My ‘Roblimo’ online nickname comes from my former occupation as a limousine owner/driver. As limo guy, I served several hundred wedding parties, so I have a good idea what make a wedding (and reception) work smoothly and what can screw it up. Let’s start with my pet peeve: Too many bridesmaids.

Listen, soon-to-be brides. You don’t really need bridesmaids at all. You need a maid or matron of honor to help you with your clothes and hair and to help you remember details during a stressful day. Maybe you have a ring-bearer kid because ring-bearer kids are cute. That’s all the wedding party you need.

A couple of bridesmaids don’t hurt anything, but how many brides stop with two or even three? I’ve seen weddings where it looked like an entire sorority house or cheerleading squad was standing around a church pulpit, all wearing dresses they’ll never be able to wear anywhere else. I know, they’re all your dearest friends, and if you invite Fannie you really ought to invite Annie so she doesn’t feel left out. And so you end up with Fannie and Annie, Sarah and Marah, Ellie and Mellie, all forced to buy the same dress, shoes, and purse, and it’s a 100% bet that if you have more than two bridesmaids, one will object to the color you choose. Have a dozen, the color choices alone will exhaust you, and shoe choices will take hours of phone conversation. Dealing with bridesmaid issues can take as long as setting up the rest of the wedding.

Instead of having color-coordinated bridesmaids, why not just invite all your close friends to sit up front? It will save them money, and no one will be forced to wear clothes they don’t like.

Reception food and time management

I’ve seen everything from minimal finger food to sit-down, five-course suppers. The happiest wedding receptions I’ve seen had simple buffets that didn’t cost a fortune. I have never seen anyone go away happier from an expensive wedding supper than from a cheap one. If anything, complicated, expensive suppers make for a less-happy wedding because they take more energy to set up and make the reception schedule tighter, which adds to clock-watching.

In general, a casual reception, with cold cuts laid out on a buffet table, is the most relaxed way to feed and entertain your guests. You can have music and food at the same time, so those who want to dance right away can dance, and those who want to eat right away can grab food. You can do the cake-cutting thing, followed by the usual ceremonial bride-dances, whenever you’re in the mood instead of at an arbitrary, pre-set time. This makes for relaxed guests and a relaxed bride and groom.

The main thing about a reception is that it’s a party, not a ceremony. It should be fun for everyone. No one should have to rush or worry.

Wedding or photo shoot?

I have watched wedding photographers ruin many perfectly good weddings by staging long, elaborate poses when everyone wanted to get on with the event itself. A wedding is an event. The photos (and possibly videos) record it. It is not a photo shoot in and of itself.

The best wedding photography I’ve seen was done by newspaper photographers used to grabbing fast, candid shots without intruding. “Snap, snap, snap” shooting by a fast pro will give you at least as good a wedding album as a series of formal shots that take a long time to set up — while the wedding or reception grinds to a halt.

Candid wedding photos don’t interrupt the festivities. Set shots do. And candid shots will give you a happier, better set of memories to look at later in life. You can augment a professional photographer’s work with photos provided by guests, too, now that so many people have digital cameras and habitually take them to any photoworthy event. Ditto videos; modern camcorders can usually get decent shots, assuming the people holding them don’t swing them around wildly.

Where most amateur video shooters screw up (besides panning and zooming too much) is in editing. They don’t take out enough extraneous footage. You may want to see if you can get a professional video person who is willing to use amateur footage as “B” roll material, spliced into his work to add a different perspective from time to time.

But the main thing is keep photographers from taking over the event. When they do, it becomes a photo shoot instead of a joyous occasion.

More on time management

Your wedding won’t start on time. Face this fact now, while you’re still planning it. Something will go wrong with your wedding dress, veil or train. The groom or his best man (who should serve the same function for him as your matron or maid of honor does for you) will be hung over and lose the ring. The cake might not be delivered on time. And if you have bridesmaids galore, there will be more clothing and hair disasters to be overcome, to the point where if the whole thing comes often within an hour of the scheduled time, you should consider yourself lucky. Add groomsmen and other hangers-on to the show, and your chances of running late get even higher.

Remember the old adage: “All a girl really needs at her wedding is a ring, a preacher, and a man.”

