For my first marriage, we were married in a church by a priest—one of the most thoughtful people I’ve ever met. In our meeting with him, he asked us, “What do you want guests to get out of your wedding ceremony?”
What?
This was a question I had never thought of, had never heard anyone else talk about explicitly or implicitly.
The wedding is all about us, right?
To be honest with you, I don’t remember what we figured out as an answer to that question, but it was fun to wrestle with. I enjoy questions like that, that force new perspectives.
Also, I have no idea if what we decided was conveyed to the people in attendance. Did the guests take from it what we had intended? I never asked. (Which strikes me as odd—asking seems like something I would have done.) I’m guessing that the answer was heady and vague and was something that either wouldn’t really convey or would convey regardless of our conversation about it.
Has this been discussed in the planning of any wedding I’ve attended? Probably not. (Like I said, I’d never heard of this notion prior.) I didn’t even remember to think about it when planning my second (though that event looked much different than the first).
Taking it one step simpler—we in general do think about who to invite, especially if there is not unlimited space.
Why do we invite those people? Often, some are “obligatory.” Do we figure out who we want to invite and plan from there? Or figure out a “how many” and then decide who to fill the seats with?
I (occasionally) like to throw big parties. Years ago, in a bigger house with a pool, we’d throw a Memorial Day thing every year (though it got thwarted once or twice). Christmas Eve Eve was big the year it fell on a Saturday.
Getting married is a solid excuse to have a big party.
I didn’t realize how much I would love this plan until reflecting afterwards, but The Climbing Daddy and I had a very small wedding and later threw a big party at home. (In other words, that’s what we decided, but I didn’t realize how great the idea was until after we had done it. The original “why” was different.)
We maintained intimacy, exchanged vows fairly privately, then celebrated later with lots of people.
One of the perks of having so few people was that everyone could hear. Especially in an outdoor space, sound is a problem. I’ve never been to an outdoor wedding where I could hear the ceremony. Which leads back to the question: why invite people?
It was relatively easy to make sure that people’s needs were met. I have been to weddings (regardless of venue) where there weren’t enough chairs, or the food didn’t accommodate diets (which is not inherently a problem, but I like to know ahead of time that there isn’t going to be anything for me to eat so I don’t show up hungry), or there wasn’t any food at all. (On our end, we did fail on securing shade and we all baked a bit when we were eating lunch after our ceremony.)
So. When you planned your wedding (or are planning it), who did/will you invite? Why? People first or numbers first or some back-and-forth combination? Did you have a thought about what you wanted them to get out of it? (Seriously—has anyone else been asked to think about this?)
(Also: I’ve been to many weddings that were perfectly lovely, any many that had issues were otherwise lovely as well.)
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