For Your Guests to Use or Keep
It goes without saying that the Bride is always the most important attendee at any given wedding. That being said, there are plenty or small ways to make your guests feel truly appreciated and more involved in the event.
Confetti in wedding thrown on the floor, celebrations and events
Providing to-boxes for leftovers or cake, personalized coasters to leave on drinks while dancing, or customized guest lists based seating arrangements to help people get to know each other, all make for great ways to make guests feel the love too. Going the extra mile to enhance your guests experience will make for an even more memorable reception. Make sure to add your wedding hashtag on these types of items so your guests can share their memories on social media!
Make Memories That Last a Lifetime
Hire a photographer that knows how to mix and mingle with the guests to take some candid shots. Nothing is staged here. These photos show the two sets of grandparents toasting each other. They show the bridesmaids and ring bearer flossing. Ask the pro to customize the borders of the pictures to spell out your wedding details.
The photos are printed out throughout the night and placed on a board. Guests can walk right up and take the images that they want. If there’s a shot you want but someone else snapped up, don’t worry! These photos also go on a website for downloading and social media sharing. To make it even more fun, all guests can use a special app that allows all images taken to be easily shared on social media. Now your wedding hashtag can truly go viral!
Skip the Restaurant and Invite the Food Vendors
Artisans from the local bakery bring the bread. The lady with the delicious cheeses at the farmer’s market stand brings some of her wares. The mom and pop restaurant with the fiery spaghetti alla puttanesca provides an experience worthy of its Napoli origins. The ice cream vendor whom you always see when you walk the dog? Invite him, too! He’ll bring the dessert. Now, that’s a party!
Encourage Guests to Bring Their Best Friends
No, we’re not talking about the plus-one option on the RSVP card. This best friend is the canine companion they refer to as a fur baby. If you and your significant other met in a setting that involved dogs, this is an ideal way of honoring the memory and giving the nod to the canine that brought you together.
Go wild, and encourage guests to dress up their dogs. Keep it low-key and merely let friends and family members bring their best friends as they see fit. Just be sure to provide plenty of water bowls, treats, and a designated area for doggies to do their business.
Incorporate Your Hobbies into the Party
The standard reception includes a meal, some toasts, and dancing. What would happen if you made your favorite hobby the backdrop to the standard? Are you and your love members of a roller skating team? Have the event at the roller skating rink! Did you meet at an indoor trampoline park? They have party rooms!
Wedding guests are enjoying a dance while the father of the bride plays piano music.
Just Have Fun!
In short, make the party a fun event for participants of all ages. Just be sure to let folks know if they need to bring special footwear or should pack a change of clothes. After all, nobody wants to jump on a trampoline in a long evening dress.
With so many new wedding reception ideas and trends, there’s no reason to do the same old routine. Forget the chicken or steak dinner and let’s party like you mean it!
Women who’ve been married before you will tell you that wedding planning is a full-time job in itself. If you are a busy bride with enough on your plate already, you will have enough responsibilities to handle daily. So, it won’t be too easy to engage in wedding planning. Nonetheless, if the women before you have done it, so can you!
The idea is to have a systematic and organized approach to plan your wedding. Take a look at the tips we’ve compiled, and beat the stress. It will help you plan your wedding well despite your additional responsibilities.
Start in advance
Wedding planner Sharon Sacks on the Huffington Post, mentions how important it is to plan your wedding in advance, especially if you work full-time. It isn’t easy to balance work and a plan a wedding. Like she says, nobody should have to choose between a job and their wedding planning. The two can progress smoothly if you can work out a balanced plan.
The key to this is to start early. The more time you give yourself to handle different tasks, the more relaxed you will be. So, before you set the date of the wedding, make sure you have enough time left to plan it. Also, put aside few extra weeks to unwind or tackle any tasks that don’t go as per plan.
