how far out is your rsvp deadline from the actual date?

If there's a decent gap...
take the number of rsvp's (yes's), multiply by 1.11, and plan for that number in attendance. take the number of seats per table (round, rectangular, this could all factor in) and divide your figure above by the number of seats per table.

[Edited on April 19, 2017 at 11:57 AM. Reason : ]

4/19/2017 11:56:41 AM

Quote :

"Why does the cost of a venue go up like $1000 when you say it's for a wedding reception? I need to just start saying it's for a family gathering!"

Just wanted to say that's not true for all venues. I'm an event coordinator at a venue in Raleigh and our prices and minimums are the same no matter what the occasion. (With respect to peak/off-peak season) I get people who lie about what they are celebrating thinking it will keep the price low and it's embarrassing.






[Edited on April 20, 2017 at 10:16 AM. Reason : ]

[Edited on April 20, 2017 at 10:18 AM. Reason : ]

4/20/2017 10:15:37 AM

^This.

My husband and I own a catering company with an on-site reception/party location. We don't charge more for saying that is a wedding.

4/20/2017 4:07:55 PM

What is the correct way to address an invitation to a widow...but she is dating...like she's only a few years older than me, so it's not like she's going to live the rest of her life out saying she's a widow. I know most of the time for a widow you still address it Mrs. John Doe...but for her, I feel like the fact that she is dating someone and I would also be inviting the person she is dating, it would seem awkward addressing it Mrs. John Doe, and instead maybe I should address it Mrs. Jane Doe

8/8/2017 1:58:28 PM

address it to the alive person, not the dead one

8/8/2017 3:30:56 PM

Does she still use his last name? I thought that was kind of the barometer for the Ms vs Mrs.

8/8/2017 3:39:29 PM

I don't call anyone Mrs. John Doe and I get pissed off when I am referred to as Mrs. John Doe. You should address it to her, the name she goes by. I don't really get why we continue to use these outdated systems of referring to people BUT blahblahblahblah oh well who cares weddings are awesome

8/8/2017 4:16:08 PM

She still goes by her married name. And I honestly couldn't care less about how we address the invitations (especially since we are having a quite casual wedding), but seeing as how it's my parents that are "hosting" it and paying for it, we address it how they want, and they (my mom) want the proper way of addressing. The only other widow that I would be inviting would be my grandmother, and I'm sure she would have no issue with me saying Mrs. John Doe...but I think with the other, I will address it to Mrs. Jane Doe. I think you do that when the marriage ended with death as opposed to divorce when doing Mrs/Ms.

8/8/2017 5:08:39 PM

when is the wedding?

8/9/2017 10:19:11 AM

Next July. I'm doing as much as I can early. Once school starts (both work and my school) I'm going to be so busy it will be very hard to get much done. So I'm doing what I can early.

We also have quite a few people from out of state that we are inviting so we will be sending the save the dates in the next couple of months

8/9/2017 7:32:38 PM

Quote :

"I don't really get why we continue to use these outdated systems of referring to people BUT blahblahblahblah oh well who cares weddings are awesome"

Because women are property.

8/9/2017 7:50:40 PM

Yeah, I hate saying Mr. and Mrs. John Doe. I think when I have the DJ introduce us I'm going to have him say Mr. and Mrs. Jeremy and Sarah Supplee

8/10/2017 10:59:19 AM

I think for her invitation I would just put Jane Doe and no Ms. or Mrs. just in case it's still a sore spot for her and her plus 1.

8/10/2017 11:25:46 AM

Quote :

" it would seem awkward addressing it Mrs. John Doe, and instead maybe I should address it Mrs. Jane Doe"

uh, it's pretty simple. It's Mrs. Jane Doe. You include only the name of the invited. Even if her husband were alive, if he's not invited, it's still Mrs. Jane Doe. If both are alive and invited, the traditional is Mr and Mrs. John Doe; modern would be Mr. and Mrs. John and Jane Doe

8/10/2017 7:26:48 PM

I'm at a loss.

I want to invite my grandparents (my dad's parents) to my wedding. However, almost two years ago, at Christmas my parents, my two brothers, and my SIL had a fallout with my grandparents and my uncle. They have not spoken since.

I have kept touch with my grandparents, in hopes that someday everyone will make up and forgive. I've spoken to my mom about it telling her I want my grandparents to come. They are a part of my life and I want them there. BUT since my parents are paying for the wedding, both of my brothers and my SIL and one of my nieces are in the wedding party, I fear that inviting them would cause unnecessary drama (probably to the point of, I won't be in the wedding if they come drama).
My mom said she would try to talk to my dad about it, but there haven't been any changes.

