Tell me..

NMac2010

So I saw this on my monthly board, and thought it was pretty neat and would ask everyone here. And I'm REALLY bored at work today.

I'm sure everyone has/had a long to-do list. I know mine was! But, what are some things that you just decided NOT to do all together ,or that weren't important to you and FI, when it came to planning your wedding?

I'll start..

No receiving line
No father/daughter, mother/son dances
No formal pictures with any family besides our parents
No long religous ceremony
No traditional wedding music
No hard liquor, beer and wine only
No bathroom baskets
No OOT guest bags
No inviting OOT guests to rehearsal dinner
No dance floor-tables will just be arranged to makeup a dance floor
No STD's

I'm sure there are more that I'm forgetting, but that's all I can think of off the top of my head.

cfibelkorn

No spending more money than I HAD to
No necklace
No receiving line
No father/daughter, mother/son dances
No formal pictures with any family besides our parents
No long religous ceremony
No traditional wedding music
No bathroom baskets
No OOT guest bags
No inviting OOT guests to rehearsal dinner
No DJ
No Garter or Bouquet Toss
I wanted no wedding party but I was overruled by FI

And I really wanted (and still want) uplighting but it is WAY out of my budget

fallbride1109

Signature drink and menus--at the beginning I just had to have them, but by the end I was just like meh, forget it.

Bridals. 

Father daughter/mother son dances or toasts.

Lighting.  Although I would have loved to have it, the pricing was too outrageous to justify it. 

Bride and groom gifts--although I surprised Ben with a note and his favorite bottle of scotch.

I wanted to skip bouquet and garter but Ben really wanted to do it.

NMac2010

Oh yeah, I knew I forgot a few:

No bridal pics
No bride/groom gifts to each other
No gifts to the parents
No BM brunch
No Bachelorette party

Donnaaries

No favors.  I can honestly say I've never been to a wedding where I was like "wow that's a killer favor I'm going to keep forever!" If you really want to do a favor, please make it edible.

No head table.  We had married groomsmen and married bridsmaids (but not to each other), it would have been mean to sit them at a head table apart from their significant others.

No drama.  If I could pay for a service to lessen the stress on myself/my mom/bridal party, I did it. 

SoonToBeMrsHoz

Sorry this ended  up being so long...  I am really bored today.

We have a  Persian wedding so some things in general are different but here are mine:

No receiving line but after the wedding we sit at our ceremony spot and the come to us, I fear this will take forever.

No father/daughter, mother/son dances. My has passed away so obv. we are not doing this, and FI doesn't care to do this either.

No long religous ceremony. We told our officiant in a nice polite way that he has got 10 min max so say what he has to say. Then we want to move on to rest of the activities. Keep it short and sweet.

No hard liquor, beer and wine only

No bathroom baskets. I am going back and forth on this.

No OOT guest bags. I think if you put really nice things in there then it would be cool, but given that we have over 50 people coming from out of town it would get really expensive.

No hosted rehearsal dinner. I feel horrible about this because the said 50 OOT from above are all from FI's side and his parents are adamant that they don't need to host them. I think they are wrong but I can't convince them otherwise and can't foot the bill myself either for their guests.. so I am letting it go but somehow I think this is going to turn into something ugly in the end since there is no official dinner planned.

No wedding party. This is more bc FI has too many men in his family  thathe is close to where he wouldn't be able to choose some without hurting others feeling. Also,  I have been in some weddings where I don't necessarily think I could ask those same friends to be in mine without it getting out of hand and in general wedding parties are not a part of the Persian culture anyway. I wish there would have been a way to do this have like 2 or 3 people on each side but I guess it's just one less thing to worry about.

No official bachelor / bachelorette parties. Neither one of us is into them. Although FI's step dad keeps talking about it. We might have a joint get together with friends the Thursday before our Saturday wedding.


ETA: No bridals. I couldn't justify the additional cost to do the same thing I am going to do on my wedding day and have to pay for hair, makeup, dress cleaning , extra photog session, and I don't want a set of pics of just me.

