Two wedding tidbits

I've been trying to not write too much about the wedding lately. Over the last couple of days though there's been a lot of talk here around one or two of the planning issues and I thought that putting them down might do some other people some good.

It turns out that some decisions made VERY early on really do effect what kind of event you are going to have. This should be obvious and not really worth mentioning except that those decisions also seem to be some of the least considered because your not really in event planning mode yet. And then once you realize all of the interactions you're locked into something.

We angsted quite a bit over the city we were having the wedding in. We thought that that would be a primary problem for attendance - that the travel aspect would be a deal breaker for some people.

In hindsite I believe that the travel aspect has not been as big an issue as our Sunday lunch time slot. Many people appear to not be able to get out of work on the Monday. Had we done a Saturday night they might have been able to travel on Saturday and Sunday and still make their work schedule. As is, we have people that could likely make the rehearsal dinner but then have to leave before the completion of the ceremony.

Now, we wound up with a Sunday wedding for a reason, and moving it to a Saturday night would have had substantive dominos. I mention it because the Saturday night dominos were ones that were obvious in planning, while the Sunday dominos (while appearing to work for many reasons) threw us a little bit of a curve in a way that wasn't immediately visible.

Also, most of the wedding prep books say not to have an A list and a B list for invitations. I guess that's good advice, because nobody wants to find out they're on the B list. The reality of it is that you will make a list (everyone will make a list) and then all parties involved will pare their list down to your invitation total. You could very easily think of the difference between your original list and your final list as your B list.

Here's what I am really talking about though. The books suggest having your RSVPs due like 14 days before the wedding. Most of the vendors don't need their final orders till then, it gives you time to do placecards and seating arrangements, and most importantly it coincides with the two-week discount airfare. The problem is that if you get an overwhelming number of regrets, with 14 days left there isn't much you can do about it.

If you had your RSVP date say 5 weeks ahead of the event, you could open up the wedding to some of the people who got bumped for space. I think you could even sell it to them that way without much difficulty: "I wanted to invite you all along, but my Mom had so many guests..." This might work even better for locals. The point being that so close in there is nothing you can do. With a little more headroom you might be able to react.

Also, just as a sideline, I now believe that the save the date cards really aren't sufficient. If you really want someone to attend, sometime halfway between the save the dates and the invites you ought to make a phone call.

Anyway, that's today's wedding wisdom.