Wedding buzz

It is very late on a Monday night and in about 4.5 hours' time I am meant to wake up to get to the airport for our little honeymoon! But it's been difficult to sleep the last two nights because every time I close my eyes, I'm still buzzing from the happiness of our wedding.

Not to humble brag (although what about this is humble anyway?) but my wedding was the BEST WEDDING I've ever been to! Lol. Excuse me while I go eat some humble pie. Many guests may not have known but the original blueprint were stolen from a couple who did in fact attend our wedding and are now parents to a one year old. We took their OG daytime ceremony and reception + night time casual drinks idea and gave it not much of a spin to be honest. They even wrote messages on the back of their name cards just like we did. I remember thinking it was so nice to have something personal from the bride and groom and resolved to carbon copy it there and then.

But of course the main reason why it was so nice was the beautiful company. Brendan and I really did manage to talk to EVERYONE there and not just in a "hi-bye" way. It was something we both wanted so I'm glad we accomplished it.

Our original brief to our celebrant was that we didn't really need a wedding to be honest and anticipated that marriage wouldn't really make ourselves feel any different about our relationship than we do now. For all intents and purposes, Brendan and I are already an old, married couple. So we were not hesitant, but rather indifferent to the status of "married" BUT we did want to throw a party and celebrate our relationship, both of us individually, and the people in our lives who made both "me" and "us" the success (or work-in-progress) we are today.

So here are the 4 things we did, and/or the serendipitous circumstances that made our wedding so good. NUMBER 3 WILL SHOCK YOU! 😱

(Just kidding, this is not a clickbait article and we are not BuzzFeed).

(To be honest, I think I started listicles way before BuzzFeed, and the Princess Diaries probably started listicles way before me).

1. We pretty much had total control over the guest list

Earlier on there were some suggestions of inviting extended, overseas family and just hoping they wouldn't show up because no one really wanted them there anyway (could we send an invite with no RSVP link? Jks). One good thing about COVID is it gave us a fantastic excuse to keep the invite list small and just to immediate family. In the end there were a few non-vaccinated casualties that couldn't attend, but overall liking everyone at our wedding was the key to success (who'da thunk it?). My parents were also very chill on this front and were delighted to be able to say that this was entirely their daughter's/a "young person's" thing and not have to bother thinking about which of their friends to invite and which not to.

2. We didn't do anything we didn't like

Turns out this is a key one too. Oh dear this post isn't very original I'm afraid. So we basically cut everything that we'd seen at other weddings that we weren't crazy about. Dance floor? FORGET ABOUT IT!! First dance?? No, I couldn't imagine scheduling dancing classes on top of everything else. Wedding favours? I like the sentiment, but I've yet to receive a wedding favour that I would be upset if I didn't have. With the exception being edible stuff because I always want more food.

3. We broke with tradition

This is probably more of a sub-point to #2. So the consultant thing would be to make this 2a but I'm on holiday right now, and this is not a powerpoint slide. These are the traditions we discarded:

• my dad walking me down the aisle (I'm not sure how representative this is anyway)
• the first dance, as mentioned above
• wedding rings - we did end up exchanging rings although they weren't wedding rings. My mum put her petite foot down and exclaimed what the hell would we be doing during the ceremony if not exchanging rings. I had a number of alternatives but in the He Household, the golden rule is to keep the #1 stakeholder happy, and if my mum's not having a good day, then I won't have a good day because her passive aggressiveness will not only be palpable to me but probably the whole of Collingwood. So she ended up getting me a gold ring because 24k carat gold is a thing for chinese bridal trousseaus, and we used that as the wedding ring, meanwhile Brendan borrowed a prop ring from his dad that only fit on his pinky which is why our celebrant was laughing when we were "exchanging" rings.

Those are the main ones. We also slimmed down the speeches (neither of our parents were particularly keen to speak) and had a very small bridal/groom party (1 on either side), which made coordination VERY EASY.

4. We made it about the party vibes (but a chill party)

What's the most important thing at a party? Food and good conversation (well at least for my kind of party anyway). Long vows and soppy speeches are kind of embarrassing and I'm not sure people are that interested. I was pretty set on finding a restaurant venue early on because I wanted to make sure the food was good and fresh. We found the venue by chance, after looking at another one where they would have to bring food cooked off-premises and heat it in these ghastly looking ovens behind some plants. Our venue was a dream - party nursery, part restaurant, with lots of daylight streaming in. It was the only other place we looked at.

As for good conversation, I sure got some, but then everyone had to pretend they cared I was getting married so haha I guess things won't be this good again. I did try to make considered choices about the seating plan. At other weddings I've been to, I am always seated next to Brendan which makes no sense because he is the ONLY person that I actually talk to EVERYDAY and don't need to catch up with. For ours, we tried to seat couples opposite each other if they knew many other guests and were well-integrated with our social circles. Hopefully this gave everyone a chance to talk to people they don't talk to everyday. For those who didn't fit neatly into groups I tried to disperse them between or within social groups so it wasn't just all the misfits being put into one corner of the dining room.

The funnest part was deciding who to put at the edge of a social group, because I wanted there to be conversation at the fringes too. Where one or two people from different friendship groups just happened to know each other, I often put them at the fringes. Otherwise I relied on things like common interests, shared views and shared current/previous place of work. I think most of the time this actually worked OK! We did the rounds and there didn't seem to be awkward, sad looking people just playing with their phones.

Drinks at night was also a win because it gave people more opportunity to roam around. And hopefully our efforts to get the guests involved (whether it was taking their own polaroid shots and hogging the camera for ages, scrapbooking in our guestbook, or spamming our shared playlist with 40 sexual innuendo songs) made them more invested in the fun as well.