Mrs. Gingerbread, Vancouver
Age and Occupation: 32, Psychologist
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 33, Software Engineer
Engagement Date: Sometime in the fall of 2004
Wedding Date: July, 2008
Blogging Since: March 24, 2008
Venue: Rainforest wedding, beachfront restaurant reception
About Me: I recently moved to Canada from Southern California. Trying to plan a wedding in a new city, not to mention a new country, is tough, but the fact that we can get legally married here more than makes up for it! The wedding will be an opportunity for most of our family and friends to see our new city for the first time so it will be both a wedding and a reunion. Besides my future wife, I am also madly in love with a good bargain, Swedish pastries, Tivo, and my two dogs and calico cat (in no particular order).
No Wedding Party
May 5th, 2008 @ 8:27 am by Mrs. Gingerbread
Miss GB 2.0 and I always envisioned a small, intimate wedding. Moving to another country created the “destination wedding” situation, whereby even though it was local for us, it wouldn’t be for the majority of our guests. We thought that getting married after relocating to Vancouver would be the perfect way to show our guests our new home. Of course, this also worked in favour of our small, intimate wedding vision since only people who really love you are going to go through lengths of international air travel for your big day. With a guest list somewhere around 50 (that’s our best projection at the moment), we really want each of our guests to feel like an important part of our wedding.
I guess we could always achieve that by having all 50 in the wedding. Hey, Ivana Trump and her new husband had 50 attendants!
We decided to go to the other extreme and not have any attendants. Part of this decision is completely practical. The people we’d consider as attendants live far away from us, so it’s not like we’d be enlisting them in helping us in the months leading up to the wedding. Then when they do show up for the wedding, we want them to be able to relax and enjoy their time with us.
There is also a cost saving factor in this decision. No one will be asked to buy a special outfit and in turn, we won’t need to buy extra bouquets, provide transportation, etc.
We have asked some important people in our lives to be involved in our ceremony in other ways. Our eldest niece, my grandpa, and a good friend of ours will all read passages and our other nieces and nephew will also be involved in the ceremony. The ring warming ceremony is a way that we’ll involve the rest of our guests in the wedding.
Is anyone else going the “no wedding party” route? What are your reasons?
14 Responses to “No Wedding Party”
I’m interested to know what the ring warming ceremony is? It is exactly as it sounds — the rings will be passed to each guest who will warm them with their touch? What a cool idea. I’m sure the hive would love to know more about this aspect of your wedding.
We were married last August and did not have a wedding party. Aaron and I had previously asked our siblings to be a part of the wedding as attendants, but then our plans changed. Instead we had just us and our officiant, while are family members looked on. It was perfect and intimate.
Mr. Jasmine and I aren’t having a bridal party either. We’re going to have our parents and brothers stand us beside us during the ceremony.
I am also curious about the ring warming ceremony… please explain! =)
We’re not planning on a wedding party either, Ms. GB, for much the same reasoning. Since we’re having a destination wedding in Florida, where only a small portion of our guests live, it’s just more practical to go without. We’re going to have our siblings do readings and my niece will be a flower girl.
Also, I feared choosing! I’ve been in several weddings and have many close girl (and guy) friends and this simplifies things greatly.
I am having a wedding of only 50 people including the bride & groom and I choose to have 2 attendants. Originally I had planned 3 on each side and I thought how silly given the size of the wedding. But I have two very close friends and I just couldn’t leave them out of something so important.
No wedding party here either- we’d just heard too many horror stories about the burdens that are placed on the couple’s supposedly best friends and the drama that goes along with it. Didn’t want to have to rank our friends anyway =)
We are having my sister and FI’s brother “stand up for us.” so I guess that technically he is best man and she is MOH, but we don’t talk about it in those terms. It’s really nice - we get the best of all worlds, in that we have two of the most important people in our lives showing their support, but neither of them has to “match” a gaggle of other attendants. And we don’t have to worry about the crazy politics and logistics of a whole group of people. It’s one of the best decisions we made!
@Mrs. Onion: I should have linked this previous post: http://www.weddingbee.com/2008/04/01/rings/
We decided against a wedding party because it was too hard to overcome the gender structure of it, with couples walking down the aisle in coordinated costumes. Also, it would have been too difficult to choose who to include and who to exclude. For example, it would matter a LOT to my FH’s sisters to be included, but not to my sibs - and to include one set but not the other would look weird and invite all kinds of drama.
Instead, we have committees of helpers assigned to various tasks. They get all the “fun” of working on the event without the potential discomfort of wearing something they don’t want to wear.
@Emerson: Hi Emerson! I’m so glad that you are here. There are several members of female same-sex couples here, but a severe shortage of men. Welcome 
We asked my cousin and his brother to stand up for us and sign as witnesses, but other than that, we didn’t ask them to do anything special, and they were pretty free on how to dress, too. For her, all I said was no prints, and keep in mind the time of day and the church’s teal rug. Heh, I didn’t even finalize the colour of my flowers until she’d picked her dress.
my godson and god daughter were ring bearer and flower girl, but that’s it. Actually, my 7 year old RB got so nervous that the flower girl had to take the rings down for us! I’m glad she was carrying our leis in a tray - we just stuck the ring bowl on that as well. Our mothers signed the license as witnesses.
We had 30 people at our destination wedding, and I didn’t want my friends to feel obliged to come and have me tell them what to wear - we all live so far apart. What I also think is kinda cool is that all three of us are were/are getting married in a 9 month timespan and NONE of us had/will have a wedding party.
I almost did this… but I changed my mind. We are having a small ‘wedding party’ (not a term in common parlance over here in UK) of a best man for him and a best man and a best woman for me. No flowers for them though 
