Once upon a time, brides and grooms would buy disposable cameras for each table at their wedding with a list of suggested shots to capture or just let guests have some fun with them.  After the wedding, the couple would spend a pretty large chunk of change developing the film to get lots of lots of badly exposed, low res, badly lit pictures.  Some would turn out great but some…well, how many pictures do you need of your friend’s boyfriend that she broke up with 2 weeks after the wedding anyway?

Nowadays, we don’t see disposable cameras much because pretty much every guest at a wedding has a camera on their phone.  Those cameras produce MUCH better pictures than those throw away cameras but it can be a chore to get those pictures from guests after the wedding.

Flickr makes it easy to give your guests the chance to upload pictures to your Flickr on the fly!  Simply set up a Flickr account and go to this page to get your upload by email link: http://www.flickr.com/account/uploadbyemail/.  Print out signs to place around the reception with that email address on them so guests can upload pictures during the reception or distribute small cards to send home with guests to they can upload pictures after the fact.

Extra pictures at no cost to you and your wedding budget?  Perfect!

This might be a strange one but something a lot of people don’t think of – what will your glasses look like in outdoor pictures?

A good photographer will have no problem with regular glasses in pictures – they can mitigate (or photoshop) any glare or sun spots.  You might face an issue if you have Transitions lens (the kind that darken into sunglasses when they are outside).  If you have lens that become sunglasses automatically, you might want to talk with your Optician about getting some non-changing lens for the wedding day.  You could also see about finding a way to pop out the lens during pictures.

This came to mind as I was going through formals from a wedding while working on my 26 things list – the mother of the groom had Transitions lens and she stands out as she is the only one wearing “sunglasses” in the outdoor formal family pictures.  If you know a parent or bridal party member has these glasses, I would suggest talking to them about wearing non-changing lens or simply not wearing their glasses at least some of the formal portraits.

It might sound crazy but lens that change automatically will hide your eyes and given that so much emotion in a picture comes from the eyes, they need to be seen and not hidden!

If you are planning a sparkler send off for your wedding, this week is a great time to pick up those sparklers on deep discount! Now, if you are thinking that you need the special wedding sparklers, bear in mind that the average sparkler burns for 30-45 seconds – plenty of time for you to make your way through the shower of sparks to the car.

Good luck bargain hunting!

Standard rule of thumb for the industry says that about 75-80% of your guests will RSVP yes to your wedding.  I used to use the same rule of thumb but now insist that if a guest is invited, there will be room for them – i.e. no inviting 200 people to a wedding venue that can only hold 160.

Why do I insist on this for my couples?  Because of Lindsay and Nick’s wedding.

Lindsay and Nick were married on private property under a gorgeous tent overlooking Bass Lake in Cleveland in July of 2006.  The invited guest list numbered 184.  We reserved a tent that would hold 160 plus a dance floor – a generous cushion or so I thought.  Lindsay began to get a little worried about 5 weeks before the wedding when literally every one of their RSVPs were yes.  I assured her that most of the time the yes responses come first with the no responses coming in later and not to worry – the nos would be coming!

I was wrong.  I was so very wrong.

When all was said and done and all the RSVPs were in they had 179 guests attending.  They had a 97.3% positive RSVP rate.  5 people said no.  FIVE.  Our planned for tent wasn’t large enough, we had to order more tables and chairs and a bigger tent!  We also just had to hope it didn’t rain because the property barely had enough room for the bigger tent unless we wanted to seat guests on an embankment and there was no nice wide aisle if we had to seat people at their tables for the ceremony!

On wedding day, it rained (and a mini tornado came through the day before during set up – that’s a story I only tell over drinks!) so the ceremony had to be held inside that tent with guests seated at their tables – it was cramped and the aisle wound through the guest tables and it was humid and muddy but everyone had a GREAT time which in the end is all that matters!  I was thankful that we were at a location that allowed us to up-size everything at the very last minute.

Go ahead and plan on 75-80% of your invited guests attending but remember Lindsay and Nick and budget and space plan for 100% to be on the safe side – you just never know what could happen!

The vast majority of my clients don’t do a receiving line but occasionally a bride and groom either want to have a traditional receiving line at the church or their parents insist on it.

Truth be told, I try to talk people out of receiving lines or releasing rows for the simple reason that they are a huge time monopolizer and tend to be impersonal. Most of my brides and grooms realize they will have more meaningful interactions with their guests if they circulate at the cocktail hour or go from table to table after dinner to greet their guests. The conversations are not as rushed, your guests don’t feel like cattle and you can say more than “thanks for coming” which is all that a receiving line allows because there are 180 or more other guests staring you down, standing in uncomfy heels and too tight suit coats to shake your hand!

