I recently experienced the pleasure and pain of planning not one but two weddings across two continents.
One was a secular American affair at a classy museum with round tables and a catered dinner amongst Rodin statues, the other a three day long affair with folk traditions and only 20 guests, all staying at the familial estate of some friends in the countryside of Cognac in the West of France:
San Francisco Wedding
Cognac, France Wedding
Both weddings were awesome, but in many ways represented opposite approaches to the wedding conundrum. So many people struggle with the question of how to make this important event more meaningful, that many fall into the trap of spending a lot more money than they initially planned in order to achieve some sort of vague target of wedding perfection.
From my unique experience, since it is not every day that one couple has two weddings on two continents, I have a few recommendations to couples out there who are struggling to figure out how to make their own weddings feel more meaningful without spending more money. The good news is: it's definitely possible!
The American Wedding Experience
Before I get to the good news, I have to talk about a few of the challenges that we faced while planning our American wedding, because they are quite common and I hope that every bright-eyed young couple can learn from our mistakes.
For our California affair, the primary objective was to host an event for friends, family and co-workers who wouldn't be able to come to France. It was important to me to have a father-daughter dance and food that wasn't terrible, but beyond that, I was relatively flexible. "That should make this easy and cheap," I thought. Ha! So naive...
First, there were the logistical challenges...
We naively chose a museum as the venue because it had a relatively low venue rental fee and we thought, "there's beautiful art, therefore we won't have to decorate and that will make it so easy!" True, we didn't have to decorate it too much compared to say, a barn, but FYI to anyone considering a museum as a wedding venue: it's not worth it.
They had an unbelievable number of unpredictable policies, many of which were not specified in the written contract at all and were instead only communicated verbally just days before the wedding by the rude rep who was proudly demonstrating her position of power in her third week on the job. To name a few: no live plants, no open flames (meaning no food warming devices even though the museum itself had a cafe), all vendors had to be approved (including photographers, florists, cake deliverers, etc.), invitations had to be approved by the museum, insurance had to list the museum's board along with a long list of other related organizations (too many characters for the major insurance company's form to accommodate so they had to get an actual underwriter on the phone to make an exception), despite the ceremony start time of 6:30, a bastille-esque spiked metal gate was closed until exactly 6:30 to prevent on-time guests from "sitting early," and last but certainly not least, handicapped guests needed to be escorted by a security guard to the bathroom.
Our caterer, one of the very few who was allowed to cater at the venue at all, laughed when we told her that we thought a museum would be easy. "It's hard to find a venue that's harder to work with than a museum," she stated nonchalantly as she charged us almost twice as much as average because her company had to set up an entire external kitchen outside by the dumpsters thanks to that museum regulation that banned open flames in the building.
Museum wedding: A beautiful space, but not worth the pain
A couple key takeaways here:
#1) Don't have a wedding at a museum or anywhere else that considers your wedding a nuisance to their core business.
#2) Before choosing any venue or vendor, talk directly to clients and vendors who have recently worked with them on a wedding - they will tell you what is not surfaced by online reviews. Despite good yelp reviews, we had to fire our wedding planner a week before the wedding because her presence was detrimental (communicating our requirements incorrectly, not forwarding contracts, etc). Afterwards we realized that her online reviews were padded with reviews from her friends and other vendors. Don't let this happen to you! Ask probing questions, talk to other customers, and expect that the sales rep for the venue or vendor will not give you honest answers.
Then there were the creative challenges....
In addition to the logistical issues, we also struggled to figure out how to make our wedding ceremony itself meaningful enough to represent how we felt about each other. We discovered early in the process that despite weddings in movies, pretty much all American wedding scripts on the internet are religious in one way or another. After sifting through script after script, we ended up writing the ceremony ourselves and then sharing the script with our officiant, one of my music professors from college, who also added a few details of his own to the ceremony. We agonized over who we should have officiate, due to our secular beliefs, and ended up choosing a professor because in lieu of being attached to a religious institution, we felt like music and academia were more meaningful to our lives.
