Is part of your dream wedding that your guests will be bored? I’m guessing not. Probably you want friends and family to be entertained and dazzled on your most special night. You want them to remember your wedding for the epic occasion it was, as the mother of all weddings! But maybe not. Here are some great ways to have a boring wedding.
Be spontaneous
You’re a happy-go-lucky type and you want the ceremony and reception to reflect your carefree nature. So you’re not going to put the evening into a straitjacket by planning everything, right? Wrong!
Don’t be spontaneous. Improvising an evening’s entertainment for you and your fiance is one thing, since you’re a whiz at Yelp and nightlife is just an Uber away. But a wedding is an elaborate puzzle made of many guests, many mini-events, all of which must progress smoothly, unless you want to introduce confusing delays, dead air, and boredom. Logistics require planning. Preferably Excel spreadsheets. You can’t wing it!
Have lots of long speeches for a boring wedding
We inhabitants of modern society, who check our smartphones every five minutes and often have multiple screens going at once, are quite tolerant of old-school oratory. People like us who expect to communicate with friends thousands of miles instantly, who get annoyed if Netflix takes a full minute to load up a movie, also find it easy to pay attention to drawn-out speeches full of in-jokes and meandering stories by amateur speakers. (off sarcasm font)
If you didn’t catch my drift, having lots of long speeches is a great way to bore your guests into a glassy-eyed stupor. Keep a tight lid on the speechifying and do your best to keep your long-winded relations and friends away from the mic.
Starve your guests
Eating has long replaced baseball as the American pastime (speaking of boring… baseball, really?). Selecting your cocktail hour and dinner appetizers and planning, to the minute, how they’ll be delivered, is part of your toolkit in keeping guests happy. It’s also your big chance to choose food that reflects your own personality and sense of style and taste. I can’t tell you what to serve, but I’d strongly suggest that you keep your guest’s blood sugar at a stable level. Don’t make them go hours waiting around on an empty stomach. The hunger pangs will make for a boring wedding.
Keep a lookout for long gaps without food. Be careful about changing up the ordinary sequence of events if it means elongating your guests’ fasts. If you suspect some aspect of your wedding might be a little slow, like speeches or a slideshow or whatever, consider giving them some food as bribes.
Have a dry wedding
I’m all for not raining on your ceremony, but do you really want to throw together a bunch of people who hardly know each other without the benefit of social lubricant? Heck, I find it hard to tolerate even my close friends without alcohol, but maybe that’s just me. A glass of wine or a nice IPA just makes those awkward conversations at the ten-tops go down so much easier. It makes smiles wider, encourages laughter, dancing, and general hilarity.
Of course, if for religious reasons, you choose to abstain from drinking (and make your guests abstain, too), I understand. However, if it’s a matter of balancing the budget, alcohol is more important than many other of your cherished touches. That is, unless you want your wedding to be boring!
Are you not entertained?
Most venues have music they can pipe in from those speakers way up on the ceilings. And many couples elect to bring an iPod with their custom playlist instead of hiring a band or a DJ. But tread carefully…
There is a reason Muzak is a punchline; it’s the soundtrack to Things That Suck. Do you really want the soundtrack to your wedding to be lame selections from the radio that some corporation’s computer tagged to be as inoffensive and unnoticeable as possible?
As far as your playlist… granted, you have awesome music taste, but just maybe, the musicians and DJs who entertain people for a living have a better chance of keeping the party going. One thing’s certain—their speakers and sound system will be orders of magnitude better than that thing you bought at Best Buy. Sorry, no one can hear that cute little Bluetooth soundbar two tables away, and it sounds tinny and cheap up close. Spring for pro entertainers if you want your wedding to be entertaining.
Following the script to the “tee” is boring
You seem to have caught me in a contradiction. Up above, I’ve basically been telling you to plan everything. To hire all the services everyone tells you to. To follow the script. So what’s up? Well, yes… the traditional wedding schedule is pretty well set. It takes care of all the important things—you getting married, getting your pictures taken, guests drinking so they aren’t too awkward, eating, some toasts so your friends can talk you up, and that bonding ritual called dancing. But that doesn’t mean you can’t express your personality within those guidelines!
If you don’t want to wear white, pick something else. You don’t have to go down the aisle to Canon in D. You are allowed to do some crazy pictures with your new husband guy.
You also don’t have to make your groomsmen wear Converse. Really… try something different! Maybe all of your friends have DJs. Get a wedding band, maybe one you like, who plays some music you like.Get a real musician to play for your ceremony. A harpist. A bagpipe player (yes, I know one if you need a referral). Dare I say, a Spanish guitar player?
Go a little beyond the norm with your food selections. It’s perfectly alright to serve donuts instead of a wedding cake, if that appeals to you. Don’t think you have serve rubber chicken. There are other options. Ask around!
Well, what if you aren’t that creative, are you doomed to have a boring wedding? First, give yourself a chance. Brainstorm. Get together with your fiance and write up a list of cool ideas. No idea is stupid at this stage. Do you have a wedding planner? Caterer? Musician? Ask them for ideas. We’ve seen lots of stuff, so we can help make your wedding memorable. Heck, we don’t like to be bored, either. Get in touch!