Themed Wedding Events

With Halloween right behind us and Christmas parties in the near future, some brides and grooms are throwing themed wedding events. In an earlier post, we discussed how wedding attire can be confusing. When is it ok to wear khakis and not suit pants? When should women wear a long dress verses a short dress?
These problems can all be solved by telling your guests exactly how to dress – 80’s style! Hollywood Glamour wedding! Fairytale theme!

What is more fun than forcing your guests to dress up in outfits they quite possibly won’t ever wear again?

Isn’t that kind of tyranny meant only to be directed at bridesmaids?

Themed wedding events do have their advantages. Firstly, they have more personality than their traditional counterparts. Melissa Rycroft recently had a country-western bridal shower and I also recently went to a rodeo rehearsal dinner.


Having a theme for a shower or rehearsal dinner is a fun way to incorporate the your personality and interests into the event. It is also a cute way to get your guests more involved and they will be talking about your event beforehand, as people do with Halloween costumes.

The other noteworthy aspect is…costumes replace bridesmaid dresses. Your Shakespearean bridesmaid attire might be more flattering (those corsets really suck you in), less expensive and less hideous than a typical bridesmaid dress.

If you choose to have a themed wedding, just be weary! Your dream of the perfect Christmas wedding might be ruined if your uncle thinks it's funny to come dressed as Santa, only so he can have your bridesmaids sit on his lap and tell him if they’ve been naughty or nice OR your wedding day elves (wedding vendors) are acting more like the Grinch!

Some of your guests will hate dressing up – sorry, it's the truth, but it is your wedding and you get to decide whether all the women have to wear flapper outfits or all the men have to wear Phantom of the Opera masks.

Just make sure when it comes time to kiss the groom, you have the right man under the mask!

Did you have a themed wedding event? We’d love to see pictures!

Rehearsal Dinners - The Kickoff Event

It’s the day before your wedding and despite feeling anxious and nauseous, you prepare yourself for the biggest pre-game event of your life thus far…..the Rehearsal Dinner. Rehearsal Dinners are more like the kickoff to the wedding weekend than an actual chance to rehearse for the wedding. I mean, once you’ve seen one wedding you’ve seen them all….walk down the aisle, try not to trip and stand for an hour while vows are engaged and tears are shed. It’s not that complicated.

If rehearsal dinners are intended for people to rehearse getting drunk for the actual event, then I think we have succeeded. We have seen more drunk people at events leading up to the wedding than at the actual wedding.

Traditionally, the pre wedding dinner is a chance for the groom’s parents to throw a party for the betrothed and their closest friends and families. But often times the event becomes too large and overdone, making the wedding almost anticlimactic. If you are having a big wedding you do not need a pre party the size of Madonna’s pre-Oscar party. Of course you need to do something, especially for out of town guests and your bridal party, but it does not need to include the entire guest list. Do you really want your friends already exhausted by the time you say ‘I do’?

The most successful rehearsal dinners are the ones which are small, understated and end early. As the bride you want to make sure that you are in bed early the night before (even if you stay up watching reruns of John and Kate Plus 8 because you can’t sleep). Do not for one second consider ‘going out after’ the party. We don’t need to tell you why that’s a bad idea.

Enjoy your Rehearsal Dinner; listen to your friends give speeches about you, have a glass of wine, eat the food (because you won’t at the wedding) and then say goodnight….and go home! Enough said!!!

A Toast To The Happy Couple

A best man once said…”I've heard that a best man speech should be as long as it takes for the groom to make love...so thanks everyone, enjoy the night”

Why is a best man speech usually so much funnier than a maid of honor speech?

And now that rehearsal dinners are the mandatory pre-game event, there are entire nights dedicated to men trumping women. With rehearsal dinners popping up as often as Internet photos of Adam Lambert, we thought it was important to inform women why their speeches are lacking the male pizazz. As women, we are bummed to make this sweeping generalization, but it is the truth.

The problem with many speeches by bridesmaids is that they are filled with cheesy quotes, off-beat rhymes or inside jokes. Cheesy quotes and poems were cute while you were making your Senior year collage, they were adorable for your sorority rush skit and are even still fitting for your parents anniversary gift.

However, listening to 6 girls alternating rhyming lines is even less enjoyable than that new Parks and Recreations show. Because a poem is made up of fragmented sentences, listening to it sounds like the teacher in Charlie Brown (wah wah wah). If we actually do hear what you are saying, we can bet it goes something like “we have been friends for so many years, through the laughter and through the tears.” By the time you get to sentence 4, everyone in the room has already stopped listening and asked for 2 more shots to numb the pain.

If you think you are a good poem-writer, and you can have someone other than your mom verify this, then you might be an exception to this “please don’t torture us with a poem” rule. We consider ourselves exceptions to the “no poem” rule, but only because we practiced for many years at camp, writing multiple alma maters/cheers and receiving compliments for our writing. So if you can write a good poem, please stand up there alone and recite it, use some witty humor and speak very slowly.

If you aren’t funny, which, 60% of you probably aren’t, we suggest you just be sweet and nice. Being sweet and complementary goes a lot farther than corny. Tell one nice story about your friendship with the bride and say what a lovely couple she makes with the groom. Complement them and hand the microphone to someone funnier.

For everyone, funny or not, tell stories that everyone can relate to. Be general and do not tell inside jokes. If you want to tell the bride/groom inside jokes, save it for the wedding card – or any other time when you aren’t in front of 50 people. Don’t be too inappropriate, its awkward for the grandmas.

Lastly, a big no-no - do not make the speech a personal attack on the bride/groom if you happen to not be their biggest fan and do not bring up unpleasant situations from the couple’s past. Wedding Crashers was totally on point - “ the whole funny-because-it's-true bit only works if the truth is a *small* thing like "everyone knows Jennifer likes to shop, ha ha ha".

Before deciding to have a rehearsal dinner, you should really evaluate your bridal party’s speech-giving capabilities. It might be the difference between a great night and a snoozefest.