Do You Have To Give Wedding Favors?

The question of whether or not you have to give wedding favors to your guests is a very common one. However, there is no easy answer to this question. While it is true that you technically are not required to give your guests any type of wedding favor at your wedding, it is also true that your guests will likely be expecting to receive a favor. This is what makes the matter more complicated. You may not be obligated to give out wedding favors but your guests may be offended if you decide not to do so. This article will take a look at the question of whether or not you have to give wedding favors to your guests and will provide some tips for giving out wedding favors on even the tightest budget.

As we discussed in the opening paragraph, wedding favors are in no way obligatory but that does not mean that guests still do not expect to receive a wedding favor when they attend a wedding. There are a couple of reasons for this. One of the most obvious reasons why guests expect to receive a wedding favor is that it is such a common practice that the majority of the weddings they have attended in the past have included a wedding favor. The other reason why guests expect to receive a wedding favor is that the purpose of a wedding favor is for the couple to express their gratitude to the guests for attending the wedding and reception. Although the couple will likely still send out thank you cards to all of the guests after the wedding, giving a small wedding favor is another way the couple can thank their guests for their support.

You may wonder why a couple would consider not giving wedding favors at their wedding. In most cases the simple answer to this question is that the couple is on a very tight budget and feels as though purchasing wedding favors for each of the guests will put them over budget. This is a very valid concern as it is important to remember that although wedding favors may be fairly inexpensive, this unit price must be multiplied by the number of guests in attendance. For example you may select a favor which costs only $2 per favor but you may be expecting 400 guests at your wedding. This means the costs of the favors alone will be $800 which may not even include the costs associated with shipping or wrapping the wedding favors. While we certainly understand the importance of budgets we believe the couple should incorporate a budget for wedding favors into their overall budget before the planning begins. This will help to ensure there is enough money available to give each guest a wedding favor as a token of gratitude.

When the couple is concerned about budget it is important to remember that wedding favors do not need to be expensive or extravagant. One simple way to make wedding favors more affordable is to give a wedding favor of a single flower to each guest. If you are already planning to have floral centerpieces you can discuss your options with your florist beforehand. You will likely be able to negotiate and affordable price for this favor because you are already purchasing your centerpieces from the florist. Selecting one flower used in the centerpiece and having your florist supply enough of these to give as favors is a really nice way to tie the centerpieces and the favors together. Alternately you might want to give each of your guests an artificial version of one of the flowers used in your centerpiece. These can be rather inexpensive and can also serve as a lasting reminder of your wedding.

Another way to keep wedding favors more affordable is to discuss your options with wedding favor distributors carefully. Many of them likely have closeout items available as well as discount items. Closeout items are items which have been discontinued but the distributor may have enough in stock for all of the guests at your wedding. Additionally, they may be willing to offer you a discount if you are purchasing a large number of favors.

Delegating the Responsibility of Selecting Wedding Favors

For many couples shopping for and selecting wedding favors can seem like an overwhelming task. There are a number of reasons why couples might feel this way. One of the most significant reasons why a couple may feel overwhelmed about selecting their wedding favors is simply because they have so much to do while planning their wedding. There are a number of important details such as selecting a location, choosing centerpieces, coordinating the catering and other details that couples may simply just have too much to do. For these couples it might be a good idea for the couple to delegate the responsibility of selecting the wedding favors to a trusted friend or family member. Of course this is only a viable option if the couple is willing to allow their friend or family member complete freedom to select the wedding favors. If they are constantly trying to oversee the effort it will cause additional stress. This article will examine the concept of delegating the responsibility of selecting wedding favors to a friend or family member and will offer some advice on how to do this and still ensure you will be thrilled with the wedding favors your guests receive at your wedding.

The most important thing to remember when delegating the responsibility of selecting wedding favors to a friend or family member is that you have to carefully discuss your budget with the friend or family member beforehand. The person responsible for selecting the wedding favors should know exactly how much you can afford to spend on wedding favors so they do not exceed this amount. They should also have a good idea of how much you would like to spend on wedding favors is this number is less than the absolute most you are willing to spend. For example you may have $1000 available to spend on wedding favors but you may prefer to spend only $750 if possible.

Another factor to consider when delegating the responsibility of selecting wedding favors is your own personal taste and preferences. You should discuss your preferences for wedding favors with the person in charge of selecting them beforehand to ensure they will be seeking out wedding favors which you will like. One way to do this is to do a little research before delegating the responsibility. This way you can provide your friend or family member with a few favors which you like as examples of the type of favor you would like to give. This way they will have a good idea of the types of favors you are looking for and will likely select something you will think is appropriate.