Be organized to the last detail
From the minute you start your wedding plans, use an organized approach for everything you do. Create an online journal and enter your wedding planning timeline into it. Find the essential wedding planning timeline with all the relevant tasks in this article. Find the best wedding planning software apps to help you with your wedding here. There are plenty of project management software out that are immensely helpful. Trello is one of them. Choose the right one for your needs and start using it right away. Make sure to use and update the information you collect or create on a regular basis. Edit out unnecessary items to keep it under control. Set aside time for this daily, so you are up-to-date with all that is relevant and aren’t overwhelmed with information overload.
Work with only professional wedding services
Weddings are huge events, and not the place to experiment with novices. One of the biggest advantages of choosing professional wedding services is the efficiency they bring to a job. Most professional wedding service experts have been in the industry for long. They have the expertise and resources to handle their tasks with minimum supervision.
With previous experience, they know how much time it takes to complete a job. Thus, they can set your expectations correctly. The risk of things going wrong are fewer. More importantly, you have a minimum guarantee. You could save money by choosing a new vendor or entrusting a task to friends or family. However, the likelihood of hassles along the way is higher.
Spend some time on reviews
Unless you have personally experienced the service a wedding vendor provides or have a referral from an acquaintance, you should spend time on finding honest reviews of the service. Most vendors advertise themselves as the best of the lot. Some of them may even have certifications and testimonials on their websites. However, don’t simply rely on this information to book their services.
Check and read reviews, ask the vendor to refer you to previous clients and objectively scrutinize the information available about them. The time you spend on this is worth the effort. It will make all the difference in averting stress at the last minute, when you should enjoy your special day.
Stop thinking about the wedding all-the-time
I know this is easier said than done! Nevertheless, the key to efficiently planning your wedding is not obsessing over it all the time. When you worry about your wedding all the time, it prevents you from concentrating on your other responsibilities. This will affect your overall efficiency and productivity. As a consequence, wedding planning will become stressful and no longer be fun.
Do not dedicate all your free and leisure time to wedding planning, as this will be overdoing it. Set aside a specific time during the day to fully engage in wedding planning. As you get closer to the wedding, you can spend more time on wedding plans. Do this in an organized manner and you can cover all plans within the available time frame. It is also a good idea to fix a regular time when you and your partner will discuss wedding-related stuff. When he knows in advance, he can focus on the tasks at hand during the appointed time.
Think seriously about hiring a wedding planner
If there is little time left, you may be better off hiring a wedding planner to ensure your wedding is a success. With a wedding planner at your service, you have a person who is entirely dedicated to your wedding. They will run around on your behalf and do the million little things that you may otherwise overlook. It will also alleviate your stress to a great extent, as you needn’t constantly worry about what you may have missed.
Wedding planners can conduct vendor interviews or may even have recommended vendors for different jobs. This will save you valuable time and effort. Being professionals in the field, they also have the ability of handling any last-minute issues that may crop up.
Plan everything in detail
Do every activity, from shopping for your wedding dress to visiting the venue or booking a florist should after due research. Dedicate the first few days to research all the available options. I suggest that you set up a binder to collect and compile all information. Alternately, have a folder on your desktop with separate folders for each factor. Collate information you obtain into different categories promptly, and it will help you avoid confusion in future.
This type of an organized arrangement will also prepare you well for the different tasks to handle. Also remember that breaking down each wedding planning task into smaller sub-tasks makes it more manageable and easier to execute.
Delegate responsibilities
Enlist the help of family, friends and anyone eager to help you out. If you have a full-time engagement, there are limitations to the amount of free time you have in a day. If you try to do everything about the wedding yourself, there is a greater chance of overlooking certain things. This can double the stress at a later stage.
It isn’t unusual for overwhelmed brides who do more than their fair share of work to miss work deadlines and receive poor quality work reviews as a result of all the wedding planning. Prevent such a situation by trusting part of your plans to efficient and trustworthy acquaintances. Delegate duties to your bridesmaids, your fiance and parents and watch things run smoothly.
Have reasonable deadlines
Every wedding planning task should have a deadline. Work with the timeline I suggested earlier to understand which tasks you should do earlier, and which of them can wait till later. Avoid waiting till the last minute to do anything. The earlier you finish your responsibilities, the sooner you can relax and enjoy the days leading up to the wedding.
