Surprise! 8 Things Your Guests Don’t Care About

Planning & Advice

Weddings – they’re usually planned down to the very last detail. Does everything match? Is there enough of this thing or that? Will everyone be impressed? Now, we’d like to ask you to think about the weddings you’ve attended as a guest. Do you remember, or did you keep, any of the items we’ve listed below? Many of you will realise that, holy cow, you actually don’t. Great! You can now spend less time fretting over these. We present to you – 8 things your guests don’t really care about.

1. Your dress designer

Whoah. Are you surprised? We were too, when we heard this one! Your wedding dress is your individual preference – so feel free to get the one you love and feel best in! But will your guests turn up their noses if they found out you’re not kitted out in Vera Wang? Of course not. It’s the same with your everyday wardrobe too – sometimes (or often), the no-label items look far more adorable on you than anything you bought straight from a designer. Guests just don’t care about that designer label.

However, we must add, if you have a teen family member or friend who are just discovering the magic of fashion and designer brands, we guarantee they’ll be way impressed you’re wearing Vera Wang!

2. Programs

Programs are lovely and they’re very helpful when the ceremony is going to follow a less-than-expected route. But, they also get left behind, because once the ‘I do’ is said, there’s no more need for them. Unless you’d like to provide lyrics to songs you’d like everyone to sing, or give them an individual breakdown for complicated proceedings, your guests won’t mind not having a program. But if you feel there should be something, set up a single large one at the entrance to the ceremony venue or go with a simple scroll style. Alternatively, if you’re making your own confetti cones, print a simple timeline onto the paper first, so it charmingly serves a dual purpose. Solved!

Photo from Julie & Scott’s real wedding by The Fennells

3. Linen

Luxury linen is lovely… as a wedding gift, or if you have aristocrats stopping by for dinner on a regular basis. As soon as you have a large party – like your average wedding of 159 guests – this becomes an immense expense. Think of restaurants and hotels – they usually choose linen with the perfect combination of beauty, durability and practicality, simply because it has to be laundered every day. Will your guests mind not having gleaming silks to dab their faces or specialty linen tablecloths (or something even fancier like sequins?)? Absolutely not. In fact, most venue packages already come with linen included, usually in white, or in a colour that suits the venue’s decor, and nobody bats an eyelid.

4. Centrepieces

If you’ve already spent hours sifting through pictures of centrepieces on Pinterest… looked at every possible vase, jug or bowl in town… agonised over the colour of petals to spread on that mirror base – take a deep breath and stop! Centrepieces are lovely and make all the difference, but your guests will never know the effort you went through to put them together. Save yourself the agony and stick to the basics! Here’s what works every time: flowers, candles, bowls of fruit, trays of brownies, a stack of old books with a picture on top. Most of the guests won’t even notice the finer details so skip the DIY extras if they’re causing you hassle.

Photo from Georgina and Joshua’s real wedding by Yes I Du Wedding Agency Dubrovnik

5. Favours

A few years ago, one wedding guest told us, ‘it seemed like every wedding I went to, I got the same favour. I felt bad leaving them behind, so I ended up with five identical candles.’ This, dear brides and grooms, is the trouble with favours – they’re like fashion, suddenly you see the same ones everywhere! May we recommend something different? You can’t go wrong if you personalise, or make it edible, winnable or charitable. Or for an extra-fun route, a photo booth is ideal! Take a look at our 20 brilliant wedding favours your guests are guaranteed to love. Because, you know, you’d feel a little bit sad if you spent money on something that went in the bin.

6. The bouquet toss

This pun is practically begging to be written – who gives a toss? Here’s an easy way to figure it out. Count all the single ladies you invited to the wedding. Add the unmarried ladies with partners. Divide by half. That’s it, that’s the number. Is it surprisingly low? It usually is. So you’re going to throw away your beautiful bouquet to no more than 10 people who actually believe in that tradition? There’s also a very real chance your 11 year old cousin Liam will jump in there just for fun, catch it and then not know what to do with it – which would at least be funny. Most guests don’t care about the toss. How about preserving your bouquet instead? There are so many surprising ways to do it – check them out.

Photo from Niamh & Jason’s real wedding by Emma Russell Photography

7. Place cards

Are place cards necessary at every wedding? Not really. It depends on the level of casual. Some brides can’t think of anything worse than figuring out who to pop next to who so a simple and stress-free solution is to just let them sit where they like at their assigned table (plus it saves you a job!). Your guests don’t care about the presence or absence of place cards – even if they notice it on the day, they’ll forget by tomorrow. And of course there are many pros and cons to not having a seating plan – and having none may just be the best thing for you.

8. Guest book

Guest books are lovely and a great memento of your wedding day, but we’ve never seen a guest book completely filled out. Who knows why that is? Some guests think ‘I’ll do it after dinner’ then forget, some just don’t know what to write and ‘congratulations’ seems to boring, and some don’t even realise the book is there. We believe this is largely the reason for the rising popularity of fun options – like the fingerprint tree, wish jars, puzzle pieces, or photo and video booths where short messages can be recorded in addition to photos. If you have a videographer, you could also ask them to collect video greetings from the guests – great fun to watch every year on your anniversary.

Photo from Julie & Scott’s real wedding by The Fennells

Main photo from Lisa & Gareth’s real wedding by Ebony & Pearl Photography