The closer you stick to this, the more likely you are to stay on schedule. When your old high school best friend is a bridesmaid, you can hardly start the ceremony without her, especially since the reason she’s going to be late is that her three-year-old is vomiting, which certainly not her fault. But if your old friend is a specatator, not part of the show, you can go ahead with the wedding even if she only needs “a few more minutes” to get there, and she can still enjoy the aftermath and reception — and look at your photos and videos later to see what she missed.

Still, no matter how carefully you pick your wedding party and how hard you try to keep everything organized, you will probably run late. Allow for this when you book caterers, limousines, and other services essential to your wedding and reception. Even the most forgiving limousine operator in the world will need to move on to his next charter sooner or later; sure, it’s not your fault that everything is running late and that you tried to save money by booking the limo for three hours instead of allowing an extra hour or two “just in case,” but why should the limo operator’s next customer suffer for your failing? Why should another wedding party wait for the church to be free because you ran late? Why should the minister be late getting home to her husband because you broke a heel?

These service people are probably all very nice, and as forgiving as they can possibly be, but they are in business. They have other things to do with their lives. They want to deliver their service and move on — possibly to their next scheduled wedding or other event. If you are late enough that they are forced to do that before your event is finished, due to your lack of allowance for slowdowns, it is not their fault that your wedding or reception comes to an inglorious end.

A note about limousines

Limousines are not essential for a wedding. My wife and I got married at the county courthouse, and rode there in a regular car because it would have been hard to find parking for my limo nearby. We’re still married and happy about it. But most people hire limousines for weddings, which is fine with me, even though I’m no longer in the limo business myself.

If you follow my “no bridesmaids” plan but still decide to hire a limousine, you can get a small, comparatively inexpensive one and keep it for all or most of the day. Use it for shuttle service — picking up friends who otherwise would be bridesmaids, taking your futre in-laws to the church, giving kids rides during the reception (with adult supervision) to keep them from getting bored while the grown-ups dance and drink.

Your main criterion for hiring a limousine should be reliability. A small operator with a good reputation (preferably found through a referral from a trustworthy friend) is almost always your best bet. Big limo companies tend to pay their drivers poorly, and some of them will book too tightly during prime wedding and prom weekends. This means the limo they showed you may not be the one that actually comes to your event. The small operator with low overhead has less of a tendency to “stack” jobs one after another, especially if he gets most of his business through word of mouth and wants to have time to clean his vehicle (and rest and refresh himself) between jobs in order to keep his service quality as high as possible.

One limousine is always enough. You don’t need to transport everyone going to your wedding by limousine. A few movie stars do this, but does this make their wedding better or happier than one where a single limo takes the bride (and her matron and the flower girl) to the church, then delivers the bride and groom to the reception, and later takes the newly-hitched couple home, to a hotel, or to the airport? Answer: No.

Again: Simple = Happy

No matter how fancy a wedding bash you throw, someone will throw a fancier one. No matter how many people you invite, someone else will invite more. If you keep your wedding guest list between 20 and 50, and serve simple food that doesn’t all need to be eaten at the same time (i.e. stick to self-serve buffet), you will have the highest chance of having a happy wedding and reception.

Don’t go crazy on the cake, either. Get a nice-looking one, chosen for artfulness rather than height. If you’re getting a custom cake, choose your baker by reputation, same as you chose your limousine operator. When I first started doing wedding charters with my limousine, I was surprised at how much complexity — and how many problems — surrounded cake selection and delivery, and at how many times brides burst into tears because the cake was either not what they expected or didn’t show up at all. Later, I got used to cake dramas and learned to take them in stride.

Simple photography, simple limo hires, simple catering, small bridal parties, simple ceremonies; all combine to make a bride’s life easier. Getting married is supposed to be a joy, not a chore. If you can afford to hire a wedding planner, by all means do so — especially if your family or other outsiders (in a wedding, the only insiders are the bride and groom) are determined to have a huge, costly wedding, have it arranged by a professional instead of doing it yourself.

And if cost is an issue, spend as little as possible on the wedding, and invest your money in your marriage instead — possibly in the form of a down payment on a house. This will give you more long-term satisfaction than one day of pretending to be a princess surrounded by glory.

All brides are princesses on their wedding days anyway. The only thing that makes one bride more beautiful than another is how much happiness they show. And keeping things simple and smooth will make a bride happier than worrying about all the details of a needlessly complicated wedding and reception.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 21st, 2006 at 10:26 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.