I was having a think about what I would and wouldn't do again for our wedding, hopefully these words of advice may have some application to you, caveated of course that everyone has different circumstances and concerns. I hope it helps in some small back-of-the-mind way. We had a ceremony and lunch at The White Rabbit for 120 people, followed by a lunch the next day for family and our parents' friends of 240 at the St Regis, with very little overlap in guests. I know that sounds huge and I wished we could have just done the first event but it would never have satiated the parent's wishes.
Mostly because of the numbers, I would never call a wedding budget-friendly, it was more about being budget-concious and choosing to spend the money on independant or local vendors. We didn't aim to profit from the wedding, nor did we want to pay for, in particular, the more traditional wedding banquet. By dropping many of the things we didn't really care about and concentrating the budget in a few key directions, I'd like to think we got away with a smaller crowd and more focused celebration, that was more representative of what is important to us as a couple.
I would still have ...
picked a time in the year that we liked. We're suckers for red Christmas berries, colder weather, roast brandied turkey, all ye merry gentlemen and all that good cheer stuff. It was a plus to have people in high spirits, friends on vacation and yes, towering heaps of flowers in the hotel lobby. On their way out, our guests were seranaded by deep choirs of bells and carollers. Also, more casual acquaintences would reject because they had holiday plans but those who cared enough would be around. Price-wise though, I am glad that we conciously avoided the two weeks before Christmas and similarly, the Chinese New Year period.
I would have ....
saved more on my dress. I decided early on that I wanted a dress with a good designer cut, which I could wear the whole time. I didn't care if it was brand new or custom-made and wanted something worthy of passing on, so that the dress could experience more good days out, rather than taking up my cupboard space and yellowing in our heat. I wanted ease of movement rather than traditional veils and costume changes. God knows (and so does everyone else, I sadly suspect) I don't need to prove I've got a lot of clothes.
I have many friends who have differing experiences but I found going to Singaporean designers formulaic, slightly condescending and extremely poor value. My typical experience was, I was given a total of three stiff, sample dresses that they felt I could fit into and sketches that were more masquerade, (or flamenco, or hooker) then stylish. It seemed ridiculous to spend up to $6000 on what amounted to a rental dress without an internationally recognized designer and no residual value- if I really was going to that extravagance, I wanted to waltz into Carolina Herrera or Valentino and buy something that I would normally never afford, without a second thought or care.
So I turned to the internet. I had a great time surfing Vera Wang, Monique Lhullier, Carolina Herrera, Peter Som, Ulla Maaja, 3.1 Phillip Lim and stores like Net-a-porter and Jcrew. On oncewed.com and preownedweddingdresses.com, I found brand-new dresses and once-worn dresses for $1500-3000. At David's Bridal, Vera Wang opened a capsule wedding dress collection with her famous designs for $700-1500. I thought about donating my dress to a store I found called The Bridal Garden (in NYC) that sells and re-sells designer wedding dresses on consignment from the brands, with the profit going to a children's charity. I knew my size from trying on dresses at the flagship stores here and on a vacation in the US, but given the regular, numbered sizing, I would also have chanced it on a close size with local alteration.
In the end, I bought a modern-vintage chantilly lace Vera Wang dress brand new for about $3500 and sold it afterward on oncewed.com for $2500. I had it for two months, wore it for two days and for photo days and received photos from the beautiful Indian-Canadian wedding that it went on to. (That girl then sold it to a Korean girl marrying her British schoolteacher boyfriend, for an even better deal!). It was still a splurge but I did love it. Z. bought an expensive but regular suit from a Zegna sale for $950, which he now uses for work.
Our bridesmaids picked out a dip-dyed summer Jcrew dress, our groomsmen wore their own suits with striped Brooks Brothers ties bought online in a sale and we bought two $80 billowy, chiffon dresses for our flower girls from LifeBaby. I tailored a simple red and peach silk cheongsum in Beijing. I reset old diamond chips into a thin, rose gold band for a wedding ring and bought Z's titanium ring online.
These are symbols of a wedding, not hallmarks of a marriage. Most guys will lose their wedding ring at least once in the first two years of marriage, so don't overspend. My cousin lost his jumping into the sea on the first day of his honeymoon and Z's ring turned up inside our oven after the first year! Every outfit, with the exception of my cheongsum, has been used frequently since that day and to be honest, I don't feel, even today, that any of them were
neccesary.