When setting deadlines, don’t forget to incorporate some buffer time just in case things don’t progress as planned. Be flexible with plans. Don’t forget to shuffle and re-organize your plans and get things done early if there are gaps in schedule. Your to-do list should constantly be updated and edited to accommodate any changes. Only then will you have everything covered well in time for the wedding.
Know the rules
You have to plan your wedding even if you work full-time. So, although it is tempting to squeeze in some planning into your work day, exercise caution. In fact, this survey on the Forbes website suggests that almost 89% of women plan their weddings on company time. Nevertheless, remember that every company has their own rules about how you use the company resources like computers and the internet for personal needs. This includes wedding planning. There may also be websites that aren’t allowed on work computers.
Before you start dedicating your free time at work to planning your wedding, it may be a good idea to check out what your company policies are. Even if your supervisor doesn’t mind, make sure you don’t overdo your wedding planning during work hours. If your online activity is being closely monitored and watched, it is best if you exercise caution.
But make the most of free time at work
Although you shouldn’t ideally plan your wedding during your work hours, there are some things you can fit into your breaks on work days or on the commute to and from work. Check out vendor reviews, go through and edit your to-do lists, and make calls to book appointments or check on updates during the few minutes you take off work. Vendor phone calls are in fact, one of the most important tasks you can do when you have few free minutes. It doesn’t take too long, and you can fit it into the earlier part of the day before you get involved in any important work. Plus, you will not be using the company’s computer for personal needs this way. So, your boss shouldn’t be able to complain.
Use your lunch hour and tea breaks to browse through wedding pics online or scan magazines for inspiration. Not only will this help you shortlist any interesting choices, it will not eat into your work time and negatively affect your productivity at work.
Set achievable goals
One of the reasons many brides overwhelm themselves with wedding planning is that they set expectations that are difficult to meet. Instead of that, try to understand your limitations and plan your activities accordingly. If you spend ten hours at work, be reasonable about the amount of time you can spend on wedding plans after this workday. Set your goals accordingly and avoid disappointment. Take time off work if required, or dedicate the weekend to wedding planning.
Unwind and step away from the wedding once in a while
Don’t let the wedding planning stress affect you adversely. As impossible as it may sound, you need to completely break away from all the planning once in a while to tackle it efficiently. Take a break when you do absolutely nothing related to the wedding. You will find yourself energized and rejuvenated for the tasks that remain.
Plan your breaks according to your convenience, but fit it into your wedding planning timeline. Either enjoy some time to yourself or invite the company of your fiance or friends to help you forget about the wedding for a bit. Trust me, the distraction will be helpful and make you eager to continue from where you left it.
Best for Bride understands every need of a bride, and is the perfect destination where bridal dreams come true. Whether you will be a fairy tale princess or a stylish modern bride on your special day, you are sure to find the dress of your dreams in our vast designer collections. Come visit us at one of our four store locations in Canada, or shop online from our amazing bridal dress collection. With bridal accessories, party favors, invitations and even dresses for the rest of the bridal party, we make your job efficient and easy. Tune into the Best for Bride website today to take a look at what we have on offer.
One of the primary focal points of every dress is the neckline. Choosing the right neckline will draw focus to the beauty of the natural facial features of the wearer and enhance the overall appearance of the dress style selected. In addition, it will draw attention to the most attractive features or camouflage the less desirable traits when chosen appropriately.
When choosing bridesmaids’ dresses, choosing a single dress is no longer stylish for your entire bridal party. This is because your girls won’t be the same size or have the same body shape. So instead, we suggest you consider a range of options and mix and match dresses to suit the individual traits of each of the girls in your bridal party.
One good mix and match option is to vary the dress’s neckline while keeping the colours or silhouette constant for the entire group. This gives the group a super-stylish and modern look. It is easy, as most collections offer the same shade for several dresses. So you can find suitable silhouettes and necklines for each of your bridesmaids while keeping the colour uniform.
This guide looks at the most flattering neckline styles for different body types. Use this advice to choose the best neckline styles for your bridesmaid’s dresses. We are sure it will help you come one step closer to making your bridesmaids happy with your dress choices.
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