Finally, if your friend or family member will not only be selecting the wedding favors for you but also making the purchase, you should make sure they are well aware of how many guests you are expecting and how many favors you would like to purchase. This is very important because it will help to make sure you do not find yourself with too few favors or that your friend or family member doesn’t order too many favors. The number of guests will also be important in the process of selecting wedding favors because this relates closely to your budget. However, if you do not want to give your friend or family member this information or are unsure of how many guests to expect you can give them a budget for the costs of each individual favor instead of an overall budget.

The Best Man And The Maid Of Honor

If we think of a wedding as a film – and it has to be said that, unless we have been drinking, we usually do not – then the bride and groom are the actor and actress in a lead role, while the positions of “supporting” actor and actress go to the best man and the maid of honor. In a wedding, these latter roles are considered highly important and choosing people to fill them can often be one of the more stressful elements of the whole procedure. When you come to choose your best man or maid of honor, you have to think long and hard about your decision.

Usually, the roles will be given to the person you consider your best friend. They can be related to you by blood or merely by a bond forged in the fires of shared experience, but for many people, the difficulty is in choosing someone without upsetting another person who feels the role should have been theirs. For the bride or groom, avoiding hurt feelings on the part of their friends is often one of the longest tightropes they will ever have to walk.

There is no steadfast way to ensure you get it right, but it is a decision you have to take by yourself. By all means seek advice, and speak to the people you are considering, but when you make that final choice it is essential that you let the people who were not chosen know that they still matter to you, and that the choice was indeed a difficult one. If, after that, they still do not accept it, then they may not realize that the day is about you and your spouse to be rather then themselves.

Now You See Me, Now You Don’t…

Given the implied importance of tradition for a wedding day, there are a lot of things that people superstitiously stick to even given their apparent inconvenience. One of these traditions is that the bride and the groom should not see one another from midnight on the day of the wedding until they meet at the altar. The idea is that, when their eyes meet in the witness of the wedding arena, they should look upon one another as if they were discovering anew the person with whom they will spend the rest of their life.

This is not, strictly speaking, a required part of the wedding and there are certainly plenty of couples celebrating major wedding anniversaries in the present day having spent the night before the wedding together. However, it is still stuck to by many, and can lead to logistical somersaults being turned by the couple in order to avoid running in to one another. In practice, this tends to mean the groom spending the eve of the wedding at the home of his best man, prior to a dash to the altar when they traditionally oversleep (this part is definitely not compulsory).

A couple who have lived together for some time prior to the ceremony may feel one of two ways – that they have seen each other every morning for a while and aren’t about to fix what isn’t broken, or that there is no point in tempting fate by breaking with tradition. In any case, it is not about what happens before the wedding, but what happens after it in the marriage.

Speech! Speech! Speech!

One part of the wedding experience that is considered almost essential is the point during the reception at which, after the meal has been eaten and a reasonable amount of wine has been drunk, the best man gets to his feet and speaks from the heart (and usually from a sheaf of notes filled with juicy stories) about his friend the groom. There is some argument about the tone this speech should take. As they will often have been friends since childhood, there will be at least one story which makes the groom cringe and his new wife momentarily angry.

Often a best man will feel that it is his duty to make this speech as uncomfortable for the groom as possible, but this is somewhat misleading. Certainly, there is room for amusing stories, but the tone of a best man’s speech should be more encouraging than embarrassing. A few funny stories should be interwoven with tales of friendship, and the speech should end with warm congratulations and wishes for all the best of luck to be bestowed upon bride and groom.

For this reason, it is advisable in the case of a reception where alcohol is served that the best man should hold back a little on the consumption of such drinks until his speech is over. No-one will thank you if as a best man you drink your own body weight in wine and reel off a series of stories about past indiscretions which, seen through the filter of the day, make him appear to be a substance-abusing philanderer.

Wedding Day Quirks

When you strip away all of the pageantry and all of the traditions which are not specifically required by law, the present form taken by a wedding is simply a short exchange of vows between two people who have decided that they want to spend the rest of their lives together. But if you ask a hundred people what marriage, and weddings, mean to them, there will be broad mentions given to the other parts of the process – the little quirks which in and of themselves are not essential, but play a major part in the story.

Think for example of the old saying “something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue”. This has formed part of the superstition around a wedding day for some time, and requires the bride to have with her one item from each category. These items will usually be worn, and often one of them (though generally not the “blue” one or the borrowed) will be the ring. Think also of the throwing of the bouquet, which when caught is said to denote who will be the next female in the congregation to get married.

