Causing people hassle and stress

puffinmuffin

We know my family are a bit put out that we have chosen to marry in the city where we met and live, not where they live (which isn't my home town) so we have tried to make it easy and cheap as possible.
we would like to think our wedding won't cost our guests too much. our ceremony is in the city centre and reception 3 miles out. There is a Premier Inn 5 mins walk from the reception and as it's a private members club the drinks are very reasonable. Some of our family will have to come 250 miles but they are already arranging car sharing etc. We are not asking for anything in the invitations.

MrsDrink

I'm paying £36 for the night to stay at a Travel Lodge for my brother's wedding. I don't understand the need to pay out more when in reality we will be spending very little time there, just using it to crash after we've been celebrating and partying with my family.

Angel_of_Tomfoolery

We're getting married about 400 miles away from where we (and most of our guests) live. I do feel a bit guilty about causing 'hassle and stress' for our guests but hope to make it worth it for them by giving them a fab weekend! We are paying for our guests' accommodation for the night of the wedding which I'm hoping will make things a bit easier for them. We've also arranged it around school holidays for those who have children/work in schools. We've given plenty of notice of the date and location so people can plan/save. If someone decides that they don't want to come, we will make it clear that there will be no hard feelings on our part. No doubt some people will moan, but then that would happen whatever we did!

nickki44

We used The holiday Inn for our reception. Most of our guests chose to stay the night before and the night of the wedding, including the guests who lived only a few miles away from the venue.

The hotel agreed to provide the same special price for both nights, an extremely reasonable £35 single, £50 double and £75 family room. Price per room, per night, B&B.

Our guests chose to take leave from work on the thursday to drive to the hotel, and as they were doing this, we arranged to all meet up and have a very large meal together on the thursday night - so that our guests could socialise and get to know each other before the wedding - but we ony organised this in response to everybody choosing to stay over the thursday night.

We got married at 1pm on the friday (for those travelling down - who now were not! lol), so again, the atmosphere at breakfast and around the hotel in the morning was just fantastic (apparently, i of course missed it all lol).

Our wedding went amazingly perfectly, and at breakfast the next morning - the restaurant was again full of our guests all happily beaming away, and all of them mingling and chatting away and swapping addresses and phone numbers, and telling us how it really was the best ever wedding they had attended!! Lots of friendships were forged.

We had no list - and did added a nice poem saying - in essence, please we honestly just want you to come to our wedding, but if you absolutely MUST get a gift, money or vouchers would be most helpful.

Our gifts ranged from £200 :eek: to nothing.
Some people didn't even get us a card (which i did think a little strange as I would always give a card).

At NO point did we open a card and think anything bad if there was nothing in it. As i said - we were just so utterly touched and thrilled that so many of our friends and family had invested so much in attending our wedding - we felt more comfortable with the empty cards tbh!! Much easier to say thank you for.

Just another viewpoint - but hope it helps

Idiophreak

I love going to weddings. I can honestly say I've never felt "hassled" to attend one in my life. It's such a happy day and a great chance to get away for the weekend etc, why would anyone moan. I've also never been to a wedding that's cost me more than £200 all in. People say "you have to buy a new dress, stay in an expensive hotel..." - my wife and I have never bought new clothes for a wedding and have always found somewhere reasonable to stay locally. If someone *did* go somewhere really expensive, not provide a decent amount of drink, etc - I'd view it as "poor weddingeering" - but wouldn't be massively offended - I'd just drink less and (sad as it sounds) probably, therefore, have less of a good time.

When I got married, we were very aware of the costs to others, keeping it down etc. So we made sure they were well fed and watered. Very few people spent a penny on food or drink...and I reasoned that if they needed to get a taxi back to town, (£15) that was still a pretty cheap night out for them for some good food or drink. I definitely think our wedding ended up being decent value for money for the guests. Anyone who'd travelled especially far to get there got a mention in my speech and I think they all appreciated that.

We asked for contributions to our honeymoon instead of gifts and got a range of sums...all of which were greatly appreciated and enabled us to have, truly, the time of our lives. Everyone I've spoken to since has seen how much fun we had and how much their contribution meant to us.