I would have ...
divided the tasks more distinctly. Instead of being hung up on "doing things together", I should have separated the work to be done more distinctly by who even cared and given Z. or each set of parents specific things they were wholly in charge of. I felt taxed because I often sought opinion when I had already a decision in mind, or vice versa, didn't achieve a clear and full delegation. Boyfriends and parents can easily be tasked with a multitude of deliveries, cake orders, caterers, sounds systems, rehearsals, wedding dress collections and printing, if the decision is firm and the instructions direct. Parents, rather than husbands, are great helping to write and deliver thank you cards. The big lesson really is to be realistic and only take on what you can manage. Speak to the stakeholders and make them all manage something. You should never feel like you're working, nor that you have to hire a random planner.
I would still have ...
spent on printed invitations. Invitations help to set the mood for the party and they have a lot of personality. In today's wedding fatigued society, we really need more of that personal touch. Singapore is also a printing hub so it is extremely inexpensive. We paid an online graphic designer $50 to calligraph an invitation, design a wedding emblem, stickers for rice packets, guest favour boxes and thank you notes. We deliberately used these inexpensive paper and fabric items, in conjunction with specific fonts and colours and some foods like Pelligrinos and Coronas to create pops of colour and create a coordinated look through the wedding. If you can identify a design off a website, local printers can often copy simple designs for free.
One thing that I think brides really need to know is that you have to be honest about how much aesthetics mean and cost, to you. I've had several friends who, two weeks before their wedding, asked me what they could do to "prettify" their wedding. What I really wanted to say (but didn't) is that you can't tack on aesthetic any more than you can symbolism. In our case, the approach we agreed on was focused on being 'natural', 'yellow', 'rustic but stylish', 'edible' and 'communication with guests', but I've heard all kinds of key words from emotional, spiritual and religious to elegant, 'Miami luxurious', geometric, blue, forested.
You have to be real about the extent of, or the lack of, your vision right from the start and then it has to live through every detail and aspect, from the size and venue, to the itimacy of the invites, to the choice of a dress or the vows, or the food or the cake. If you never defined a style, then your wedding will look exactly as it was planned to- practical and serviceable. I'd like to gloss over this by saying oh, every wedding has meaning and is pretty but that too, is unfair, to think that either just 'happens', is like saying white is the absence of colour, as opposed to a deliberate and disciplined choice.
In a concious decision to concentrate the expenditure on the tables, we omitted flowers on the ailse or stage and asked the hotel to line the ballroom edges with plants instead and filled large vases with lemons, which we bought cheap and used to make cake and curds afterward. (Fruit is immensely cheaper than flowers in Singapore , provide a nice burst of colour and can be eaten afterward). I bought fabric to make wide chequered table runners in the wedding colours and printed custom coasters, favours boxes, program and menus on kraft paper.
The cost of printing an invitation, coaster, favour box and thank you card per guest is barely $1.50-2, which buys you so much in terms of control, quality of communication and guest experience but would have bought us nothing in flowers or installations. We bought our own flowers at cost for the bouquets and we told the hotel to concentrate on a just a few varieties of flowers and bought in the wide vases on each table from Ikea, so that guests could take the home the flowers provided.
I would still have ...
spent on edible favours. Having received a lot of chocolates and odd trinkets, it mattered to me to have a sizable and edible guest favour, that guests could bring something home and share with their family for breakfast. We researched a lot of baked options and finally gifted small loaves of Auntie Doreen's famous fruit cake, then printed favour boxes in our wedding colours and vintage script, which she packed them into. We used the back of the favour boxes to print a thank you message and because the cakes were substantial enough, we sent them out to guests who declined our invitation but gave gifts. At times, this seemed like more trouble then it was worth but looking back, it's the one $2500 expense that I'm still glad we made. The budget for it was extra but I would say it came out of what we otherwise may have spent on decorations, photography or jewellery.
I attended two weddings, one where the couple had hand-written a note to every guest, to go with the fans distributed at their outdoor wedding. Another made a donation to a cancer society in lieu of favours and on each plate was a small card explaining this, a message of thanks and the link to the organization. The thing about a thoughtful, personal and unique favour is that it is such a nice gesture and people do appreciate and remember the extra effort and gift. It also doubles as a chance to say an immediate, nice thank you, if you're the sort that's going to take 6 months to send out thank you cards *guilty look*.
I wish we would have ...
made our parents write a physical guestlist from the start. For about a year after we got married, my parents would meet people and say to me, "we didn't invite them for your wedding". More often than not, I would have no idea who the person was and be fairly sure they would have not wanted to attend my wedding. If I were to do it over, I would have tried for more parental buy-in from the start, rather than trying to make the impossible happen, without a realistic idea of how many people we were expected to eventually invite. The guestlist is not an important thing, it is the only thing. It is the thing that determines your location, budget, expenses, mood, style, your very experience. If your guestlist is 1000, then many things in this list will be moot, there is not much point in music, or favours, or cake, it's just going to all get diluted in the numbers and noise.
