Rules for weddings. Accept with a grain of salt.
Many of these rules touch on the obligations of the bride and groom to the guests. There are many folks who maintain that there are no such obligations. I suggest such folks not invite anyone to their wedding. If you expect people to travel, dress up, attend, and (of course) provide gifts, courtesy, if not morality, demands a certain consideration of them. Certainly it is your day. But that doesn’t mean you can be completely and utterly self-centered. Not if you don’t want them talking snarkily about you for days to come.
- Bride and groom, consider the physiognomy of your attendants when selecting a style for their clothing. This is mostly an issue with bridesmaids, since, fortunately, nearly all men look good in a tux. Not all women look good in all dresses, however, and some styles are particularly
cruelunfortunate — particularly when sized too small and when the attendant in question is standing closest to the congregation, back turned. - Guests, if the bride and groom and attendants are getting dressed up, perhaps you can, too. Sure, formal clothes are usually uncomfortable clothes. Suck it up.
- Bride and groom, consider sight lines at your ceremonial site. When you are doing the rehearsal, turn around and look back at where folks will be sitting. The chairs you can’t see because of walls, candelabras, or your attendants will be occupied by folks who cannot, in turn, see you.
- Guests, when seated someplace, don’t just willy-nilly sit somewhere else, particularly in the church. There may be a good reason why nobody’s sitting there … yet.
- Preacher, the bride and groom will remember zero of what you preach to them. Keep it short and sweet. You’re just there to facilitate, not to convert.
- Bride and groom, organization is your friend. You will not be organized, so appoint associates — your Best People, your parents, whoever — to help shepherd things during the ceremony and reception in the direction you decide upon ahead of time (and to adapt plans when things go akilter). The wedding coordinator will take care of most of this (or should) at the ceremony site, but the reception is a different matter. The DJ is not necessarily the best person to do this.
- Bride and groom, do not, when you can avoid it, keep people waiting, especially when they are, for example, all lined up, waiting for you to walk in the door. Or all lined up, waiting for you to exit the door.
- Guests, be patient. The marriage couple are functioning at about 20% cognition level, and if nobody’s nudging them in the proper direction in a timely fashion, they are probably not going to be the best of hosts. If you have complaints, save them for the car ride home. Or for your blog.
- Bride and groom, having someone who can announce what’s coming up next is a keen idea, especially if that’s what’s really coming up next.
- Guests, be flexible. Weddings are like military operations — all the planning falls apart as soon as the enemy is engaged (or something like that).
- Bride and groom, avoid admonishments of “Please, no children” on the reception invitation unless you really mean it. If you change your mind, contact folks to let them know.
- Guests, if you bring children, do not let them distract from the goings-on. Children have tremendous fun at weddings and receptions, and that’s fine. They will also heterodyne wildly out of control if you let them. Don’t.
- Bride and groom, circulate. If you have not gone anywhere else besides the head table or the dance floor for over half an hour, you are probably doing your guests a disservice. You don’t have to engage in deep conversation; indeed, you should avoid being monopolized. Just a “Thanks for coming” or a “How’s the food?” or “Hi! Nice outfit!” will do, especially if repeated once or twice during the evening. People are there to celebrate your wedding. It would be nice if they got a chance to actually interact with you.
- Guests, don’t monopolize the bride and groom. If you are in a position to do so, you probably know them well enough that you’ll see them again in the near future. They’re not going to remember anything you tell them, anyway.
- Bride and groom, consider your audience. If you want more than just your peer group to get out on the dance floor, provide music beyond the range of what just your peer group prefers. Not everyone cares for (or dances to) rap and hip-hop. If that’s all you want to have playing, make sure that there are plenty of other distractions and entertainments, or else see the next point.
- DJ, you are not nearly as amusing or entertaining as you think you are, particularly in your pranks to embarrass people (admonitions to smear cake all over each other, the typical jocularity regarding the garter removal). The more you sound like a lounge singer (without the singing), the less anyone wants to hear from you.
- Guests, take the opportunity to dance and mingle and revel when offered. The bride and groom want everyone to have a good time, and even if you are not, you should pretend you are. This is their day, not yours.
- Bride and groom, four hours is very long for a reception, especially when the entertainment is very age-specific and limited. If you want to do the dance floor thang with all your friends, go through the traditional activities, then, after about 2.5 hours, exit the building with great fanfare, cruise around the block for fifteen minutes so folks can leave, then slip back in. Many people consider it rude to depart before the bride and groom, so they’ll just sit there, stewing, until you formally depart.
All that having been said (and some of it is exagerrated, and some of it is derived from other weddings I’ve been at instead of this one), I was really pleased to be able to attend my step-nephew’s wedding. I did really miss having Margie there (I had forgotten how unutterably depressing weddings can be when you aren’t with the one you love), but it was great visiting with some of the folks I got to visit with. Plus the chapel was fun (an small 1910 Episcopal Church, most of the old decor still intact) and the food was quite decent. And they’re a really nice couple, and I really wish them the best of futures.
52 view(s)
Gosh, now I’m thinkin’ back, trying to remember if we committed any of those infractions back in ’87! Nah! When you’ve got an A-1 best man keeping things running smoothly, what’s to worry? 🙂
Sounds like there is something to be said for Eloping.
