Value for money is extremely important. When it comes to a wedding, there are potentially a lot of suppliers to be hired. You don’t want to hire one just because “most people do”. However, you don’t want to miss out on one who could save you a lot of work and peace of mind. The Wedding Planner Debate falls under those categories.
Of course, if you’re having a micro-wedding, perhaps in the back garden, with a handful of guests, you’re not likely to need a wedding planner. Equally, if you’re having a medium-sized affair at a hotel, say, the booking may well come with an in-house event planner. The latter may suffice.
Avoiding the Wedding Planner
So you may not use a planner:
if you can’t afford it
if you want to do everything (such as sourcing and hiring suppliers) yourself
you are able to use a great in-house event co-ordinator
you haven’t found one who shares your vision
Contemplating a Wedding Planner
You should give some thought to hiring a wedding planner in any of the following scenarios:
if you are holding a big (especially destination) event.
If you’re using a dry-hire or marquee wedding. Everything needs to be organised from scratch for these.
A wedding planner can take an unbiased and objective view of issues, and may actually end up saving you money.
The wedding planner may also save you money because they have a network of trusted professional contacts who they regularly work with.
You don’t have to hire a wedding planner for weeks at a time. Some will work with you for just the week of the wedding and some can be hired for the big day alone. Obviously, you’ll have to judge which will work best according to the size of your function.
A good Wedding Planner will have experience and wisdom to fall back on, when advising you or suggesting ideas. They probably have learned over time what works best.
Because they usually handle the suppliers (notably, on the day itself), they will take the stress off you. They are being paid to do the worrying and to make any snap decisions that may be necessary.
So although each occasion is different, and my advice only applies in certain circumstances, I would certainly advocate serious consideration of employing a Wedding Planner. A professional, but sympathetic, experienced person may be worth their weight in gold.
In my celebrant work, I’ve come across some astonishingly hard-working, but good-humoured and accomplished professional Wedding Planners.
I realise that there can be as many answers to this question as there are different circumstances. So, if your opinion differs from mine, that’s OK! (You’re welcome to let me know what you are finding most trying.)
In my experience, however, I’d emphasise two danger areas: money and parents.
Budget
When planning a ceremony, you have to be singing from the same hymn-sheet. Decide how much money will be available. Talk this over with the relevant people and do your best to reach a compromise, if you can’t agree on everything.
An example of an issue that needs sorting may be how much religion (if any) you want in your ceremony. Can you manage some give-and-take, if you’re not in full agreement? So, could the ceremony be mostly secular (but spiritual) with a conventional prayer or two included?
Or, depending on the ceremony, could you make it secular, but with someone doing a (religious) blessing?
There’s also ritual – you could borrow from various traditions, if you wanted. Some are “heavier” than others, so you could find one (or more) to suit.
These are things your celebrant could helpfully discuss with you.
My final point about expenditure is that, although you should not exceed your budget, you may find something you want that costs a little more than you planned for. It may be possible to accommodate this by juggling your costs. For example, you could possibly afford the celebrant of your dreams (me, obviously!), if you picked a weekday for your ceremony (often cheaper) or chose flowers that are in season …
Parents
If your parents are bankrolling your event, or they have strong personalities and feelings about, say, religion, you will have to take their wishes into consideration. Again, you may be able to compromise a bit. Think it through before you draw up battle-lines! What can you afford to sacrifice (or include) for the sake of harmony?
The bottom line of the matter is that it is YOUR event and you should be able to have it the way you want. Sure, there may have to be a little that you’d rather not include, but your parents must accept that their role is to enable you to have YOUR day. You should be grateful and, where reasonable, amenable, but you want to end up with a day that is memorable for the right reasons!
Planning your mixed-faith ceremony doesn’t have to be a challenge. However, there is potential for disagreements, so it is as well to be as ready for them as possible. Certainly, clarity of vision, patience, tolerance and compromise are good skills to be able to employ!