I'm stressing out, because I'm sending out the save the dates this week, and there isn't one addressed to them. I don't want word to get out from other family members that they all got a save the date and my grandparents didn't get one. It's causing some serious anxiety on my part.

I just feel like (especially with one of my grandfathers being gone), on this big day in my life, I want ALL of my grandparents there. I was the only one my cousin was allowed to invite to her wedding, and she cried at the reception because of it. Part of me wants to just go ahead and send a save the date to them and hope that in the next 9 months something can happen...but the other part is 1) my parents are paying for it and 2) I'm afraid it would cause an issue.

I don't know, maybe I'm being selfish by wanting my family to put their differences behind them for such a big day in my life, but the then again, maybe they are all being selfish to hold on to such anger, knowing that it's causing me such pain.



[Edited on October 23, 2017 at 8:30 PM. Reason : ]

10/23/2017 8:25:51 PM

is it even feasible that they'd come? When I got married my grandparents were like "thanks but no thanks" b/c they couldn't handle the travel down to Raleigh for the wedding. The wife and I still go up to their place every now and then and that's good enough for all of us.

10/23/2017 8:27:35 PM

^Well, they are in better shape than my mom's mom. They still get out and about. My mom's mom came down here for my brother's wedding, and she is planning on coming to mine. I know that they would, if they were invited, would do everything in their power to come to the wedding.

10/23/2017 8:29:04 PM

You should invite them and your family should chill for one day at least.

10/23/2017 9:08:54 PM

livestream it

10/23/2017 9:11:18 PM

Call the weeding off

[Edited on October 23, 2017 at 10:21 PM. Reason : Thought it would autocorrect wedding]

10/23/2017 10:21:08 PM

longest planning period ever.

10/24/2017 10:58:11 AM

In the end it's your wedding and your day so you should do whatever and invite whoever makes you happy. If your family can't understand that their issues shouldn't matter on your day and be adults about it then maybe they are the ones that shouldn't be coming. So unless your fiance has an issue with someone coming since it's also their day then it shouldn't be an issue.

10/24/2017 11:54:26 AM

Not to be a Debbie Downer, but planning a wedding should be fun. If you think this is too much stress, just imagine how stressful planning a divorce is going to be...

10/25/2017 1:40:01 AM

your parents are trash

10/25/2017 7:21:50 AM

when's the date?

10/25/2017 9:45:27 AM

^^^ who the hell thought planning their wedding was fun?

10/25/2017 10:30:40 AM

^ someone who has never been involved in planning a wedding.

10/25/2017 10:36:21 AM

Quote :

"I want to invite my grandparents (my dad's parents) to my wedding. "

It's your day, not theirs, invite who you wish.

[Edited on October 25, 2017 at 1:07 PM. Reason : /]

10/25/2017 1:07:03 PM

I've been the best man twice and I might be getting married soon, so it's not like I don't know anything about weddings. Is it time consuming? Yes. Is it stressful trying to figure out the logistics? Sure. But overall, if you're the one planning it, you do have a lot of control over how fun or stressful the process is. It's literally the one day where you can do whatever you want and get a pass for sticking up for yourself and telling people to fuck off if they don't like it.

I'm super type A about most stuff, but planning vacations, dinners, etc doesn't have to be this awful soul sucking experience.

[Edited on October 25, 2017 at 1:52 PM. Reason : .]

10/25/2017 1:51:12 PM

^

"I played middle school basketball and still play NBA Jam at the local arcade...I totally know what it's like to be an NBA Player"

10/25/2017 6:08:38 PM

I know it annoys you when I'm right, but it's true.

10/25/2017 9:49:46 PM

I’ve literally never heard a person/couple, while in the middle planning for their wedding, say anything about it being fun

only about how stressful it is, for a multitude of reasons

10/26/2017 1:12:40 AM

I never said it's always fun, or that it's easy, or stress-free. I just said that it should be fun, because that's the mindset I think people ought to have. If planning a day that's supposed to be the happiest day of your life makes you miserable, that's on you. Plenty of ways to make it less stressful, and people still get married all the time despite how awful the process y'all are claiming it is to plan one.

We will probably do a destination wedding because I the ones I've attended have been really fun for everyone. Either that or a small ceremony with <50 people. Or elope. We don't expect our parents to pay for anything, and we don't want drama or a bunch of strings attached either. Sounds fun to me, at least.

