Our 8 Favorite Things We Did At Our Wedding

Can I just say that I am a huge fan of the trend in the wedding industry that you don't have to stick with traditions you care nothing about and can instead do the things you want at your wedding?! Big fan.

When it came time for wedding planning there were some things we knew we wanted to have as part of our celebration, but there were other things we just didn't want to do or didn't care about. Neither of us like cake that much and since I am gluten free we knew finding a good GF cake would be a challenge, so we opted to go for something we both love instead and do an ice cream sundae bar! We also knew we didn't want to invite every single person we know to our wedding so we made the decision to have smaller numbers and were so happy we did that. The choices we made for our big day felt very much like us and ensured our wedding was everything we wanted it to be.

Here are some of the decisions we made when wedding planning that ended up being our 8 favorite things we did at our wedding weekend. These are all things that worked really well for who we are as a couple and what we wanted out of our wedding, which means they won't be the right decisions for everyone. BUT these are things we enjoyed so much that we now recommend them to anyone we know planning a wedding as options to consider because they worked out so well for us.

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Our 8 Favorite Things We Did At Our Wedding

1) Having a smaller wedding

One of the decisions we made when planning our wedding was to have a smaller wedding. Not tiny, but we limited our guest list to our closest friends and families and only ended up having about 75 people attending.

Because we got married near where I grew up in New England and not local to where we currently live it was easier to limit the people we invited since we didn't feel obligated to include friends we might see regularly but aren't as close with.

I had also heard from lots of friends who had big weddings that many of them regretted inviting that many people because it felt overwhelming and meant they didn't really get time to talk with all of their guests. Likewise, the friends I knew who had smaller weddings really enjoyed the intimacy of that and definitely recommended doing the same, so those bits of feedback from trusted confidants certainly impacted our decision.

Having a smaller wedding ended up being so nice because it felt like we truly got time to enjoy our guests without feeling rushed to see everyone. It also helped with nerves to look out onto the room and only see your closest friends and family smiling back at you. Having lower numbers also meant we paid less for our wedding since we didn't have to feed as many people. All in all, we loved the size of the wedding we had and if we were planning it all over again we would definitely do the same thing.

2) Smaller wedding parties

Sort of in line with the smaller guest list, we only had 4 bridesmaids and groomsmen each. This was another decision we made after hearing from friends who had had large bridal parties that they regretted that decision.

I watched two of my dear friends have large bridal parties at their weddings with friends they were very close with at the time, but within a few years a lot of those friendships had already changed and they weren't as close anymore. Neither of them were upset with their decision at the time, but looking back on it they said if they were to do it again they would do smaller parties with only people they knew would be around forever.

With that in mind, I decided I wanted to limit my bridesmaids to only friends/family I knew were in my life for the long haul. For my party I had my sister, my best friend since college, my best friend since 8th grade, and my husband's sister. My husband, Zach, chose his 4 closest friends (he doesn't have any brothers), 3 from college and one from adult life. We were really happy with the choice to have smaller parties with people we know we will always be friends with, and again limiting the numbers also meant it kept the price down when paying for things for our bridal parties.

3) Laid back rehearsal dinner

Our rehearsal dinner ended up being one of our favorite parts of our whole wedding weekend! Since we were getting married in coastal Maine we knew we wanted to give our out-of-town guests a local taste and opted for a restaurant that does lobster bakes (which also happens to be my favorite food!).

It was such a blast and everyone enjoyed the experience whether this was their first time eating lobster or their 100th. We hosted the dinner at Foster's Clambake in York, Maine which was such a great experience. The staff were wonderful and the room we were in was big enough to easily move around and mingle, pop by other tables to talk to friends and family, and it just felt comfortable and laid back while still being special.

We were also really happy with our decision to include all of our extended family and bridal party in our rehearsal dinner. It was so nice to have lots of time to hang out with those people and enjoy seeing them before the wedding where we knew things would be busier. We got such great time to connect and enjoy all being together and it was a really special and fun time. We definitely recommend having a rehearsal dinner that's relaxed and fun while giving you plenty of time to connect with loved ones if that is something that works for you as a couple and with your wedding plans.

4) Friends meet up the night before our wedding

We got married on July 5th which means the night before our wedding was the 4th of July (and consequently we now always have fireworks around our anniversary!). Something we really wanted to do was have some way to see all our friends who had traveled from out of town to be in Maine for our wedding and get to celebrate the holiday (and our pre-nuptuals) with them.

