The invitation has been on the desk for three weeks and the reason it is still there is the line about a guest. That part is ordinary. What is less ordinary is how differently a wedding behaves from every other booking we take, and how many of the decisions have to be made before the reply card goes back in the post.
Start with the clock, because it explains the rest. A ceremony at two, photographs until four, drinks on a lawn until seven, dinner, speeches, a first dance at ten, and the last car at one. Eleven hours in one outfit, in a room where everybody has known each other for twenty years, and the only person nobody knows is the one you brought.
A dinner is three hours with people who then scatter. A wedding is a whole day with a group, and the group will still be discussing it at Christmas. It is the booking we most enjoy arranging and the one that rewards half an hour of preparation more than any other.
The reply card is the first decision, not the last
The name you write on it is not a formality. It goes into the seating plan, the place cards, the caterer’s count, and sometimes a printed order of service, all of which are finished weeks before the day. Change it late and somebody is rebuilding a table plan on a Sunday evening.
Which means the booking happens earlier than clients expect. Six weeks before the wedding is comfortable. Four is workable. Two means writing a name on the card that we have not matched yet, and we would rather you did not.
The card usually asks about dietary requirements as well. Send us the question rather than answering it on your companion’s behalf. A caterer takes that answer as final, and a kitchen cooking for a hundred and forty has no room to improvise on the night.
What to tell the couple
Two positions work. You give a name and that is the end of it. Or you tell the couple plainly, in advance, and in our experience they are entirely relaxed about it. Both are fine. What does not work is a third version invented at the reception, because a wedding is a small town for a day and a story told at one table has reached the others by the speeches.
If you are going to tell anyone, tell the couple first and tell them before the plan is printed. Finding out on the night is the version that irritates people, and it is entirely avoidable.
The questions run longer at a wedding
Somebody will ask how you met. That question has its own entry in this journal and the short answer is one agreed sentence, boring on purpose. A wedding then adds three that a dinner never gets to: how long, whether it is serious, and whether you will both be there at Christmas.
So agree a length of time along with the sentence. "Since the spring" is enough and it survives being repeated across a lawn nine times. Agree who answers, too, so you are not both starting the same sentence in front of an aunt who has known you since you were nine.
None of this is an interrogation. Your companion will be the only new face in a room of two hundred people who have all met, and asking questions is the friendliest thing anybody there can do. Wedding guests simply have eleven hours in which to do it.
The briefing is shorter than you think
Everything your companion needs fits on one screen. The names of the couple and how you know them. Whose side you are on. Four or five guests you will be introduced to, with a few words on how each one relates to you. Anything the family is currently not discussing, stated plainly, because a wedding is exactly where somebody asks about it.
Send it to the desk rather than to your companion directly. It reaches them in writing, with the rest of the briefing, and it means nobody is working from memory of a phone call.
You will be separated at dinner
The seating plan was settled weeks ago by somebody with a spreadsheet and a difficult family, and you do not control it. At most weddings you will be put together. At a fair number you will not, and there is a two hour stretch where your companion is talking to a cousin you have never mentioned.
So mention them. Four or five names and their relationship to you covers almost any table. If you can get a look at the plan beforehand, send it through and we will pass it on.
Photographs are arranged, not improvised
A wedding produces more photographs than anything else either of you will attend this year, and unlike a party the pictures are collected, printed, and sent to people who were not there. Several are online before the cake is cut.
Wide shots of the ceremony and the room are unavoidable and mostly not worth thinking about. The one to plan for is the family group photograph, called out from a list by a photographer working to a schedule. Stepping out of that is effortless when it was arranged in advance and awkward when it was not.
Ask the couple rather than the photographer. One line a week before is enough: your guest would rather not be in the posed groups, though wide shots of the room are no trouble at all. Couples pass this on without comment, because they already have four other requests like it.
It is your companion’s decision rather than yours or ours. Tell us the photography situation when you enquire and we will match the day to somebody comfortable with it.
The dress code has two layers
The printed code is the easy half. Morning dress, black tie, or lounge suit all mean something specific. The second layer is the venue and the family, and it is printed nowhere. A church may expect covered shoulders. A mosque or a temple will have its own requirement at the door. Some families read white on a guest as a mistake and a few read black the same way, and the invitation mentions neither.
Send us the invitation itself, the venue, and if you know it, what the last wedding in this family looked like. Then nobody is interpreting a phrase at eleven in the morning with a car waiting.
The long gap in the middle
Between the ceremony and dinner there are two or three hours with nothing scheduled in them, and that is where a wedding is won or lost. Everybody is standing on grass holding a drink, in sun or in wind, and the conversation has to come from somewhere.
- Say whether the ceremony and the reception are in different places. The gap between them is a car journey and it is never as long as the running order suggests
- Say whether it is outdoors. Grass, heat, and three hours of standing all change what your companion brings
- Name the four or five people you actually want to speak to, so the middle hours have a shape rather than a duration
- If the wedding is out of town, book the rooms when you book the day. Separate accommodation is the standing arrangement on every travel booking, and a hotel block held for a wedding sells out before anything else in the town
- Send the running order if you were given one. Knowing that the speeches start at nine is worth more than it sounds
Leaving
Set the departure before you arrive. At most weddings the first dance is the earliest clean exit: before it, leaving is early enough that somebody notices, and after it nobody is counting. Order the car for a time rather than deciding at midnight, say goodbye to the couple once, and go.
A wedding gives you eleven hours and about four decisions. Make them in the week before, not on the lawn.
Six weeks of notice, the invitation itself, and the names of the people who matter. That is the whole of it, and the rest of the day is a good party you happen to be dressed for.