We would frequently say to the parents that if a guest did not know them very well and didn't know anyone else at their table, then they should invite them for a get together at a separate occasion. Another very smart idea, which came too late for me, is for each involved party to say what are the three most important things to them at this wedding, (say, personal guestlist of 150, good food and chinese invitations for grandmother's friends), which I would then committ to making happen. This would separate the inherant from the mere suggestions. For the parents, this makes them feel important and heard, while also ring-fencing the concept of relative importance and outlining where they might be stepping on other people's toes.
I would not have....
been defensive about the guestlist. At the end of the day, the best way to see it is that if people are unhappy about being left out, it's because you throw good parties. People are only sorry to not have attended, if they believe the party was good! It sounds so silly to say this but I received enough rabid "I
naturally assumed we were friends and I'd be invited" emails that I wished I had spoken to fewer people for the entire year before. You can never please everyone. Just explain that your parents needed most of the seats, your husband and you agreed to invite guests who were close to
both of you (funny how many people
don't fall into that category), that you hope they don't feel that just because you don't attend a wedding means you're not friends, that you invited companies of people and would therefore rather catch up individually and then, just move on.
I would have ....
split out our tea ceremony and done it the weekend before. On the day of, there is so much emotion and time constraint that our tea ceremonies were prioritised to the block of time that came in between other events. The ceremony itself was a bit of a joke, no one remembered their place in the family age heirachy, the old people were sanctimonious and the young people embarassed.
If I could do it over, I would have chosen a time that was leisurely and a place that was beautiful. I would have had a shared meal and hired a portrait photographer for gorgeous black-and white family portraits, not the overexposed, bent over snapshot pictures that we have. Documented family gatherings are a rare and wonderful thing, I wish we would have taken more time and effort to make it a special tribute to tradition and culture. Sometimes I reflect that compared to what it could have been, it was pretty rubbish.
I wish we would have ....
had more cake! I'm really glad we spluged on delicious cake. Don't ever let your mom convince you that people are used to seeing fake cake. People are used to seeing it because it's
there. But nobody, really nobody, turns down good cake, especially at the end of a meal. We chose a three tier buttercream, lemon poppy seed and raspberry puree cake for 120 people with a large but hollow fourth base tier and I wish that we had paid up for a cake base tier because in the end, the slices were small and people kept asking for more, coming up to me and telling me how good the cake was and I actually do really regreat that we didn't even get a slice for ourselves!
One reason that we picked the St Regis is because they serve champagne and a beautiful dark mousse chocolate cake, which you can have with or in place of the Chinese dessert. We chose the latter, both to save money and time on service because we were concerned that people would take their first dessert as their cue to leave and miss the cake completely. Even my dad commented on people wanting extra cake, although he was very disbelieving before that dessert would be missed.
I would have spent more on ....
live music. We had an amazing jazz singer called Mandy Gaines at the St Regis, we found her at Harry's Bar, straight from the Cinncinati Jazz Festival and she really rocked it. By bypassing an entertainment company to engage her, we paid just $400 for each bandmember. At the last minute, she asked us if we would like to also hire her friend, a wonderful R&B singer called Richard Jackson, at a similar, discounted rate. Having not factored this into our budget, we demurred but on reflection, I wish we had done it. Guests whom I feared didn't know that many other people, all enjoyed and bonded over just listening to her psuedo-concert and the majority of guests comments was about the standout music, rather than any other aspect.
I would have spent more on...
the best photography. After it's all over, all you have to remember it by are the photos. I totally balked at expensive photo packages and now I realize that even with the huge number of photos that were taken, few were timeless and many were duds. Although we don't look at them often, I now know that I should have spent more not to have more photos, but to improve the quality of the photos. I should also have arranged within the price, for albums for the parents. I intended to put together my own low-cost ones but two years afterward, the parents still want them and I haven't delivered.
Given how little we've (in particular, Z.)looked through the wedding photos, I'm still quite glad we didn't pay for a videographer. He was really against the melodrama of a video and we're both a bit unnatural in front of the camera but I have had friends who've told me that they wished they could replay the moments and speeches of the day, as it passes in a adrenalin-confused blur. I must also say that it's the videos in blogs and sent to me by friends that are moving and really give a good picture of what transpired on the day, it does a much better job of emotional content than photographs.
