So I went to my brother's wedding yesterday and it turned into a huge what not to do.
The ceremony was small - family only - the bride was 25 minutes late to the ceremony. Then they didn't have any music to come in to so they just came in and I'm not sure anyone even realized it was starting because they came in from the same direction we were facing. The mother of bride never stood when the bride entered so neither did anyone else.
The ceremony was pretty standard - 25 minutes - quick and painless. Although her 2 year old started screaming 10 minutes in and the bride ended up holding him for the rest of the ceremony.
Then we went to the reception which was about 15 minutes away. The ceremony was at 2 (2:25 due to lateness) and the bride and groom never showed until 5:30. There was no cocktail hour or anything and some people who were staying at the campground near the reception site crashed the reception.
The bride and groom finally arrived and people were starving. They did their first dance, father/bride, mother/groom dances before dinner. Then the bride got up and gave a 25 minute long toast and thanked just about every single person there. Then they went on to the toast by the "best woman". They go to lift their glasses and they are empty. So most people had nothing in their glasses for the toast.
Finally, it was time to eat and the food was actually really good. There was tons and the only issue I had was that the only drink provided were coffee and kool-aid...yes kool-aid.
There were 60 guests - 5 from the grooms side (me, my FI, mom, dad and aunt). The rest were from the brides side. My family is big into dancing so after dinner we really got into dancing. We looked back to the seating and everyone was gone. The bridal party had gone swimming - with their dress clothes on. Most of the guests were outside watching and some had already left.
There were often times where whole hours went by without the reception progressing. A lot of people just left. Finally - at almost 9 pm, they came back inside to cut the cake. We left shortly after that.
The whole thing was pretty insane. Especially since the bride had been planning the wedding for over a year and was constantly working on things. I'm not sure if the problem was on the planning end or was on the venue end for not keeping things going.
