Mind Your Ps & Qs

Wedding Etiquette

I am going to officially name 2016 the year of ‘Remarkable Weddings.’ There was not one month last year that I did not attend several weddings or at least hear about the exciting weddings that my family and/or friends attended. In the past, established or customary rules associated with weddings such as what to wear, who’s paying, location or even who can marry who, was pretty much set in stone, especially here in the South. For example, my parents married right after my mom graduated from college in a beautiful church wedding. But it’s 2017, and the rules have changed. Technology has a lot to do with the changes. While some things have changed, some have stayed the same, so here are my do’s and don’t’s for wedding etiquette.

  • Do: Send out paper invitations. While there may be pros of sending wedding e-vitations, when you add up the cons, it’s just not worth it. Wedding e-vitations may never be opened, or they may not get delivered at all because of bad addresses. They also come off as cold and impersonal. Invitations should be mailed out to guests 6-8 weeks before the wedding to give them time to return their RSVP cards.
  • Do: Create a wedding website. A wedding website, also known as a wedsite, is a great tool to get information out such as location, date and time of the wedding and reception as well the registries. It could also have information for out-of-town guests such as local hotels, restaurants and entertainment. There is a saying “Who doesn’t love a good love story?” so I say give it to them. Tell your guests how you met, your proposal story and share your favorite pictures of each other.
  • Do: Decide early whether the wedding will be unplugged or fully plugged-in. This is a relatively new and exciting concept in the wedding industry. Having an unplugged wedding means there will be no photos taken at the wedding other than the photos that the official photographer takes so that you can have complete control over the photos taken during the ceremony. This prevents your wedding pictures from being placed on social media before you are ready to post anything. Fully plugged-in weddings on the other hand encourage the guests to join in, but it can interfere with the wedding photographer’s ability to do their job. A great way for the guests to participate in the ceremony is to create a hashtag where guests can share photos.
  • Don’t: Forget to send thank you notes. After the wedding and honeymoon, when you’re back home, comes the task of writing thank you notes. When sending thank you notes, a general rule is they should be handwritten. The note shouldn’t be long and drawn out. Just thank them for coming to the wedding if they attended, and thank them for their gift.  For example, you could say, “Thanks for the black and white bath towels. They will look great in our new bathroom.”
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