Q: I was recently at a craft store and ran into a friend who is getting married a few weeks before me. She had an armload of stuff, and said she was going to craft her card box. I thought she meant a box to put on a shelf at home to store all the cards and notes and well-wishes she would get. In fact, she meant a box to put on the gift table at the wedding where guests could drop the cards they brought. This had never crossed my mind. It seems like a decently good idea, but I would never in a million years have conceived of this on my own. Which brings me to my crowd-sourcing question: What are the little wedding details that proved to be worthwhile? I am at the stage of wedding planning where I have a cake and flowers and a DJ, but what about card boxes? Gift bags at the hotel? I know the WIC tells us we need All The Things, and lots of them are silly, but which ones are actually useful or meaningful or day-saving?
Becky
A:In indie wedding land, we like to pretend like the details don’t matter, or that they only matter if they’re also emotionally gratifying. And in WIC-land, details are ALL that matters. The reality of weddings falls somewhere in between, but it’s often really confusing trying to separate out helpful advice from a marketing ploy. So here it is in plain English: details matter for different reasons. Some things (like table numbers and escort cards) are functionally necessary for keeping your wedding organized and your guests taken care of. Other things will be meaningful and others are just there to sit and look pretty. (And that’s fine. Everybody needs beauty as well as bread.) But just because something serves a functional purpose at your wedding doesn’t mean you have an obligation to make it pretty (or meaningful).
So yeah, it might be helpful to have a place to put cards so that you don’t end up losing them or having to collect them from tables at the end of the night. But do you need the world’s most inventive card box at your wedding? Nah. Table numbers can just be numbers, and guests can put their cards on the table next to the presents. If you’re still not sure what to do, just ask yourself: what actually matters to me? Then invest your time in those things and put a minimal amount of effort into the rest. Or as Meg says on the subject:
Focus on making your wedding feel aesthetically honest (because there is a lot of aesthetic bullshit out there, and a lot of people trying to tell you that Classic Wedding Aesthetic is the only way it can be done). Focus on making it feel like you and your partner. And once you get to that place, realize that everything else is extra.
Just make sure that you don’t forgo the details that, you know, tell people where to go. Because that stuff is legitimately important.
details are different for everyone, and we’ve got a COMMUNITY full of recently married people. So let’s kick this over to you. what wedding day details did you make meaningful? What items did you bring to your wedding that ended up saving the day? What could you have lived without?
Editor’s note: If you had details that were emotionally meaningful at your wedding, don’t forget to share them with @APracticalWedding on Instagram using the hashtag #DetailsWithMeaning. We might end up reposting your image and your story!