By the way, if I refer only to “mixed-faith weddings”, that is more for simplicity’s sake. My comments may also apply to other ceremonies, such as Vow Renewals or Namings.
Lucidity
Fairly obviously, you will need to put some thought into the planning of your ceremony. If you and your partner wish to include religious elements, various questions spring to mind.
Why are you actually including those religious elements? Is it your choice or somebody else’s? How much religion do you actually want? Would you prefer the contributions from each religion to be more or less equal? How should you balance them out?
How much do you and your partner agree on the answers to these questions?
Compromise
Once you have clarity in what you are both seeking, the crucial point is reaching a consensus.
It can be complicated, if you’re being pressurised into including certain elements. You shouldn’t have to accept being bulldozed because, say, your parents are bankrolling the event. Or they may be putting on the ‘martyr act’ (“You must do what you want, dear – we’ll just put up with it”). Ultimately, it is your day, and that fact should be respected.
Having said that, if there’s room for compromise, then go for it. Maybe your father would like to bless you – that could be a big deal for him, and relatively acceptable for you.
What you mustn’t do is to let a disagreement fester or remain unresolved. You can’t afford to put off an issue that will need to be sorted for sure later.
The Ceremony
You may be able to work with your celebrant and easily come to an understanding. It will be your decision, finally, how much – or how little – religion or ritual you will want. What will you put in – and what leave out?
A conversation with your officiant will help a lot, but you will need to give thought to what needs to go into the service. Who will participate? Is there something you specifically want to include? How traditional do you want the ceremony to be?
It’s up to you (with the celebrant’s guidance) what you put into the ceremony. You can have it “top-heavy” towards one religion, if you want. You can even make it pretty traditional, if you choose. Or the ceremony can contain a passing nod to religion, but be mostly spiritual.
I have helped a lot of couples through issues such as these, so please feel free to chat to me.
As a celebrant, I sometimes want to cry at a ceremony I’m conducting. That may be surprising. But this might be because I have lost someone myself, or it may just be the reflected emotion of the occasion.
But is it right for me to cry? And is it right for the punter to cry?
And then, I’m a bloke. It’s not the done thing for men to cry, surely?
The last question can be blown out of the water at once. There’s no reason why men shouldn’t display emotions. Crying (and laughing) are part of what makes us human.
Happy Occasions
Crying at weddings is more common than you might think. You almost expect it from the bride’s mother, say, but sometimes it can spread surprisingly wide. (Obviously, if there’s been a recent death in a family or somebody is on the way out, it’s quite normal for there to be tears.)
And we often don’t realise the adversity a couple may have had to overcome simply to reach the day. No wonder they, or relatives/friends are crying!)
Also, when I see the look of love a couple next to me is exchanging, it’s hard for me to keep a dry eye.
Funerals
You expect crying at a funeral (even if the emphasis is on celebrating the life). However, funeral families often tell me that they want to stand up and read something, but don’t dare to. They think they won’t be able to get through it, or will break down in tears.
I normally reassure them that one purpose of a funeral is to release emotion. Moreover, it’s totally expected that people close to the deceased will be emotionally involved. No one is going to criticise you for wanting to shed a tear. (And I can always take over, if needs be.)
Where I personally found it hard to hold things together was during the funeral of my dear uncle. We had been very close. But again people recognised my relationship and nobody minded.
I think that even harder was the funeral I conducted for somebody I had never known. She was a young mother of two young children (aged about 6 and 8), who had known she was dying (it was cancer).
She wrote a paragraph to be read out at the funeral. That was my job. She wrote of her love, especially for the children, and, without denying her regrets, was positive and encouraging. Love was absolutely what it was all about.
I certainly wasn’t alone in shedding a tear!
My Answer
To revert to my original question, I am not sure that a celebrant should break down and “lose it” (although I believe that the odd tear is quite acceptable – we are humans too!). However, anybody else, who is faced with strong emotion, should not hold back. There’s nothing to be ashamed about, if you cry a bit. In fact, it’s positively healthy.