For the groom, the traditions are less prominent. Indeed, on the male side it is usually the best man who follows tradition, by making a speech (which, theoretically, should embarrass his friend the groom) and by leading the dancing with the head bridesmaid. None of these things is strictly necessary and yet we feel, perhaps despite ourselves, that a wedding is not quite right without them.

The Changing Face Of Marriage

Some time ago, it was impossible to get married anywhere other than the interior of a religious building, and any ceremony conducted outside of these boundaries was considered not to constitute a genuine wedding. As times have changed, and our perceptions along with them, we find ourselves in an age where it is now easier to get married than it was before – and where the option to marry is extended to people who previously could not.

There are people who argue that this is a bad thing per se. Increasingly they find themselves in a minority, but they still insist that marriage, if it is to mean anything, should be between a man and a woman, married in the eyes of the church and within a church building – or whatever place of worship they are affiliated to. These people further argue that the ease of getting married leads to unions that should never have taken place – and in the case of some quickie marriages which are followed by equally speedy divorces, they may have the beginnings of a point.

However, it should be pointed out that many of the most secure marriages in place today, and the most monogamous unions, are unions that could never have taken place were the couple required to be church-going, mixed-sex, and of a high enough social standing to be accepted into the church. It requires some strength of character on the part of the couple getting married to ensure that these unions come about and are successful, but the times have certainly changed compared with the situation of a century ago.

Capture The Wedding On Video

Not so long ago, before the major technological advances of the last couple of decades, a video camera was a very rare thing to own. People who did own one quite frequently had little idea how to operate it and were rewarded for their efforts by shaky, unfocussed clips with extremely poor sound that would look out of place in anything but a “Funniest Home Videos” compilation. In the present day so many advances have been made that the amateur with a handheld video camera can make a quite watchable recording.

So it is that, where past generations look to still photographs in an album when they wish to reminisce about their wedding day, the current generation is more and more frequently recording moving pictures of the occasion, allowing them to capture not only the momentary stillness of a group, posed picture, but also the things that make a wedding what it is – the exchange of vows, the placing of the rings and the moment when the person presiding over the wedding tells them that their union is bound.

The longer that time goes on, the more advances will be made technologically, and we all wait to see what that will bring. At present we are far further forward than we could have realistically imagined in the late 1980s. What does the future hold for wedding photographs and videos? And will the married couples of 2030 look back on our seemingly advanced recordings and laugh? Only time can tell us.

Wedding Photographs – Professional Or Amateur?

So many traditions have built up around the institution of marriage, some of which are more comprehensible than others. One of the more reasonable ones is the importance of wedding photos, an issue which leads many people to debate whether there is a justification for spending big money on a wedding photographer when just about every person there will be armed with a camera. Most people decide that it is entirely justifiable, and point to the importance of having souvenirs from the day. If it seems to you that having a husband or a wife would be the only souvenir you need, then that is fine – but not everyone agrees.

The thing that matters most about photographs is that they really capture the occasion – the people, the clothes, the flowers and the rest of it. If you have a keen photographer in the family (on either side), then you may see fit to give them a bit of cash for the privilege of them taking your official wedding photographs. If you want the photographs to be presented in a certain way, though, it is often easier (if more expensive) to get them done professionally. They will be bound in a personalized wedding album and will be of a high quality, but it will cost money.

It is worth bearing in mind that perhaps no other photographs you will ever appear in will mean as much to you as these ones – so you do want to be able to look at them without cringing. If you have the money to spend, a professional is usually worth the cost.

That’s The Dress! I Must Have It!

People who are getting married can be excused somewhat if they get a little bit over-excited and lose a little of their sense of perspective when it comes to the trappings and fripperies of a wedding ceremony. Exhibit A for the defense is the wedding dress. Probably all of us can think of one dress that we have seen worn to a wedding inspiring us to think “just what is she wearing?”. If the bride likes it, however, then it is her choice, it is her day. If it makes her look like a pavlova, then at least it is her choice to look like a pavlova.

The question which arises as often as the “What does she look like?” debate is to do with money. “She paid how much?” is something that we have probably all asked, usually at the top of our voice and with an incredulous expression upon our face. Yes, people spend a lot of money on getting the right dress. They will be looking at these photographs for the rest of their lives, after all. If they instinctively feel that it was the wrong dress, it could be nagging them for fifty years or more.

If there is an accusation to be leveled, then it should not be at the bride nor at the groom, but at an industry which all too often tells you that you must look a certain way and spend a certain amount to have the wedding you really want. In the end, the decision lies with you, and nobody has any right to deny you your special moment.

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