Those Who Went Before Me...

This past weekend Eddie and I attended the wedding of two friends from church.  The wedding was held at a small ranch in the Inland Empire, and the reception was a mile or so away in the mother of the bride's insanely gorgeous backyard.  It was definitely one of the most fun and beautiful weddings I've been to (and the food was delicious!).  It got me thinking about the many weddings I've been to over the years.  I've always gone to a lot of weddings because I have a pretty big family and I went to a big church.  However, I didn't really start to think about specific details (more like "Where's the food?") until my roommate got married to her now-husband the summer after my junior year of college.  At that point, Eddie and I had been together for almost two years, and that was the first friends' weddings I'd been to (as opposed to my parents' friends).

 

 Us at said wedding (in 2006).  I actually think we look pretty much the same.

It was at that point that I started to notice certain elements at the weddings I went to and wonder how I was going to do that when I got married.  Since then, I've been to plenty of friends' weddings, and these are a few of the tips I've learned and cool details I've noticed*:

• Charissa and G's wedding had so many simple, budget-friendly, and creative ideas (just like Charissa)!  Theirs was the first in which I saw the (now trendy) idea of having bridesmaids wear their own black dresses.  Charissa unified the look (since the dresses were different, and there were probably other girls in black dresses at the wedding) by making purple sashes for the bridesmaids to wear.  Another neat idea from Charissa's wedding were their cake centerpieces.  This was helpful in several ways.  First of all, small cakes are usually cheaper than a large tiered cake.  Secondly, you don't have to get flower centerpieces--those things take up a huge chunk of the flower budget.  Lastly, the guests can eat cake whenever they want instead of waiting for people to serve it to them.
• My cousin and her husband were able to take a ginormous guest list and still make the wedding feel personalized and fun.  Her husband J actually serenaded Vir with "their song," Jack Johnson's "Better Together" (love that song!) and it's actually where Eddie got the idea to learn guitar for his (2.5 years later) proposal to me.
• E + C's wedding was the first (and one of the only) wedding I've been to that had the ceremony and reception at the same place.  It was so convenient not to have to drive anywhere between the ceremony and reception!  That was one of the things that I was looking for when it came to venues, but alas, it was not meant to be.  E + C also had a dessert buffet in lieu of a traditional cake, an idea that was super popular with the guests and that I'd be all over if it weren't for the fact that our menu comes with dessert (and a darn good one at that).
• M + E's (see Eddie in one of the pictures as a groomsman!) wedding had satellite flower centerpieces, which are small centerpieces scattered around the table rather than one large centerpiece.  Because M + E are such big fans of beer, they bought a keg of a delicious local brew.
• B + E's wedding is the only one I've been to that didn't serve a meal (they had a reception with heavy hors d'oeuvres).  And you know what? Everyone was totally fine with it and they paid only a fraction of the cost of a full meal!

*Note: Just because I didn't mention your wedding above doesn't mean that it was boring or uninspired.  These are just the things that popped into my head first!
And here are some of the things that I've learned from weddings that haven't gone 100% smoothly (and trust me, none of them do).  I'll keep these anonymous:

• Toasts and speeches always, always need to be written out, even if you don't plan on reading from them.  I've heard one too many rambly best man speeches.
• Even on a hot summer day, outdoor weddings can get pretty windy, so no open flames or little pieces of paper lying out.
• Don't spend too much on favors, because 50% of the guests will leave them behind when they leave.
• If you're doing an iPod wedding, set the music to cross-fade so that there aren't awkward 5-second pauses in between songs for the dancing.

I'm going to a mind-boggling five weddings this year (not counting my own)!  Of course I'll be noticing the details that the brides (and grooms!) invested so much time into, and I'll try to blog about them if I remember to bring my camera and get the couple's permission.

What were some of your favorite things about friends' weddings that you've been to?