No garter toss.

KellyLovesJames

I really have no energy to type... but here is my brief ADHA list:

No Dancing.... no one has danced at the weddings I've been to lately, it's been forced
No Receiving Line
No Head Table (do people still do this anyway?)
No Bridals (I'm doing TTD after the wedding)
No Garter or Bouquet Toss
No Long Ceremony either

We are having a DJ though to help direct the reception and for atmosphere music.  Instead of dancing we're having different things going on after dinner... like wine tasting and a Butt Sketch artist and I couple of other random things to keep people mingling and busy.

lesalyric

For budget reasons:
No hard liquor, beer and wine only
No bathroom baskets
No OOT guest bags
No dance floor-tables will just be arranged to makeup a dance floor
No STD's
No programs
No mother of the bride/groom flowers
No lighting
No coordinator

For no reason other than I just didn't want to:
No receiving line
No formal pictures with any family besides our parents
No long or religous ceremony
No traditional ceremony music
No garter/bouquet toss
No chair covers!
No ring bearer
No high heels!


I am sure there are a ton more, that's all I've got right now.

balfour00

How fun.

No Hard Liqour (I know half our friends will have flasks anyway)
No Receiving Line
No Sweetheart table  - I'll have the rest of my life to have dinner alone with FI, I want to be social during our wedding
No signature drink
No tradiional ceremony music
No long ceremony

I wasn't going to do a veil (and still might not) but I bought a birdcage one so we'll see.

I feel like there's more, like I've cut out so much but this is all I came up with.

I'm with you Donna - our "favors" are that guests can take cheese from our cheese wheel "cake"

mandaroo7

Oh wow, I don't think my list is very long yet nor have I really thought of this.  But, here's what I can think of:

No STD's
No Head Table
No long religous ceremony
No Necklace
No hard liquor, beer and wine only
No bathroom baskets
No OOT guest bags

emimayor

No games at the reception.
No silly/cheesy music
No garter toss
No parent toasts at the receptions
No head table
No bathroom baskets
No OOT bags, but we did do welcome letters
No receiving line

Wish we had done OOT bags...

lacy1603

No receiving line - I don't even know what that is so I guess I'm not doing it.
No long religous ceremony
No unity candle
No traditional wedding music
No bridals - I really want to but like Kathy said...I just can't justify the cost.
No bathroom baskets
No OOT guest bags
No inviting OOT guests to rehearsal dinner
No bride/groom gifts
No parent gifts
No head table for the same reason Donna listed above

emimayor

More...

No parents gifts
No STDS
No TTD


And Donna - my favors would have made you swoon!

MarieSD

Things I'm cutting to keep costs down:
No bathroom baskets
No OOT guest bags
No chair covers
No favors

And things I just wanted to cut:
No garter/bouquet toss
No flower girl/ring bearer (we don't know any kids the right age!)
No DIY projects (I'm not creative or crafty, and me and my FI are huge procrastinators on projects. Other people are great at creative/crafty stuff, so I'll buy it from them on Etsy or the like and happily pay them for their talents)

fallbride1109

More...

No flower girl/ring bearer.  In fact, no kids period.

No flowers or decoration for the ceremony except rose petals.  I just wanted the simple outdoor space and candles.

No YMCA, Makes me Wanna Shout, Macarena, Cotton Eyed Joe, etc.

No Hora/raising us up on chairs even though Ben is Jewish. 

No limo or fancy car getaway.  We just ran to the elevator through rose petals.

Donnaaries

Emi, now I am curious!

No flowergirl/ringbearer for us either

No chair covers/chivari chairs (I could not justify the cost of renting chivaris though I think they're gorgeous)

Agree with MarieSD on the DIY stuff because I'm not crafty.  My Etsy purchases were wonderful but my DIY projects looked kind of cheap and out of place next to everything else.

SoonToBeMrsHoz

Steph, I recently went to a big party where my DJ was playing the music, and he played the Macarena and people danced to it, and it seriously made me feel physically ill hearing it and watching them.

