@Raechellennon they look great! Seriously! They're beautiful. One of the BMs actually already wore it to another wedding, where she was a guest. She got tons of compliments. People were amazed when she told them it was a BM dress for an upcoming wedding.
@Spaghetti -- I'm not judging you. You're doing the best you can in a really hard situation. Your dad may not get everything he wants here. I *might* feel differently if this were a blood relative, but it's not. So I'm gonna be the minority and say what you're doing is OK. You're not judging their RELATIONSHIP, you're judging him, and you're doing this to get her not to come. So, not ideal etiquette-wise, but understandable.
haha a few things: I hand wrote two addresses for friends we decided to invite after we sent the list to the caligrapher (and i have not super writing)
I had a staffer drop off a few thank you notes for me, to people's offices at work, bc I have a broken bone in my foot and don't ahve their home addresses bc it was an office shower and they're not coming to the wedding (lovely gesture and one I tried to tell them not to do, but they wanted to throw a party)
Oh, and I might murder my FI later today, but that's a different story! haha kidding!!!!!!!
I didn't ask my BMs for their price range either. :-S I did keep the prices reasonable, however, and gave them about 15 dresses to choose from.
We're B-listing +1's. Kind of. I guess technically they're not B-listed because they are hypothetical guests at this point, but I only put the names of our truly single friends on our STD's. If we're ahead of our budget when our actual invites go out, I'll extend +1's to those single people.
I included an 18-year-old cousin on her parent's STD. She lives at home although I suppose it doesn't matter.
I didn't ask the FG/RB's parents for a budget - it honestly didn't occur to me and they had much less input than the BMs did... I still feel kind of guilty about that
We also had a head table w/o SOs. The venue had an immovable head table platform that wouldn't fit everyone and wouldn't have worked for any other function (unless we wanted to be at a sweetheart table on a 10'x10' stage). I might have gotten more creative if I'd needed to, but in reality all of the SOs had been around for a long time and were friends with other guests so I let it go.
Also - we didn't invite single adults w/ +1s, i just kind of told people, if you really like someone around the time of the wedding, invite them (and am hoping not all of them do...)
- I had attire listed (IN TWO PLACES) on my wedding website until I read about how terrible it is and took it down...good thing we hadn't given anyone the URL prior to that
- I didn't ask my BMs for their price range on dresses - but did let them pick whatever they wanted from 5 different styles and bought all their shoes, jewelry, clutches, wraps, etc.
- I didn't get shower thank you notes out until 3 weeks after the shower...no good excuse, this was just laziness
- I skipped the calligrapher, but printed directly on the envelope vs. using labels
- I didn't put SO's on a separate line (i.e. did Mr. John Doe and Ms. Jane Smith) when addressing invitations.
About half way through our engagement, my then FH and I made a trip from MI to OR, so that he could see my hometown and meet a lot of the family and friends he had previously been unable to meet. To make this process easier, my parents hosted a "Meet the Groom" party. While many wedding guest were invited, they also extended a good old fashion open invite to my family church, most of which were not invited to the wedding, though they did caveat the invite with "no gifts please". While part of me wishes we could have just planned the vacation around a Sunday service and had a just a family party, I know that we made the best decision for us at the time.
Re: Confession time: I didn't ask my BMs for a price range before I picked their dresses
haha a few things: I hand wrote two addresses for friends we decided to invite after we sent the list to the caligrapher (and i have not super writing)
I had a staffer drop off a few thank you notes for me, to people's offices at work, bc I have a broken bone in my foot and don't ahve their home addresses bc it was an office shower and they're not coming to the wedding (lovely gesture and one I tried to tell them not to do, but they wanted to throw a party)
Oh, and I might murder my FI later today, but that's a different story! haha kidding!!!!!!!
I didn't ask the FG/RB's parents for a budget - it honestly didn't occur to me and they had much less input than the BMs did... I still feel kind of guilty about that
We also had a head table w/o SOs. The venue had an immovable head table platform that wouldn't fit everyone and wouldn't have worked for any other function (unless we wanted to be at a sweetheart table on a 10'x10' stage). I might have gotten more creative if I'd needed to, but in reality all of the SOs had been around for a long time and were friends with other guests so I let it go.