Edmonton is the perfect place to get married no matter what season you choose. With so many wedding venues there is sure to be the perfect place for you.
We have come up with 10 tips to help your day go as smooth as possible.
1. Always do a hair and makeup trial before your wedding day. Your wedding day is not the time to find out that your hair will not work with the style you had envisioned, or wearing too much makeup makes you feel unhappy. We always recommend a trial to make sure you are satisfied. This could even be coordinated on the day of your engagement session.
2. Make sure the groom and groomsmen try on their suits when they pick them up from the rental place. We have seen two different sized shoes, wrong pants or jacket size just to name a few issues. This usually isn't discovered until the morning of the wedding which makes it very difficult to return before the ceremony starts.
3. If possible try and hold off on celebrating the night before a wedding. Hangovers are never fun and nursing one throughout a wedding is a recipe for disaster. Ever see a groomsmen faint at a wedding? We have multiple times and it is almost always avoidable if everyone takes it easy the night before.
4. If you are not going to hire a wedding planner make someone other than yourself the point of contact for all your vendors. Do you really want to know if they ran out of pergoies half way through dinner or the groomsmen has the wrong size of pants? All of this can be delegated to your maid of honour or mother so you can focus on the most important parts of your day.
5. Skip the receiving line. If you know what it is you already know why. It is by far the biggest time eater of your day. To throw some quick math out there lets times the amount of guests at your wedding (150) by the amount of time it takes to to talk to someone and thank them for coming (3-4 minutes) and you are looking at around 45 minutes to an hour. The thing about a receiving line is once it starts theres no stopping it. If you get a few aunties that want to keep talking while you are standing out in the blistering sun you are going to remember reading this and wishing you said no. It's a tradition that our parents HAD to do but we can politely tell them there just isn't enough time.
6. Make a list for your family photos. This is a necessity for all of our weddings. We want to make the family photos quick and painless for you and your family. The only way to do this is to be organized ahead of time. We suggest starting with grandparents or anyone that has small children. They are usually the ones to leave early so its nice to get them done so they don't have to wait long.
7. Instead of the receiving line go around to each table after dinner and thank your guests for coming. Its much more personal and you can take as much time as you need. If you don't finish before the speeches just continue where you left off when everything finishes.
8. An open mic is a bad idea. Everyone has that one friend that crosses the line a few times with jokes. Do you really want that person going up to tell a story while your grandma is sitting front row?
9. Dinner, Speeches, Cake cutting, First dance, Parent dance then Bouquet and Garter toss. This is the order we recommend. Try to minimize breaks as once people get up from their seats it takes forever for them to sit back down again.
10. No one is going to remember what your centre pieces looked like. Try not to spend hours or days trying to hot glue a cornucopia of things together to create a masterpiece that people will move aside to try and talk to each other.
We hope you find some of these tips helpful. They have been tried and tested at many Edmonton weddings and always seem to work out well.
Location: High Level Bridge Edmonton.