As a celebrant, I obviously officiate at many types of ceremony. Some are quite conventional; others, less so. Some include ritual, while many do not.
Rituals are too numerous to list (and originate from a whole variety of cultures). No selection is going to be anything like exhaustive. I therefore ask your indulgence, when I focus on a few that have been particularly popular with my clients.
Trampling a Glass
A popular way to end a ceremony (pictured) is for the groom (usually) to tread a glass underfoot. This comes from Jewish tradition. It actually has a number of different interpretations. The most common one is the idea that breaking the glass brings good luck.
Loving Cup (Quaich)
From the Celtic tradition, a goblet is shared by the couple. They usually – but not exclusively – drink wine. They may well have three toasts – one to the past, the second to the present, and the third to the future.
Sand Ceremony
This is a lovely ceremony and can be performed by the couple alone. The origin is pagan. It signifies the joining together of two families.
Sand of one colour is poured by one member of one family into a receptacle; sand of another colour is then poured into the same receptacle. Appropriate words from the celebrant can accompany this act.
A full handfasting can last a long time, depending on the blessings to be incorporated. However, there is a much shorter – but lovely – version available.
This involves the couple using ribbons or cords (their choice), and the celebrant tying their wrists together (often in a figure-of-eight knot).
The ritual goes back to Celtic times, although here too there are various different versions. One, at least, related to a peasant wedding conducted by the village blacksmith.
This is only a taster of what could be available. Rituals offer a huge amount. They are often beautiful in their own right, may be humorous, but are always intriguing, and most have immense spiritual value.
I’d be happy to discuss these (or other) rituals at your leisure.
Although my speciality, of course, is ceremonies, I have quite some experience of other aspects of weddings, and I’d like to focus on guests today.
Wedding invitations typically inspire one of two reactions:
“Yay! I’m getting married! Who can I invite?”
Or “Yay! I’ve just been invited to X’s wedding!”
Yes, wedding guests (from whichever angle you look at them) are good news.
But let’s look at both angles a bit more closely. There might be some surprises.
Inviting the Guests
It’s all very well having all your favourite people together for your big occasion, but most couples have a budget, and it may not stretch to inviting just anyone.
So you have to make decisions as to who makes the cut. Not always easy. Compromise and patience are the watchwords here.
Then, of course, there’s the question of inviting children (where relevant) or not. And do you invite some, but draw the line at others?
And what about “significant others”?
You may have to take into account dietary preferences ,etc.
Seating plans for the breakfast are potentially a dangerous area!
How much do you actually pay for? For example, will you offer a couple of drinks free and then have a cash bar?
Then what do you offer for entertainment? Do you lay on special entertainment for children? Or for the elderly?
Do you want a Wedding List, or do you prefer no gifts?
These are all considerations that deserve to be mulled over.
Being a Guest
It’s an honour and (hopefully!) a delight to be invited as a guest. However, that comes with a few potential issues.
How easy is the wedding date for you to accommodate? Can you juggle bookings to ensure you are free? Do you really want to? What if it’s a destination wedding, which involves an extended period away (and indefinite expense)?
Are there liable to be personality clashes or embarrassing encounters (eg you know an ex will be invited)? Are you going to find an excuse, or will you grin and bear it?
What gift(s) are you expected to purchase? Can you find something that the couple want/need? Is that within a reasonable budget from your point of view?
Will you need to spend money on new clothing for the occasion?
How easy is transportation going to be? Will the wedding be in a separate venue to the reception? How accessible are they both?
Talking of money, according to American Express, the average wedding guest will spend (when all is said and done) almost £900 attending a wedding. That’s quite significant!
So, whichever side of the fence you are sitting, don’t jump straight into inviting guests left, right and centre. Equally, weigh up the invitation you have received so you can make the right decision.