In the end we pulled from random traditions that we thought sounded nice and chose our own readings from Neil Degrasse Tyson, Einstein, and Shakespeare. The difficult museum regulations and the resulting increased cost led us to personalize other aspects of the event by making our own paper crane decorations instead of using flowers, ordering "special event cakes" not a "wedding cake," and hiring my mom's friend as our photographer (who did a pretty amazing job) instead of a pretentious San Francisco artist.
By starting early and working with a photographer who was a family friend, we had time to play with non-traditional pictures...
"Special event cakes," each customized to represent a place we've traveled together. This cost less than half of the same type of cake as a "wedding cake" from the same bakery and was infinitely more personal.
The space did meet one of my primary objectives- an awesome father daughter dance. Having enough space to dance can be a difficult constraint when finding a venue because it eliminates many restaurants and smaller spaces from the list. Be sure to ask any venue about hidden costs, and ask for references to former customers who can corroborate whatever info the rep gives you.
A bouquet of white roses, white calla lilies and purple thistle, created by my wonderful bridesmaid, Shirley.
Dress by Marchesa
We did a "first look" before the ceremony in a public area near the museum so that we could have all pictures done before the guests arrived, allowing us to make the most of our 5 hour American wedding sprint.
We snuck this pic in at the end of the night while everyone was leaving.
Overall, it worked out and fulfilled the criteria that I originally set out to meet, albeit with higher stress and more money than we had planned. That said, the one takeaway that I cannot ignore is that at the end of the day, I hardly remember the event at all!
Despite the amazing pics, from the beginning of the ceremony until the end of the reception was exactly 5 hours which absolutely flew by. My husband didn't eat any of his excruciatingly expensive meal, and the thirty minutes of dancing passed by in a blur.
And so, in contrast, I present exhibit B - the French wedding.
The French Wedding Experience
(And what you can use from it to make your own wedding awesome!)
For the French wedding, our friends and family from California, Europe and Asia converged on a beautiful old farm (400 years old to be precise, and built on the ruins of a Roman villa that is over 2,000 years old). We spent the entire weekend together imbibing and enjoying each other's company and it was awesome. My memories from this weekend are vivid, deep and wonderful.
While we were extremely privileged to have such a wonderful family and home hosting us, there were many elements that can be applied to any wedding, anywhere in the world. And, if you want to have a French castle wedding, that too is possible. My husband and I actually know another American couple who rented a castle in France for their wedding, and they had a very similar story, extolling the virtues of getting everyone to a beautiful place where they can spend ample time together enjoying each other's company and the amazing food of the French countryside.
And so, finally, here are some ideas and borrowed cultural traditions that made my French wedding awesome, that you can easily (and cheaply) do yourself!
1) Tying the knot (literally)
Our French wedding was officiated by my friend whose family hosted the event. He flew from his current residence in Singapore back to France for the occasion and did an amazing job! In about 10 minutes, about one hour before the ceremony, we created the entire program together.
He had recently been to a South Indian wedding, in which it is a tradition for the bride and groom to be bound together by ribbon throughout the length of the ceremony. This creates a very clear and meaningful visual representation of the joining together of people, and it only requires some string or ribbon. When rings are exchanged the rings take on the symbolism of the "tied knots," bringing additional lasting meaning to the rings.
2) Seven Vows by the Fire
Another South Indian tradition that we included was the Agni fire ceremony. In this ceremony the fire is the "witness" to your vows (as are your friends and family who are watching you), which even to my agnostic self, made them feel more significant. The couple (while still tied together), walks around a fire seven times, each time stopping to make a vow to each other.
Since we hadn't pre-written our vows, we had to come up with them on the spot and our friends and family got to be a part of the process, which made it very personal and fun. Seven vows is a lot, so it also allows you to cover a spectrum of big things and small things. Since it's awkward to walk around while tied up (especially in a wedding dress!), you already have to support each other, which adds to the symbolism.
We used a candle in a moroccan lantern to reduce the risk of setting my wedding dress on fire :).
3) The Dance-Off
Another fun Indian tradition that we incorporated was the dance-off. The men escorted the groom to the altar in dance, and the women escorted the bride. Together we reached the altar in a big Indian dance-off (in our case to music performed by a local French folk band from the local region of Charente) and the ceremony started with a lot of excitement and fun energy.
