Your wedding

I should have invited my cousin and his partner. We fell out several months before the wedding and my cousin's partner killed himself a few weeks after it, without me getting a chance to sort things out.

We should have picked a song for the first waltz but we somehow forgot that bit of the preparation so told the dj to just play something romantic. We ended up with Unchained Melody. Not a bad song, but beyond corny as a wedding selection. I wish I'd brought Nick Cave's "Ship Song" - my wife and I both love it and it would have been fun to see all the relatives murmuring "What the fuck is this shite?" to each other (well all my relatives anyway, hers don't swear).

Other than that I can't remember anything else that annoyed me, apart from playing Bouncer to two wee neds that tried to gatecrash from the pub next to the hotel - and even that wasn't really a problem.

Small weddings sound lovely.

The only thing my bf and I have actually discussed with regards to a potential wedding is the djing! I think it would be the most important part of the whole shindig, especially to him. ha ha.

I also wouldn't have allowed my husband's mother to make a speech. We had several speeches: the best man talking about how great the groom was, my mother talking about how great the groom was, and the groom's mother talking about... yes, how great the groom was. Luckily one of my brothers had the presence of mind to stand up and say "well, if no-one else is going to say anything nice about my sister, I suppose I'd better".

I'm glad that this time around we are going away. I'm not worrying about what I will wear or what music we will play or what we will eat or where the flowers will come from or any shite like that. There will be me, Bloke, my parents, and our mate. That's it.

I suppose a better DJ would have been nice, but he was a friend's son doing it for free, so I should shut my ungrateful mouth. My mum went up and told him to stop playing shit like Elton John and Wet Wet Wet, bless her. Our first song was "The More I See You" by Chris Montez, which we'd picked and put on a CDR with some other songs we wanted him to play. Dancing with my best friend to "Human Fly" by the Cramps was a particular highlight I think. The DJ wasn't impressed.

Also, I'd try not to pass out on the floor.

OTM - exactly the same thing happened with us. Actually no, the lead photographer who took the photos of us was a dick and made me feel like I was back at school. His assistant was lovely and the pics she took of the guests were all great.

I'd have anticipated my wife getting ill after the honeymoon (always on the cards - she has M.E. and tires very easily) and sorted out the thankyou letters beforehand.

And I'd have told her mother to make sure departing guests came over to say goodbye to us rather than having my wife dash away from the dancefloor every five minutes to say bye-bye to some eighth cousin.

But basically it was brilliant and all our decisions paid off. :)

Once she did actually shut the fuck up, I had a lovely time and even enjoyed her company.

Fortunately, instead of flowers, we'd gotten fresh fruit for all the tables, and invited people to nosh on it while they waited. And everyone appears to have had a great time anyway.

(Thing we did very right: having photos, video, DJing, etc., done by our friends, and telling them we wanted them to do it in their own style rather than wedding-traditional. I think everyone appreciated that.)

http://arago4.tn.utwente.nl/stonedead/movies/life-of-brian/thumbnails/05-blasphemy.jpg

My Mom got me stoned and then I had to back in and deal w/my ex-wife's French family and my American one, switching back and forth between languages with the worst cotton mouth. Had I not been so annoyed I would have laughed at my predicament sooner.

That was when I realised how shit it was that my wife and I got That Song From Ghost.

Pogoing for 24 seconds to the Magnetic Fields' "Punk Rock Love" sounds good to me :)

OR

I would have made no plans just invited everyone
we knew to some big hall have everyone surround us holding
hands with eachother as we were wed in the center after that
champaign, food, music and dancing.

Shortest: You'll get away with anything - long enough for all the aunties to take a badly framed picture of the back of your head should do it.

xp

Oh God, that sounds like my wedding except no-one stood up for me (except my new husband, but that was earlier on). Except I couldn't have stopped my mother-in-law making a speech as no-one knew she was doing it. She went to the guy who was acting as toastmaster and said she was doing the last speech and stood up and talked about herself and her two sons. I never got mentioned. She asked me something stupid during her speech, to which I muttered a reply whilst grinning as graciously as I could manage through gritted teeth and blinking back tears. I will regret for the rest of my life that I didn't have the courage to say "Sorry, I wasn't listening to you".

I'd also have got a professional photographer, or taken more interest in the actions of the family member (their side again) that did the photos. I was told he was very good, and his photos were very good. I'm just not in very many of them. There is no photo of me with my bridesmaids. There is no photo of me with both of my parents. My wee cousin may as well not have bothered presenting me with the traditional horseshoe, I kept him there for ages whilst trying to attract the attention of the photographer, but he was too busy using the film we'd bought him to take snaps of his own immediate family. Thankfully my family's snaps are quite good, and I've made a better album from copies snagged off other people.

I've said all this already somewhere else.

Mine had index cards! With a list of her son's achievements on them! Not that I am bitter.

My new mother-in-law to be confines her embarrassing activities to getting really drunk and putting me in a headlock, telling me how great Bloke is and how much she loves him. But she does it in a sharing way, like I'm the only other person in the world who would understand, so it's okay.

we'd have videoed the speeches too instead of just assuming they were, especially as we can barely remember them, especially my own, which I just had to check with Vic whether I made one at all...

Wedding stories are mostly all about the party though, there's always potential to go wrong, especially if you set store on it being a fairytale perfect day. I thoroughly expected background interference, and I got it. But it's the marriage itself and the life that follows afterwards that's the important thing. I would have had the whole day ruined as long as I got the years that have followed it.

Fuck all that. If I ever do get married, there will be a very strict embargo on anything traditional: complex first dances, crap music I dont like, relatives I don't want anything to do with, religion, speeches and so on. It'll be me and the lad, having a party with people we love and having fun, which is how my best mate did his "wedding" (they were already secretly married and just had a nice party night six months later - nice idea).

it's just a shame I have a bit of a blank period throughout the later evening (although I remember going back to the hotel via the 24 hour deli for gin and tonic and biscuits still in our glad rags very clearly)

I'm not sure about this. My brother's getting married next year, and I'm conscious of the fact that we're not expected to do much more than turn up, really. Maybe that's only true if you're a woman on the groom's side, though. There's absolutely no involvement for you.

Which I'm not complaining about, btw.

It's very easy to call the shots when you're paying for everything yourself and you don't care what your parents think. If your parents are in a position to put the guilt on you at all, it becomes much harder.

Unknown to me at the time he was dying of cancer and was skint and had had to save up for months to travel from London for the wedding, so I don't grudge him his wee heckle - though I'm sure my mother-in-law is less than happy about audible swearing on the wedding video.