When I asked you guys what you wanted to hear about our wedding, one of you asked to hear how to make a wedding feel personal. What an incredible blog idea! We’ve thought about that a lot and came up with these 6 decisions that we think made guests feel the most loved.
Disclaimer: I can only speak to my own wedding, which involved about 250 guests. With a much smaller guest list, you could likely guarantee time with each guest on wedding day, but I can only speak for making my 250 people feel special. 🙂
1. Help Traveling Guests Feel the Love
When people travel to a wedding, it’s a big deal. They have to stop their own lives to come to a different city and spend money on a hotel. The roomie isn’t from Iowa, so most of his family/friends were making a trip to the wedding. We wanted them to love Des Moines as much as we do, but also feel the love from us the second they arrived! Welcome boxes with DSM recommendations and some hotel essentials did the trick for those staying in our hotel block—and my sweet mother-in-law put them all together for us! 🙂 They included Ryan’s favorite potato chips made in his IL hometown, my favorite cookies homemade by a family friend, homemade lip balm made by my MIL, and a number of other helpful little items.
2. Be Present at Happy Hour
Every wedding day is different, but I love when couples actually participate in their own happy hours rather than skip out for a party bus or an extended photoshoot and leave their guests for a bit. As a vendor, I’m all for sneaking away for some great shots, but I think it’s still important to make some of the happy hour at least.
We chose to stick around for the whole thing! With a shorter overall wedding day that was all set in the same location, we wanted as much time as possible with our guests which for us meant sticking around for cocktail hour. We walked back down the aisle as husband and wife, snuck over to the bridal room to sign the wedding licenses, and then got right back to our guests at the cocktail hour. It was wonderful to be able to briefly talk with and hug so many of our friends and family members!
3. Have Family Working the Day
Obviously when I say “working” I don’t mean doing hard labor on wedding day, haha. What I mean is that family should be working the room on wedding day to help make all the guests feel special. So much of a wedding is about family. Our parents invited many of their own friends to celebrate our new marriage, so we all had plenty of socializing to do. The next morning, I could name very few people that Ryan or I hadn’t gotten to speak with (WHICH WAS AN INCREDIBLE FEELING), but the few I did think of our parents confirmed that they had talked to and danced with. That helped us feel at ease that those guests had gotten attention, too.
4. Choose Seating Charts Thoughtfully
I was excited about creating the seating charts before I even had a final guest list. We worked hard to consider peoples’ personalities and friendships as we chose tables for everyone. I loved visiting the tables and seeing everyone so deep in conversation with each other! I also enjoyed hearing about the new friendships and how much our guests loved meeting new people at their tables! Ahhh, that was the best to hear.
5. Skip the Head Table
With no wedding party, this was such an easy choice. For me, I always have felt disconnected from the guests and even my roomie at weddings when I sat at the head table (as a bridesmaid). I think it’s intimidating for guests to walk up to the bride and groom, but elevated head tables isolate the wedding party almost completely! We chose to do a sweetheart table as we knew we’d sit there for hardly any time at all. It gave us a second to talk with each other and let guests feel more comfortable chatting with us quickly. Our nuclear families and close family members were seated at the four tables surrounding us, so none of our wedding party was too far away. For us, the sweetheart table was the right decision and allowed us to show off the floral piece we got married under even more as it was right behind our table.
6. Make Special Efforts for Kiddos
Our wedding had a limited amount of children in attendance—on purpose. Family kids, my two girlies that I nanny for and love so much, and a few close family friends were the only ones invited. We made that decision to encourage parents to enjoy all the fun of the evening! And to elevate the elegance of the black tie optional night.
All that being said, I worked hard to make those kids feel special and entertained. I spoke with all of their parents and made sure they would all get a meal they’d actually eat. For some, that was the vegetarian option (pasta!), some wanted the adult meal, and some chose the children’s option that had all kinds of kiddo goodness. Our caterer was notified in advance where the kids were seated and knew to serve them first to prevent any kiddo crankiness—which worked beautifully! I know this because the 5-year-old princess I nanny for personally thanked me for getting her food she wanted to eat. THE CUTEST WEDDING COMPLIMENT EVER. 😭
I also made little custom coloring books for all of the kids. I drew up a bunch of wedding-related images on my iPad, printed them all out on thicker cardstock at Office Depot, and had a friend bind them together with front and back covers (thanks, Mags!). Last minute, of course, I made cover pages with their names on them that they could color in. 🙂 When the kids got to the venue, the table with a bunch of crayons and their coloring books was right beside the entrance to make them excited for the night! I loved this touch and got a lot of thank-you’s from parents of the littles.
Bonus—7. Don’t Call it a Night Too Early
This all depends on the type of wedding you’re having, but many of our guests headed to a bar after the wedding night wrapped up. When I say many, I mean not just the crowd of twenty-somethings but even family friends and our family, themselves! It was amazing to swing by the bar for a cocktail to get even more time to hang out with our people. Even though we were exhausted, our adrenaline pushed us through and we had so much fun—plus, the bartenders greeted us with champagne the second we walked in! 😂
If you’re married, how did you make your guests feel loved on your wedding day?! I’d love to hear about your big day, too. If you are planning a wedding or just love wedding content, was this post valuable to you? I’m toying with the idea of some guest blog spots related to weddings if posts like this are something you all are craving. Please let me know in the comments or in my Instagram DMs. 😘
The high-quality photos in this post were taken by the wonderful Justin Salem Meyer.