If I were the OP, I'd say fuck it and invite the grandparents. Sometimes it's easier to ask for permission than forgiveness, and her parents are acting like twats anyway.

10/26/2017 1:29:23 AM

we went into our wedding planning with the idea of "we're both easy going people, we aren't gonna make this a stressful process" and it's still pretty stressful (still planning, wedding is next year). i get what you're saying, but some of the stress is just kinda unavoidable.

10/26/2017 6:15:26 AM

Quote :

" awful soul sucking experience. "

Nobody is claiming it's that, but it is stressful AF, regardless of your best efforts.

Here do this. Every time you you know of a couple getting married try and call the bride the day of and chit chat about meaningless BS for 3-4 minutes and let us know how that goes.

10/26/2017 10:57:58 AM

Quote :

"I know it annoys you when I'm right, but it's true. "

It probably would, but lucky for me that never happens.


The only scenarios I can imagine wedding planning being fun is if you're poor (or agree to just spend a couple thousand), and do something really simple and casual like an oyster roast with your friend's band playing and the plan is just for everyone to get drunk or have fun. Or possibly if you're filthy rich, money is no object, and everyone agrees on what to do.

But 99.9% of weddings have a combination or all of the following:

- An unrealistic budget
- Time constraints
- Issues with venue availability
- Disagreements with invitees
- Disagreements over miscellaneous shit (first dance, seating arrangements, band or DJ, buffet or sit down dinner, etc)

My in-laws paid for everything, had a pretty high budget (that we ended up going over), everybody agreed on most stuff, and everything went great. But there was still tons of stress (not on my end, of course). It's just unavoidable. And until you experience it first-hand (and being a best man/groomsmen a couple times is not first-hand), then you have no idea what you're talking about.

10/26/2017 10:58:39 AM

Quote :

" I've been the best man twice and I might be getting married soon, so it's not like I don't know anything about weddings."

Quote :

" We will probably do a destination wedding because I the ones I've attended have been really fun for everyone. Either that or a small ceremony with <50 people. Or elope. We don't expect our parents to pay for anything, and we don't want drama or a bunch of strings attached either. Sounds fun to me, at least."

dude, if you don't even know the basic details yet of your own wedding it means you haven't even started wedding planning and don't know shit about if it's fun or not. you haven't even learned that every wedding at one point started out as "maybe a destination, or maybe just small ceremony with a few people, lol or maybe we will elope." you aren't special, that is every single fucking couple at the beginning.

(and being in a wedding doesn't mean shit)

if everything goes well it is a "well it wasn't that bad, but I'm glad it's over" experience, but it is never fun

10/26/2017 11:35:53 AM

^^The word should is important. You can look it up in the OED, Webster's, or even just Google the word to find out its definition. In my second post, I literally fucking said it can be stressful. The point I was trying to illustrate is that while it is, indeed, time consuming, expensive, and stressful, there are several things that are far more stressful than planning a celebration of finding someone to spend the rest of your life with. For example, planning a divorce is much more stressful. so is moving, being a parent, planning a funeral, paying for college, and buying a house (it should also be fun/exciting, but it's typically not).

She can certainly feel stressed out about it, but that's her choice. I'm sorry your wife's rich parents made it so hard on you two. I would have thrown their money at the problem to get other people to plan that shit out better, which is what exactly sounds like what happened anyway.

^Oh yeah, I'm just in the "planning stage". It's not like I haven't bought the engagement ring or anything, or that we both agreed a long time ago we are NOT spending 20k plus on a fucking five hour party. You're right, me going into it being excited and trying to make it fun is stupid.

[Edited on October 26, 2017 at 11:43 AM. Reason : .]

10/26/2017 11:38:29 AM

Man, you get into some dumb arguments

10/26/2017 11:46:19 AM

Sorry y'alls wedding planning process wasn't fun. I really am.

10/26/2017 11:53:03 AM

^^ For some reason he likes to argue about stuff which he has no experience in.

I'll give him credit, his stubbornness is unwavering.

10/26/2017 11:55:32 AM

Quote :

" But 99.9% of weddings have a combination or all of the following: - An unrealistic budget - Time constraints - Issues with venue availability - Disagreements with invitees - Disagreements over miscellaneous shit (first dance, seating arrangements, band or DJ, buffet or sit down dinner, etc)"

plus, those decisions and disagreements aren't really just between the bride and groom...because, whether or not you want to, the parents are going to (or at least going to want to) have a say in several things. everybody has an opinion on everything. my fiance and i are trying to keep things simple but every fucking body is like "you know it'd be so pretty if y'all did this" and "what do you mean you don't wanna do xyz?!?! everybody does that!". and while they're trying to be helpful (mostly it's a couple of her friends and our moms) it still kinda adds to the stress.

we've learned quickly that it's very easy at the outset to say "we only wanna spend x amount and we wanna keep it simple and not make this is a difficult process" but it's much harder to actually pull that off. not saying it can't be done, but it's way easier said than done. if you can pull it off, good for you.

