What not to do – we did it!
Jul 8th, 2009 by Henriette
Before our wedding I kept stumbling across three things every wedding guide/book told me I shouldn’t do.
It may be that I noticed these things because we had long since decided that we were going to do all these things!
Here is the list and how it went on the day:
1. Don’t just plug in an iPod or laptop for the music, get a professional to play or DJ!
We broke this rule and it was great. Instead of having a DJ ruining the flow of dancing we just had a playlist, which we had spent quite a bit of time making. It turned out to be wonderful. We knew we had a lot of potential dancers coming and would have the dance floor full if we got the music right. We did! From the moment we had the first dance / bridal waltz till we went to bed we were all out there dancing and having a great time.
Having said that the creation of a playlist was not without its issues. We soon found out that all the music we had was unsuitable to dance to! Luckily, one week before going to Denmark for the wedding some friends of ours who were married last year mentioned that they had done the same thing and still had their playlist on their computer. Perfect! We borrowed their music and had a wonderful time with it.
2. Don’t leave all your photography to amateurs. Get a professional in or you will regret it!
We had no professional photographer but had instead asked one person to be in charge of photographing the official portraits and another of filming.
Then we asked all the guests who had a decent digital camera, which they felt comfortable using, to bring it and take as many photos as they wanted. They all did this and we ended up with 2250 really good photos from the wedding. A great success!
The best part was that one of the guests also went around with our Lego-themed toppers and took pictures of them in different situations.
3. Last but not least never never cater your own wedding
Also here we decided not to listen to the profs. My mother was at first sceptical, but we soon had her convinced.
We had John’s parents, sister and best friend come over and stay at my parents’ house and we then spent the Thursday setting up the tent and finishing off the wedding cake and the Friday cooking all the food.
It was all down to good planning (yes, I had made a spreadsheet!) and choosing food which could nearly all be made a day in advance.
After the ceremony we had a light Asian style lunch for which we had made sushi, satay chicken, crispy noodle salad and lots more. It was all buffet style. We then had a bbq later on with roast pork, beef, lamb and chicken. The salads where all made or prepared the day before.
We had two lovely girls in the kitchen on the day to throw the cut veg together as salads and put stuff out on the buffet and tidy up. It worked very well.
All the guests were very impressed, especially with the Asian buffet, which was not what they were used to. And as an added bonus it brought our two families really close together. There is in my opinion no better way of getting to know someone than by working together.
I am not saying that everyone should cater for their own wedding. For many people it would probably end in tears. I am just saying that it is not impossible and it can be rather fun. We only had to cater for 40 people but you still have to be very organised and have family/friends who are up for it and you should really choose food that can keep at least a night in the fridge and/or can be easily assembled in the morning.
Also I think it was very important that we had the two girls to help in the kitchen on the day so that none of us had to get our hands dirty at that point!
But for us it was a great success with food far better than we ever would have been able to pay for if we had hired caterers. And it was a lovely thing for our families to do together.
Henriette
Read Henriette & John’s profile
Teehee, now I see why we didn’t read any wedding mags (apart from this one!) – we did exactly the same!!
Well, after our cd music, we had a band play a ceilidh for us, and we were catering for around 100 and doing it vegan, but otherwise the same! And I can definately second that it works doing it that way too! People enjoyed the music, we got back loads of fantastic photos, both from my experienced amateur uncle who did our posed shots and the rest of our guests, and the food was fantastic, reasonably well organised (albeit with a few tears and many loooong to-do lists!), and most importantly, our guests all said they enjoyed it! DIY is well worth the effort!
We also used an Ipod to kick off the dancing which worked well, although you have to be careful that it mixes between tunes without a gap. Luckily husband is also a DJ! After the first few tunes we also had a Ceilidh band which worked really really well. No regrets there.
I’m afraid as far as food is concerned, we had a caterer who my mum knew well. But there was no way we could have made all the food for 90 people and evening guests. We were sooo busy the day before decorating our barn and doing other jobs that preparing food would have caused a crisis. However, I did make sure the caterer used local food and everyone loved the menu. I guess I value the food side too much to risk messing up!
Photos – we used a local photographer who is also a friend. He charges reasonable rates and works really hard. He’s based in Suffolk. We’ve also gathered pictures from the guests which is really nice to do too.
Hi, new to your blog and loving it! Can’t wait to see more!
I’m only in the very early stages of planning and trying to decide what to do!
However, I am totally stealing the cake topper adventure idea!
I love that you did it all yourself. It must have been a nice community spirit on the day too. For my wedding reception we had nibbles like quiche and chicken wings, and a giant Quiznos! Cheesy by wedding mag standards, but our family and friends loved it. I think all brides should do what makes them happy on the day.
Thank you for your lovely comments. That is the great thing about this website. You start out feeling that your ideas are way crazy and then you come here and find that loads of other people have done the same sort of things and it worked fine.
And as Angela says brides and grooms (let’s not forget them) should do what will make them happy on the day. This will also ensure that most friends and family will have a great day. Anyway, one persons “cheesy” is another persons “having a good time”.
I think as far as the food is concerned Laura it is all down to how you feel about it. I probably wouldn’t have tried to cook for 90 people either. But then again we where always very strict on the fact that we didn’t want that many people at our wedding. I am quite amazed Waverley when you say you where catering for 100, but then as I said it is all down to how you feel about it. My point is just that it is possible to cater yourself, but of course not for 100 persons sit-down dinner with 3 courses and without the support of your family and friends.
We managed it by making lots of sharable dishes like pizzas, chilli and quiches in advance and freezing them, and them adding to that lots of breads, humous and pates etc. bought at the last minute so that people could do their own sandwiches, spending the whole day before making desserts (again, sharable things like bowls of mousse, jelly and fruit salad), and doing a bring-and-share salad bar – so it wasnt actually as crazy as it sounds!! Though there were stressy moments, and it did involve borrowing a couple of extra fridges/space in other peoples fridges!