My DJ and I are going to have a long talk about how he will not be playing the Macarena at my wedding.

MissAngel

No receiving line
No father/daughter, mother/son dances
No inviting OOT guests to rehearsal dinner
No Sweetheart table or Bridal Party table because most of ours are married or with SOs also so it didn't seem fair to me.
No STD's
I have a FlowerGirl/Ringbearer (1 for both jobs) because she's my Goddaugther.
No lighting... would love it, but I can't justify spending that much on lights.
No photobooth... they all got pricey after I originally checked and since I'm paying more for a photographer... it took the photobooth budget out.

I wish there were more 'no's though...

emimayor

Our favors -

Mini disco ball oranamants (a homage to our centerpieces) wrapped up in a mini boxes that were placed on each table setting. The top of each box was a little quote (kind of the theme of our reception):

"Live for today, plan for tomorrow, party tonight" Our monogram and wedding date

We also had sliders, french fries, and milk shakes passed around at the end of the night before our exit - kind of a joke since we partied late into the night. Kind of like "late night, I've been drinking too much food". Attached to the bags of food were "Don't Mess with Texas" magnets. This was fun since 80% of our guests were out of towners...

See - favors can be fun! And yes, I'm proud and psuedo bragging!

Donnaaries

Alright Emi, you get the exception   Those sound really cute, and favors do make the place settings look nicer.  I went to 2 weddings in the month before mine that used their favors as part of the place setting.

I love the late night snack bar idea, too!

No photobooth for us either.  This was something I was originally super excited about, but after pricing them out, decided I'd rather have a gelato cart that's cheaper and edible.

fallbride1109

Kathy, on our dating anniversary in June before our wedding, we stayed at the Omni and sat in the bar listening to the wedding in the ballroom.  The DJ played all of those songs in a row and we about barfed.  We told Glenn and he was like "ok, nothing cliche" and that took care of it.

bobbileighb

No Receiving Line
No Head Table
No Bridals
No Garter or Bouquet Toss
No Flower girl or ring bearer
No Long Ceremony either
No Rehersal Dinner (this may change)
No hard liquor
No DIY
No cheesy reception dances

fallbride1109

Oh and if I had it to do over again:

No bouts or corsages.  The new thing is colored pocket squares which I begged Ben to do but he is so traditional.  And the grandmothers did not like the corsages on their dresses.  But the moms loved carrying the nosegays.

No favors.  I would have done gold chargers instead.

emimayor

Stephie - I LOVE pocket squares. Jeff insisted on a tuxedo, but I wish we had done suits or the other extreme...bow ties.

llc2011

No Receiving Line
No Head Table
No Bridals
No ring bearer
No hard liquor (beer, wine, and possibly some signature drinks)
No mother/son (because they don't want to, but I will be dancing with my dad)
No bathroom basket
No bride/groom gifts to each other (but we'll exchange cards)

MissesKB

No short ceremony
No flower girl
No ring bearer
No OOT bags
No bridals
No solo songs during ceremony
No renting table linens
No head table
No chair covers
No fake flowers
No cheesy bridal party gifts

tam427

Here's what I have so far:

No huge wedding party- one person on each side
No ring bearer (not decided on flower girl yet)
No religious ceremony, No quick and dirty ceremony either!
No bouquet or garter toss
No super slow first dance
No cheesy or group dances - YMCA, chicken dance, Macarena etc.
No traditional wedding music
No menu cards
No assigned seating
No unity candle or sand ceremony
Yes breaking the glass-- the only thing FI really wants to do.

tam427

No bridals here either!

[Deleted User]

-No wine or champagne, just beer and hard liquor!
-No bridals
-No chair covers or extra linens other than provided by addison event center
-No programs
-No ring bearer/flower girl
-No religious tones to the ceremony
-No unity candle/sand
-No receiving line
-No toasts
-No bridal luncheon
-No favors - doing a photobooth instead
-No OOT bags
-No veil
-No get away car or staying in a hotel the night of. Home is a 10 minute drive from the reception space