Obviously, my advice is to skip the receiving line but if you really want one or a parent is insisting, make sure you allocate enough time for it in the timeline! My rule of thumb is assume it will take on average 10 seconds per person for each guest to move through the line. 250 guests? That receiving line is going to take just under 45 minutes. See why I recommend greeting guests at other times?

While looking at venue and catering menus, you will quite often see a dollar figure with two plus signs after it – i.e. $50.00++ – but do you know what that means to you and your budget?  If not, read on:

Plus/plus refers to the service charge (usually between 18 and 25%) and tax rate that many caterers and reception sites add onto their per person rate.  That means that if you are looking at 3 different meals or packages on the menu listed for $40++, $50++ and $60++ at a location in Franklin County with a 20% service charge, your final cost for each would actually be $51.24, $64.05 and $76.86 per person.

If you are like me and don’t do well with doing math in your head on the spur of the moment, a little homework before you start looking at venues and caterers will save some confusion and possibly heartbreak in the long run! A good place to start is take about 45% of your budget and divide by the total number of people you are inviting – NOT the number you think will attend.  (Yes, everyone you plan to invite – better to be safe than sorry and not be faced with a huge overage in your budget at the last minute because lots of people want to celebrate with you!) That number would be the plus/plus number. Divide that by the service charge and then by the tax rate to get your base per person.

As an example:
Total Budget: $40,000
Number of Guests: 200
Reception Budget: $18,000 (45% of the total budget)
Plus/Plus Number Per Person: $90
Base Per Person: $70.26 (This assumes a 20% service charge and 6.75% Franklin County Tax Rate)
In this example, you would want to concentrate on menus that are less than $70 per person to stay within budget.

There are some companies that do not charge an extra service fee but charge for staffing – this should all be clearly stated in your quote.  If it isn’t, make sure you ask!

Since one of the first things all you newly engaged couples should do is start working on your guest list, I thought this quick tip was especially timely.

One of my most asked questions with regard to the guest list is “Who do we invite from work?“  Usually it is a matter of the bride and groom feeling that if they invite one or two people, they will have to invite everyone in their office.  Well, I give you permission to let that feeling go!

The rule of thumb I share with my clients is that if you have had a coworker over to dinner or have been to their house for dinner (or have spent a significant time with them outside of work) then they likely belong on the guest list.  Everyone else is a “nice to include.”  Really.  I know that some of you are likely sitting there thinking I am crazy but unless you have enough room, you have to draw the line somewhere.  Co-workers who you don’t really care for is a great place to start.

The exception to this would be bosses who should generally be invited even if you’ve never gone to dinner with them or seen the inside of their house.

One quick rule of thumb when budgeting and searching for a reception venue and/or caterer is that about half your budget is going to be spent on the reception.  That includes food and beverage, venue rental fees, any hard good rentals that need to be brought in (i.e. tables, chairs, flatware, china and glassware – linens usually fall under the decor category) and cake.

If your budget is $30,000 and you are looking at venues with a $20,000 minimum, you need to keep looking – even cutting your guest list won’t help if you have a certain dollar amount you have to hit.

I think the most dreaded task for many couples during wedding planning is the table assignments.  While I have no tips to help you make sure that no one feels like they’re seated at a bad table or how to best keep your divorced Aunt Sarah and Uncle Charlie as far away from each other as possible (because no one wants a repeat of the great butter fight of 2006), I can give you an easy way to keep track of who is sitting where and with whom.

I am a rather visual person so seeing things laid out helps me keep track in my mind.  Here is what you need to create a perfect seating arrangement for your wedding:

*A pack of paper plates – feel free to use whatever you have in your cabinet.  Leftover plates from New Year’s Eve 2005 or your niece’s Barbie birthday party are fine!

*Post it note strips in multiple colors like these:

Got those two things?  Great – now grab a pen and get started:

1. As you receive your RSVPs, write each person’s name on their own post it strip.  If you have asked your guests to indicate their meal selection, use different colored slips to represent each meal or use the different colors to represent guest groups like bride, groom, both, etc. so you can make sure you have a nice mix in your floorplan.

2. Spread out your plates and start putting assigning guests to tables.

3. Number each of your plates to correspond to a table on your floor plan.

4. Enter everyone’s table number into your master guest list and you are all set to create your place cards, send final meal counts by table to your caterer, etc.

Since you can easily move people from table to table or take the seating plan with you to consult with family members this is a super easy, super cheap and super flexible to tackle a dreaded task.  Good luck!