Aiee, I remember a wedding I attended decades ago…the groom was a music minister and, I swear, they stopped the service dead in the middle to see if anyone wanted to come up and get saved. That incident did quite a bit to divorce me from organized religion. *shudder*
Excellent commentary!! Your list should be standard issue for future brides and grooms! 🙂
Thanks, Tess. Well, if someone does a web search on “Wedding Rules” some time after Google does its next crawl, maybe they’ll find it.
Seki, as a somewhat organized religionist, I apologize. That was inapproprate and rude to both the guests and the couple. Bleah.
Adam, eloping certainly cuts through some of the red tape and expense. It’s a bit more difficult to register for gifts, though.
Scott, I recall yours being short, sweet, and to the point, which is always in fashion.
My Mom (who for some reason never leaves comments) suggests the following:
Very young children may look cute walking down the aisle, but can be distracting during the ceremony.
Amen.
Your first recommendation may ruffle a few feathers. I seem to recall hearing more than one woman talk about the humiliation of being passed over as a bridesmaid because other friends of the bride were closer to the skinny ideal. I’ve never been a bride so who am I to say, but it sounds to me like a recipe for ruining a friendship.
By the way, I’ve got my own wedding page with a few tips that may sound surprising out of context, like “be prepared to take off your shoes” and “don’t expect the bride or groom to help you get dressed”. 🙂
I just have a simple question pertaining to wedding rules that was not mentioned. If someone actually has a valid statement to the question, ” if there is anyone who feels these two should not be wed , speak now or forever hold your peace?”, what is done in regards to the rest of the ceremony?
Y’know, I’ve never actually heard of that taking place (outside of the movies), so I don’t know what the answer would be.
The usual phrasing is “why these two should not be wed,” and I think it’s meant to solicit information about a legal (or ecclesiastic) impediment, not a “They’re just so wrong for each other.” E.g., one of the participants is actually married.
I would hope that someone with such knowledge would actually approach the couple (singly or togehter), or the officiant, ahead of time, though.
Thinking to my own wedding, I’m not sure what I’d have done if someone had popped up at that moment. I suppose it would depend on what they had to say, but unless it brought up a valid point, I would probably have relied upon my groomsmen to deal with the problem (and I suspect they would have).
Recently I attended a wedding that disgusted me. The pastor when on for a long, long time and one of the bridesmaids literally passed out. He went on even after that seemingly not even noticing it. The best blessing the pastor can give does not start “The Lord bless you and keep you” or “To Him who is able” but “And in conclusion”. Needless to say I had to do a lot of damage control the next day at work.
While I am being critical of preachers, there is another rule that comes to mind, do not abuse Ephesians 5. At first blush, it looks perfectly suited to a wedding message with specific (but controversial) instructions to the bride and groom. There is one big problem, giving instructions to a bride and groom is not Paul’s primary point which is: “This is a profound mystery–but I am talking about Christ and the church.”
In other words, Paul is arguing a forteriori from a known relationship between husband and wife to an unknown relationship between man and God. Finally, if you want to use this to force the bride to “submit” consider the following: which is the higher standard behaving as the church does (the role of the wife) or behaving as Jesus does (the role of the husband)? Hmm?
Ephesians 5 is not one of my favorite passages for weddings anyway. I’ll have to look up some time the passages we used in our wedding.
1 Corinthians 13 was used in ours.
John 2 is another good passage. Note that turning the water into wine was Jesus’ first recorded miracle and that the wine was very good quality. This underscores that marriage is something not to be endured but rather enjoyed. So much for God being a cosmic killjoy.
Song of Solomon 2:8, 10-13; 8:6-7a
Psalm 150 (canted in Latin by our good bud, Mario)
Ecclesiastes 4:9-12
Matthew 22:36-40
We also had Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese, XIV (read by our friend, Mary).
No Epistle, evidently.
If the wedding is called off, what do you do with the gifts? The ones from the Bridal Shower have already been used.
I’m sure Miss Manners or some other etiquette guides would be of help here.
My inclination would be that unopened or unused gifts would be returned. Used gifts would be “thems the breaks.”
Can someone answer this for us? I currently cohabitate with my future wife Patty. We will be married June 28, 2003. How should we address the RSVP’s? Mark and Patty with our address? or Just my name or her name with our address?
Thanks,
Mark
Assuming that some third party is not appropriate (parents, friend who’s handling the RSVP list), I’d probably go with one or the other name.
Or, if not, maybe relate it to how the wedding invite/announcement is phrased. That might be appropriate, too.
I am trying to find out what the appropiate amount of time allowed to send thanks to guests for gifts. Thanks Tom
I would think (and you should look it up in Emily Post or something like that) within 30 days.
I have a question about #11. Why would anybody include admonishments such as “no children, please” on the invitations unless they meant it?
If I ever get married, such an admonishment will most definitely be on the invitation for both the ceremony and the reception, and will be strictly enforced. And considering that my theoretical wife-to-be will necessarily have the same distaste for children that I do (otherwise we’d be fundamentally incompatible and wouldn’t be getting married in the first place), I’m sure she’d be all for it as well. We will most definitely mean it, and I couldn’t imagine including it on the invitations if we didn’t.
If you prefer not to have young’uns about, definitely (but politely) make that clear.
And we’re presently #15 on Google under “Wedding Rules.” W00t!