When we got engaged (in fact, even before we got engaged!) we always agreed that we didn’t want a wedding-y wedding. Nothing wrong with wedding-y weddings at all, apart from the whole idea of spending gazillions of pounds on one day and all the politics (guests/families/other peoples opinions/expectations) that comes with a wedding-y- weddings sent our heads spinning. I’ve always dreamed of a beautiful wedding, so I’m not the type to just say “Let’s elope” … but I also didn’t want to conform to tradition.
Plus – we’re two girls, so we had a great excuse to chuck out tradition.
So the vision was this – we’d hire a villa in Spain and have a party in the garden, we’d arrange the ceremony ourselves (we can’t do it legally in Spain so will complete the legal bit on the way to the airport) with our guests all involved in the ceremony in some way, standing around us in a circle. I quite wanted our dads to perform the ceremony. No bridesmaids – we wanted anyone who is special to play some kind of special role in the ceremony. No formal speeches (we’d have an open mic if people had something they wanted to say). We’d then have a big old knee’s up with a live band, tapas being served all evening (no seating plans – perhaps picnic blankets?) and perhaps a bit of drunken jumping in the pool later on. We weren’t going to wear traditional wedding dresses – we’re both very girly so thought about getting some beautiful (non white) dresses designed.
What we’re actually doing?
Practicalities got in the way.
- We went with a hotel in the end – though it’s an old mill up in the mountains with beautiful rustic gardens and amazing sea/mountain views. Our wedding planner convinced us that practically – it works much better, there are staff there doing things for you.
- We have a minister now (humanist) who is LOVELY, I’m so excited she’s doing it for us … the slightly hippyish idea we had of our dads doing it just wasn’t working out.
- OH decided she will only get married once in her life and therefore wants to have a proper white wedding dress. Fair enough, so I’m having one too (I’ve seen a girl/girl wedding before in which one wore white and the other wore a pinkish white – the pinkish white one looked like a bridesmaid!)
- So the ceremony is to be structured, and because of the layout of the gardens, we have to have rows of chairs and an aisle.
- We then have to go off to have photos taken (we really didn’t want to have to leave our guests/wedding to pose for pictures … yet, we do want some nice pictures of just the two of us.)
- We then have to have a seating plan for the food because of the way the tables have to be set up where we’re having our tapas. Also, the venue will only bring out tapas for 2 hours, not all night (we wanted it to be more snacking than an actual meal)
- Our wedding planner has now convinced us to allocate time to speeches (to fit in with the band etc.)
- We may now have to take the wedding inside to cut down on noise because we aren’t taking all the rooms in the hotel so don’t have exclusivity.
- We were going to order flowers from a supplier and just have lots of buds in mason jars/mini vases about the place, our wedding planner has now suggested a florist might supply everything cheaper than we can get it (considering vases/jars/shipping etc) … so now we have a florist, too.
All costs we wanted to avoid!!
I am happy with everything we have planned, but when I think about our original plan, versus what we have planned now, it makes me feel a little bit sad like the wedding has run away from us.
Practically though, the original plan just wouldn’t have worked. It would have been a disorganised mess.
If you’ve got this far, I’m sorry for the rant – here’s a flash of what our evening reception will look like. The venue has this amazing ‘secret garden’ with overhanging tree’s etc which guests will be lead to after the ceremony
So ... what was your original vision, and does it compare to what you're getting/what you had!?
