My boyfriend and I have been together now for almost two years and are getting married. We have both been married once before, I had the huge family reception/wedding at my first and he had the destination wedding for his first. We want something different, classy and want our family and friends to be there…
I dont know how to approach a few things… what style? or how big? the wording of the invite? I wanted to include on the invite somewhere on the bottom like “no gifts please, your presence is gift enough”. I dont want people to feel obligated to give us gifts since most of our family and friends attended our first weddings. I am really stuck on what to do and how to go about this the right way for everyone!
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
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I think “different and classy” are going to mean different things for different people. How exactly do you want this wedding to be different from your first ones? Talk about that together, and that’s the place to start.
Maybe you want to get married in the town where you live now. Maybe you want to get married on the beach where you went on vacation. Maybe you want to keep the guest list under 1 people. Maybe you want immediate family only. Maybe you don’t want to wear white. Maybe he doesn’t want to wear a suit.
It’s hard to say how to make your wedding “different” when we don’t know what different things you’re going for or what you like.
My personal thought is that even though it’s your second wedding, it’s your first wedding to each other, and deserves to be special. So the two of you should sit down and talk about what’s going to make the day meaningful for you.
And it’s never rude to put “no gifts” on an invitation – it’s only rude to put “bring gifts, and these are the kind I want” on there 🙂
If you don’t want gifts, don’t put it on the invite, just let people close to you know and they will spread it around, and don’t register anywhere. People may give things because they want to though. Just relax about it, at first I thought that you meant having another wedding with the same person, and I thought that would be hard to do with class and taste, but since it is your first wedding together people will be much more forgiving. Figure what you can spend and what you want to do or do the opposite and figure out who you want to invite and then figure out the other. Maybe a fun place like an outdoor wedding in a park, or a camping weekend wedding, or a nice backyard wedding? You won’t please everyone, just do what you want and your real friends and family who care about you will have a good time.
Wedding invitation can be very Traditional, no need to mention this is a second wedding. (John Doe and Suzy Smith request the pleasure of your company as they unite in matrimony)
I recently attended a second marriage which was held in a “rented venue / home”.This was NOT a casual affair
The decorations were beautiful (lots of floral) and there were chairs in the living room for all 30 guests. A large champagne fountain was available and appetizers were passed while the couple took photos.
After the ceremony we dined on the patio. We had a beautiful buffet, danced, and cut the wedding cake.
There was a great selection of music,
In lieu of gifts, this couple requested a small donation to the Susan G. Komen Foundation
Congrats! Two recent weddings I went to were second weddings, and each was nice in its own way. So just for ideas:
1. Backyard wedding – afternoon civil ceremony, very nice, maybe 30 people, nice turkey dinner. Everyone still dressed up, it was lovely.
2. Chapel wedding – fancy, string quartet, opera singer, formal. It was at 11 a.m., then went for champagne brunch to a ritzy hotel. About 50 people.
If it were me, of the two I’d go with the informal one.