With my wedding day less than 6 weeks away, I’m steadily freaking out… for no reason. Everything has been acquired or planned for. All vendors have been secured. I’ve gotten about 80% of the RSVP cards before this Friday’s deadline. Hell, we’re actually already legally married.
There is little to do but be plagued with doubt over our decision to forgo many of the extraneous details that the wedding industry positions as traditional wedding day essentials. Will guests be scandalized by the lack of personalized cocktail napkins? Will everyone be inwardly scoffing at the wedding party’s non-uniform attire? Will my searing contempt of and refusal to allow Hokey-Pokey type dances ruin everyone else’s night?
Niggled by these and a million other questions, I recently read a message board that discusses wedding pet peeves on Boston.com , and was gratified to note that my judgment is somewhere between “acceptable” and “impeccable.” Here are some findings about wedding pet peeves:
‘Lack of open bar’ is the number one wedding pet peeve (which is funny because ‘unruly drunk guests’ appears to be the number two wedding pet peeve.) This confirmed my suspicion that all the other wedding stuff is just window dressing. Guests won’t remember if we gave out personalized water bottles or monogrammed candy bars, but they’ll remember if they had to pay for their own cocktails.
‘Garter/Bouquet toss’ is surprisingly high-ranking. Honestly, I briefly toyed with the idea of doing one or both, but rejected it because our guest list is about 90% non-single. In fact, nearly the only single people will be my siblings and various step-siblings, and how traumatizing would it be if the guy who catches the garter is related to the girl who catches the bouquet?
‘Chicken dances, macarenas, electric slide, hokey-pokey dances’ are just not my style. I get too distracted by the dualing desires to rip my ears off and scratch my eyes out.
‘Cake smooshing’ is just a shameful waste of cake, and if there’s one thing I’ll never, ever do, it’s waste cake.
‘Games to claim the centerpiece’ seem like a nifty idea when you’re in the wedding planning mode, but I can see how the execution of a wedding game can be tricky. (That said, ‘arm-wrestling’ isn’t strictly considered a game, is it?)
‘Cocktail napkins, favors, or any other disposal paper item that is personalized with names and date on them’ and ‘Photos of the couple everywhere’ didn’t have many detractors, probably because a wedding guest must be touchy bordering on priggish to get annoyed by a couple who posits their wedding day as a special event that glorifies their love. But while I don’t mind these things at other people’s weddings, the last thing I want to do is turn my wedding into a festival of idolatry. We are Bride and Groom… worship and honor us. Besides, as states above, all anyone will really remember is if there was an open bar.