We landed on having anyone who wanted to join meet up with us at one of the beaches I grew up going to as a kid to watch the fireworks after our rehearsal dinner. It was so fun to get some time with our friends before the wedding to hang out and throw frisbees and footballs around, and it just made the weekend feel so much like "us" since those are things we love doing with our friends at home. It was also nice to get to chat and catch up with those friends at that point because that meant at our wedding there were fewer guests we hadn't seen already at some point during the weekend.

Obviously meeting up at a park the night before your wedding for sports and fireworks is not everyone's cup of tea, but I've had other friends do something similar by meeting up with friends at a local bar or brewery after their rehearsal dinner. Whatever is more your speed, our recommendation would be to find a place you can invite your friends to come meet you at after your rehearsal dinner so you can hang out and catch up in a more relaxed environment before the big day. It was so fun and made us feel like we got more time with everyone throughout the weekend instead of only seeing them for a few hours at the wedding.

5) Photo escort cards

I have an entire blog post on our photo escort cards so if you are interested in learning more about them head to that post, but the short version is these were one of the things that ended up being such a huge hit at our wedding and our guests loved them! We had fun making them and our guests loved getting something personal, plus the conversations and connections it led to were really wonderful. We thought this would be a cool idea when we planned it, but it ended up being even better than we had expected and was something our guests talked about for months after!

6) Polaroid guest book

We wanted something more interesting than a traditional guest book so we decided to do a polaroid photo guest book instead, which ended up being so fun! We used the Fujifilm Instax Camera from Amazon which worked out great and got plenty of film, as well as this cute guest book that matched our wedding colors. My bridesmaid who also had the same camera let us use that too so we could have two cameras going at the same time.

We had a sign on the guest book table to "take a photo for us and one for yourself" so that people could take photos home with them to have as memories also. We loved that this was something fun and interactive for our guests to do and that we got some great pictures to look back on of moments from our wedding we might not have seen otherwise.

But one of the best things that actually happened with our photo guest book was not our doing at all. Our friend, John, decided to dub himself our "official polaroid photographer" and spent the reception running around snapping photos of everyone. We are SO glad he did this because it meant that we ended up with way more fun and candid pictures to add to the book and now we have a whole album full of photos from the day from a unique perspective! If you do a polaroid guest book make sure to ask a friend to be your official polaroid photographer for the night (and pick someone fun and outgoing who loves making new friends!). We were so thankful he took on that role and got us so many great pics!

7) Ice cream sundae bar

Like I mentioned already, neither my husband nor I really enjoy cake as much as other desserts, so we decided to do an ice cream sundae bar for our reception instead. We realized that even the tradition of cutting a cake wasn't that important to us so we opted to not even get a little one for that purpose and just stick to ice cream. Plus, New England is known for having amazing ice cream so we thought it would be cool to serve up something local for our guests.

This was another aspect of our wedding that our guests ended up loving! We got so many comments from people afterwards on how much they loved the ice cream bar and thought it was such a fun thing to do. We were really glad that we decided to go with something that felt more "us" and we didn't miss having the cake cutting as part of our reception at all.

8) Gifts for each other after the wedding

This ended up totally being an accident, but with everything going on during the day and getting ready for the wedding neither of us got around to opening our wedding gift from the other person before the wedding. I know some couples plan out a time to do this before the ceremony either together when you do a first look or with your photographer/videographer to capture the reaction, but that wasn't something we planned into our day so for both of us it was something that just got lost in the shuffle.

This ended up working out so well, though, because it meant that when we got to our hotel after the wedding we were able to have this really sweet and special time together of opening our gifts and reading the cards we'd written for each other. It was such a nice way to end the festivities of the day with a quiet moment getting to celebrate being married and opening our wedding presents. We ended up enjoying it so much more than if we had opened our presents by ourselves earlier in the day.

If you aren't planning to have a scheduled time before your ceremony to open each other's wedding gifts we really recommend waiting until after the wedding to do it together. This ended up being one of our favorite moments from the day and it's now something I suggest to everyone because of how special it ended up being for us.

These 8 things we chose to do for our wedding weekend helped to make it the most special, fun, and joy-filled weekend of our lives. We were so happy with how everything worked out and wouldn't go back and change anything because of how perfect it all ended up being for us.

I hope this gives you some ideas on what types of things to consider doing for your wedding and helps you think through what traditions are important to you or not. Making your wedding a celebration that feels very much like you and your partner will make it feel so special and personal and ensure that it is a weekend you look back on as being one of the best of your lives too. Happy wedding planning!

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