At the end of the ceremony we finished the dance-off, with everyone dancing together from the ceremony to the reception (which was about 30 feet away). Even people who were not normally comfortable dancing in public had an awesome time, and the ice was broken for an entire day of dancing.
4) Pièce montée
Europeans have a lot of fun local folk traditions that add color and meaning to any wedding, and the French are no exception. One of my favorites was this local French tradition, in which the bride and groom serve sweet puffs of dough held together by caramel (displayed in a tower called a Pièce
montée)
to each person at the reception. As they work their way around the room, the bride and groom personally thank each person for participating in the wedding. Because the puffs are sticky, it is funny to watch the bride and groom attempt to give out the pieces, requiring them to display teamwork :).
5) Wheelbarrow race
This is definitely one of the best. It was a local tradition for the groom to push the bride from the place where they originally met to the location of the wedding...in a wheelbarrow. This made sense logistically back in the days when people married other people within their tiny villages, but the tradition symbolically lives on, even for people like us who met across the world.
The French family created a "bridal wheelbarrow" with white pillows and streamers and my new husband pushed me around the farmyard on an obstacle course with people wearing hats (buckets, technically) that listed different places that we'd traveled together. This was a very difficult task for my new husband to achieve and he succeeded fantastically. At the end though, the tables were turned and I had to push him! I hardly got a few inches...
This tradition was hilarious and wildly entertaining for all involved.
6) Teach everyone how to do a local dance
The local charenteuse band taught everyone a traditional folk dance. The folk music was fantastic and very easy to dance to, and when they showed everyone the moves, it was another way to include people who otherwise would not be comfortable dancing. This was a great way to bring people together with a new shared experience.
7) Interactive entertainment
Because our reception space was relatively small (in the area where the estate had formerly made its wine), we had the band sit at our banquet table with us! This actually made it very personal and fun, and they ended up singing folk songs and teaching the group the words. They even did the blues and many people at the banquet participated with their own verses. It was another way to make everyone feel like they were a part of the action, which was a huge benefit of having such a small group.
8) Everyone gives a speech!
This one was another one of my favorites. Because there were only twenty guests and we had lots and lots of time, everyone gave a speech! This made the entire experience really personal and it helped break the ice between people who didn't know each other outside of the context of the wedding. This would obviously not work with a large number of guests, but for twenty people it was perfect and made the event much more personal and meaningful.
9) The Slipper kick
Everyone's heard of the bouquet toss, but I present to you the...slipper kick. Another local French tradition, it's pretty much exactly how it sounds. Each guest has an opportunity to kick a slipper as far as they can. The symbolism has something to do with the man's...slippers (something scandalous that wasn't fully explained because the winner's 7-year old daughter was present...). This was another way to get all of the guests involved in a funny activity that would make them feel comfortable just doing fun, relaxing activities together.
10) Last but not least - spending lots of time together!
Our French wedding lasted from Friday night until Monday morning. It started with a welcome reception and dinner on Friday night. The actual ceremony happened on Saturday afternoon, followed by the fun events described above. Sunday, with all of our guests, we went to the beautiful medieval town of St. Emilion, a grand cru wine region in Bordeaux, followed by another final dinner together on Sunday night.
Having so much time together really allowed us to enjoy every moment, without the crazy stress of pushing through a tight wedding schedule. When it rained on our wedding day, we just waited until it stopped. When we wanted to decorate the arch the morning of the wedding, my groom and I went to the local flower shop and bought beautiful flowers that we then also used for the bouquet and boutonniere. People from three continents had time to get to know each other, build friendships, and relax enough to have a fantastic time, and the funny local folk traditions really helped create the open atmosphere that enabled everyone to feel like a part of something special.
If you don't want to incorporate any of these fun traditions, I would say that my one key takeaway is that no matter what you choose to do, give yourself enough time with your guests to enjoy it and to remember it.
And for that, you don't need a crazy budget, you just need to find the right place and the right people, and allow yourselves to enjoy being together!
Have questions or comments? Leave them in the comments section and I will answer them!
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