9ja4life

I come from a country where it's more or less compulsory to attend weddings, funerals and all what not. I am 33 now and have attended over 40 weddings far and near. I have never bought a new dress for a wedding (what's the point of wearing a dress only once?) or shoes for that matter! I already have a wardrobe full of unworn clothes.

Our wedding is miles away from everybody but then we also live miles away from all family and friends. Most of my family (40) are coming from over 4,000 miles away so I think that puts things in perspective for the ones who live here in the UK. We have just under 200 guests attending all day and they all want to be there! Infact, some (about 65) of the guests are going down the day before and spending the whole weekend there with us. They suggested it and chose to. We didn't ask them.

My hen do is the night before at the wedding venue - Have booked the spa and a whole raft of rooms. Bringing our own drinks, food and massuese for the night.

We have requested that nobody brings any gifts - at all and there is a free bar all day and night.

I think it depends on:

1 - What you want and expect
2 - What your family and friends want and expect

jemb

I've just read this and everyone's comments and I'm a little annoyed. Why is everyone justifying their wedding as a result of this rant on weddings and brides? Maybe that's your opinion OP, but there is always the option to turn an invitation down if you feel it is, too expensive, too far away etc. Not all Bride's do things for the expense and worry of their guests, i've spent more time worrying about about the guests than me and H2B!

stir_crazy

And don't even get me started on the "we have everything we need, and we know you've spent a fortune on coming to the wedding, but we would still quite like some cold hard cash to spend on honeymoon/paying off our credit cards" train of thought :mad:

Just re read this and speaking as a recent guest at a wedding, and will have more weddings in the near future t go to as a guest, I would rather give the bride and groom "cold hard cash" to spend on whatever they like. I dont see the point in me being a stickler and insisting on buying something for their house that they dont want or dont need.

One other wedding I was at had a guest list and had little things on it like part of a bed set or part of a kitchen set, which is not something I wanted to get my friend of 10+ year. So I ended up getting them gift vouchers from the same shop, which was also on the list.

minerva_windsong

I don't mind travelling to go to people's weddings but I think if you're going to ask people to travel then it's fairer to ask everyone to travel. This is what my sister did - she and my now-brother in law lived in Rugby when they got married, my parents and most of our family lived in Lancashire/Liverpool and most of his family lived in Kent, so however they did it someone was going to have to travel a fair way. Their solution was that they would have the wedding in Cornwall, which is somewhere they've always loved and meant that everyone would need to make the journey, including themselves. Brother-in-law also very generously paid for the hotel rooms (the place was owned by a friend which meant he got mates' rates).

I also agree that it's surprising how many people will make the effort to come. For example, my other sister's husband is from New Zealand and is one of seven kids. His parents, all his brothers and sisters, their partners and children, his auntie and uncle and his best friend and wife - so we're talking about 20 people all in - made the effort to fly to the UK for the wedding. He'd expected maybe his mum and dad and his brother and sister-in-law who live in London to make the trip, so was pretty overwhelmed when they all showed up! Weddings are a big thing and (hopefully) once in a lifetime, so people will make the effort to go if they can possibly get there, especially for close family and friends - had my sister decided she wanted to get married in New Zealand I would of course have gone out there.

In terms of giving cash, I do admit that I would much prefer to give vouchers for something rather than just money because you don't know where it's going and I would much rather that anything I gave for a wedding went to something specific. I don't mind being asked for vouchers for a specific place though, like B&Q/Homebase if it's for doing up a house or Thomas Cook etc if it's for a honeymoon. That said though if I was getting marrited I personally would have a small gift list of things we liked - as opposed to necessarily needed - for anyone who wanted to get us something more tangible than just vouchers, as then at least it's more likely that you'd get a gift you knew you'd like as opposed to just going 'Oh great, another toaster!'

But ultimately, to each their own in terms of the couple doing what they want for the wedding is my view I'm afraid, although I do think some aspects such as the travel thing are inevitable for some people as quite often people don't live anywhere near the family home or the place where they grew up or the families live in different parts of the country (or even the world) so someone has to travel.