7 Things We Skipped At Our Wedding

Wedding’s are being postponed, canceled or changed right before our eyes and while I’m absolutely grateful to have had mine, I know this gives a lot of fiancées and brides a chance to think about their plans or change how they do them. As a couple your wedding should be a direct reflection of you and your partner so don’t take this list as a form of encouragement or discouragement from what you choose to do for your big day. At the end of it all you will both choose what is best for you both; that said I’m sharing 7 things we skipped at our wedding.

HUGE BRIDAL PARTY

The first thing that we skipped at our wedding was the extremely large bridal party. We personally have been together longer than our friends, including the ones who are recently married so we never saw ourselves having this huge group of people standing with us. We love our friends, but have always wanted them to enjoy themselves when it came time for our wedding. Having a large bridal party takes time away from other things like the party itself, the relaxation of getting ready, dealing with seating and a number of other things that I PERSONALLY did not care to make a focus. I also did feel like I have high expectations and though I have the most amazing friends who I know would not let me down, especially on our wedding day, I didn’t want to set myself up to be disappointed.

We initially were going to forego a bridal party all together because most of our friends are already married and again, it just didn’t seem like something we NEEDED for our wedding. However, at the end of it we both decided that 1 and 1 was the best decision for us. My husband chose his best friend to be his best man, and I chose one of my best friends to be my matron of honor. Looking back on it all, that was truly the best and I absolutely appreciated that time and those moments that we both got to share, and I’m glad that my husband got to have that moment as well.

We have no plans to have another wedding, so of course we would have both been alone as far as getting ready (outside of videographers and the like) so it was really special to have both of them there for us. I will say I do not regret having only one person, that was easily the best decision I/we made. My morning was so stress free, I even got to go Starbucks, the grocery store, go pop in on my husband, and just start the morning of our wedding in a way that made sense FOR ME/us. My hair stylist was even a bit shook at how calm I was; we were binge watching Love is Blind while getting ready and she kept commenting on how she had never seen a bride so calm and that is for sure my vibe and energy.

If your wedding had to be postponed or switched and you’re considering what you want to do moving forward as far as your bridal party, keep this in mind. You don’t HAVE to have a large bridal party, you don’t have to have all of these people, if it’s not something you desire.

MOTHER/SON + FATHER/DAUGHTER DANCE

I love my dad and my husband loves his mom, but is it really necessary to take time away from our wedding to watch us dance? No. We did a choreographed first dance and slid right into the party. If it’s important for you to dance with your parents, or it is sentimental for any reason, definitely do it, but if you’re wondering, your guests truly will not care and will not miss it if you don’t do it.

BOUQUET TOSS + GARTER TOSS

If you’ve been following me on social media then you already know that we weren’t doing a ton of flowers at our wedding to begin with. I also didn’t see the need to pay for an extra bouquet to throw since MOST of my friends are married or in new relationships and not looking at marriage as of yet. Sure it’s fun, sure it gets the crowd involved, but honestly it takes time away from everything else we could be doing. We’re done hearing single ladies and that being the cue to get all of the ladies to the dance floor, at least I am.

The garter toss doesn’t make much sense at a wedding if there is no bouquet toss so there wasn’t going to be a garter toss without it, NOT ONLY THAT, my wedding dress was trumpet style and could not be pulled up over my knees so there literally would have been no way to even get to a garter. We also changed outfits for the reception and it would have looked real weird to be walking around in a mini dress with a garter on in my opinion.

No one missed either of these activities, none of these things would have added anything to our wedding at all.

PHOTO BOOTH

Now this one is tricky because most people usually want a photo booth to capture photos and for me personally if I wasn’t going to be able to have my Karjenner black and white photo booth (which is very pricey) then I didn’t want one at all. I’m not a fan of cheesy backgrounds and based on the overall vibe and feel of our wedding, EVERYTHING needed to go together. Instead of paying someone to stand around and snap our pictures with random props, we used our flower wall backdrop as a photo booth area and I would do it over and over again.

I knew that it would turn out as amazing as it did, not only that a lot of my friends are technologically sound (we’re all in the creative space to some degree) so I knew that they would do their thing and use the space to the best of their abilities which we ALL did and it was absolutely perfect. Looking back on everyone’s photos and photos from the wedding it was much more tasteful and chic then a photo booth would have been.

The only thing I messed up on and wish I could have done over was putting extra film for our polaroid camera out. I did so much work to get a polaroid camera only to not put extra film out so that didn’t last long, but outside of that, I don’t regret not making a photo booth an extra expense.

All in all this post, to be clear, isn’t a way to talk you out of things for your big day, but if you’re looking for ways to cut costs or wondering if certain things are really worth it, then I wanted to share what we did just to help with insight.

The other thing you have to consider too is the time frame you are allowed to be at your venue; we were at a private home, so there was no “real” time limit in that regard. At a traditional venue everything you do is a part of your allotted time frame; so if you had to/have to postpone or cancel your wedding consider some of these things when you get a chance to do it over.

NO CHARGER PLATES

As much as I understand things being done for the look, and though chargers would have looked nice, I’m so glad we didn’t use them. For our food we had tacos and they had the option of hard clear plastic plates. If I was going to do chargers they probably would have been clear anyway so it was just a one and done thing. They worked perfectly, when people were done eating the plates we not even a second thought so glad we didn’t make that an additional expense. Another reason we didn’t want charger plates, is because we wanted people to peep the velvet table linens and napkins that they had. Get into these textures okay!

I will say budget wise and the type or amount of food you actually serve, will determine if this can actually be pulled off. We just really wanted to be relaxed with that vibe.

NO WATER CARAFES

Or making the bar tenders be responsible for water. Boxed Water was literally the best thing we did. Not only was it aesthetically pleasing and something “interactive”, because we were at a home, there wasn’t going to be a back and fourth we need to get water kind of vibe. It wasn’t necessary and shockingly even with 120+ people and more than enough boxed water, we didn’t even run out. Flexibility and ways to make things more aesthetically pleasing was also huge for us so there weren’t going to be water jugs on the table.

NO FAVORS + NO NAME CARDS

Listen. Even the best favors get left and it was something that I really could not spend my time thinking about. One less expense, one less paperweight, one less pack of seeds to plant, there are very creative favors, but it wasn’t necessary for us. If I could do it all over again, wouldn’t think twice about it at all. At the very  beginning of planning before I had a solid idea of what we wanted, design and decor wise, I was going to do custom agate slices with everyone’s name on them. They are so gorgeous, but I’m literally so glad that I didn’t waste time or money on that because of course some people came, some didn’t, some people brought additional people last minute, so it’s just one of those things that adds up and seems fun at first, but after that it’s like wow, glad I didn’t make a huge fuss about it.

Speaking of names, we also skipped the extra step of making sure everyone had a name card at the table. Literally not necessary. Our seating chart had table number and name and we loved that because it gave everyone the flexibility to sit where they wanted and not feel like they had to be next to this person or that person, etc. These are literally things that no one thinks about at all when they aren’t there. Out of sight out of mind.

Most of the things we chose to do or not do were due to the freedom and flexibility we had at my cousins house. We wanted the day to feel fun and not so technical because weddings can feel that way. You’re being told to do this and go here and take pictures and cut the cake and all of that flowed so freely without the fuss of the other stuff.

If there is anything that this pandemic taught couples, it’s to get creative and focus on what is most important. I love that for ya’ll.

If you were recently married or married way before this all went down, was there anything you didn’t do?

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