10/26/2017 11:56:30 AM

Parents and annoying friends/family can absolutely make the process horrible, and my sympathies for those who don't have much say in the matter, because they can't really be honest and tell people to fuck off. This is a chit chat thread, and while I stand by my comments, I think a lot of people missed the point I was trying to make, which was to tell her parents to fuck off NOW, because if they continue to make and her DH's lives miserable for a wedding, I wouldn't expect things to change much once they get married. Her family sounds particularly toxic and while I don't think it's as easy as cutting them completely out, she needs to start standing up to them sooner or later.

Our parents will definitely be invited and they'll come, but since we live far away from them and other relatives, a destination wedding or some place in Northern CA are the likeliest options. If it gets to be way too expensive and miserable, we are both OK with saying screw all of you, we're eloping

10/26/2017 12:16:30 PM

destination wedding = fuck you family and friends, use your vacation time and vacation budget to come to our wedding

[Edited on October 26, 2017 at 12:18 PM. Reason : .]

10/26/2017 12:18:46 PM

^ that's my opinion as well. i can't in good conscience invite people to a wedding that's gonna cost the guests a very significant amount of money to attend. i'm sure my close friends and family wouldn't mind...but i have no real desire to ask that of them.

Quote :

"Parents and annoying friends/family can absolutely make the process horrible, and my sympathies for those who don't have much say in the matter, because they can't really be honest and tell people to fuck off."

this isn't exactly what i'm saying, though. it's not that i/we don't have much say in the wedding. we have absolute final say in all of it. but we also have to consider the opinions of our closest family and friends. i don't wanna tell them to fuck off because they're also being extremely helpful in a lot of ways...but that seems to just come with the territory for wedding planning. tons of people are gonna have opinions on tons of things because they think they're being helpful. and it's not too difficult to tune a good portion of it out. but my overall point was, it's very easy to say "we're gonna keep it simple, it's gonna be easy" but that's still much easier said than done because in most situations it's not gonna just be the two of you making certain decisions...it's gonna be parents or close friends helping in the process that also help make those decisions and offer differing opinions.

[Edited on October 26, 2017 at 12:30 PM. Reason : b]

10/26/2017 12:24:35 PM

^, ^^ If that's how you want to see it, that's fine. They aren't for everyone. We both love to travel, and most of our super close friends do too. My parents specifically suggested it when I told them I'm proposing.

Both of our families are pretty complicated (multiple marriages, step kids, etc) and everyone pretty much does their own thing, while we get together for holidays, family trips, anniversaries, etc. It works OK for us.

Not saying my circumstances apply to everyone, but believe it or not, people have different opinions and experiences.

[Edited on October 26, 2017 at 12:25 PM. Reason : .]

10/26/2017 12:25:20 PM

nah, i think it's a great idea in theory. but it's not for me at all. sounds like a very fun thing, though.

10/26/2017 12:31:30 PM

I like destination weddings, but you could possibly be fucking over your less prosperous friends and family. Regular weddings are expensive to attend...destination weddings are texa$.

10/26/2017 12:51:47 PM

Dumb argument above aside, what your family is doing infuriates me, for you. Holding grudges against family is a sure-fire way to miss out on great memories and set the stage for some serious guilt issues once someone dies. It's just not worth it. And it's totally not fair that the stupid grudge is causing YOU stress simply because you want all of your family there on your special day.

Send your grandparents the save-the-date.

10/26/2017 12:54:56 PM

^^ I know my younger brother won't be able to afford everything since he's in college and will be part of the wedding party, so we can help him out financially, but most of my closest friends are like us: they've got decent jobs, they like to travel, and they'll be glad they have an excuse to go somewhere fun. While we might have kids one day, neither of us will be sad if it's a kid free wedding. My sister is pregnant and has another on the way, so I know she wouldn't be able to make it anywhere besides NC or DC and that is NOT going to happen.

Yeah, it'll be a challenge to find a place that's easy for East Coast relatives to get to, and one that my West Coast family (basically my very closest friends and cohorts from grad school) will feel comfortably paying to attend, but I think it'll be fun doing the research.

10/26/2017 1:00:24 PM