Planning a Wedding Party

This post is written in collaboration with Confetti. 

Unless you’ve been living in a hole you’ll know that this year has seen THE wedding of the year.

Although we had the ceremony in secret – just us, the children and two witnesses (I bet Meghan and Harry wish they’d done that…). It was always our intention to have a big wedding party to celebrate with our friends and family at a later date.

I’ll be honest, I thought we were being clever getting married privately.

Yes, the MAIN reason was so that the day remained about us and our happiness. Celebrating our love and not keeping other people happy.

The additional benefit was that we wouldn’t have to worry about inviting family members we barely know, fret about who should sit where and spend too much time wondering what colour a chair back should be. All those things that quickly overtake and become, wrongly, important in wedding planning.

It turns out planning a wedding party isn’t as easy as I assumed it would be – it’s harder than planning the wedding!
We’re not fussy (much), we had simple criteria – somewhere quirky with a bit of character and not in the middle of nowhere.
Heck, we’d even consider somewhere ‘plain’ if we could decorate it to look nice.

Our first mistake was telling people it was a party to celebrate a wedding (seems I never learn).

One place, a local community centre, wanted to charge us £1800 just to hire the space.

ONE THOUSAND EIGHT HUNDRED POUND FOR TWO ROOMS!

My flabber was gasted to say the very least.

We want a party, a buffet and a disco, it’s pretty much a birthday party but with a fancy frock! At this rate it was going to cost more than the wedding!

We I was starting to panic, and I started on with my whole
“We might as well just not bother, woe is me”
Whilst Rory was more
“It’ll be reet”
I have no idea where Aoife gets her melodrama from.

Then, in that wonderful way things happen in life, the perfect venue appeared.

We will now be celebrating in a lovely bar in town with a super helpful manager who didn’t hear the word ‘wedding’ and add an extra £1000 onto the cost.
They are even sorting out the food and will ensure the DJ plays the right amount of indie classics.
WINNER.

The best thing is, it’s such a beautiful space that we don’t need to worry about getting venue dressers in to disguise it, rather we can just get some of our own wedding accessories to decorate it and make it a little more ‘us’.
I love it when a plan comes together.

Obviously, this opened a whole new can of worms, what theme do we choose?
I like shabby chic but it’s been done to death.
Rory likes ‘classy’ but is yet to define what he considers to be classy. One person’s classy is anothers explosion in a tat factory.

After having a good mooch around Pinterest, we have decided on a simple rose gold and white theme. Or maybe silver and white, or gold.

We don’t need a lot of bits. Napkins, lights, centrepieces, hanging decorations, standing decorations, table decorations, a guest book…I can feel myself getting carried away already, the phrase ‘over the top’ has been uttered already.

Luckily (or not for my purse) places like Confetti are full of ideas and items that I didn’t even know I needed so I can get everything I could possibly require in one place.

Now we have a venue and things are falling into place, I’m actually really looking forward to planning this party. It’s like the exciting bit of planning a wedding but not having to worry about the wedding politics. We can just drink, dance and be merry!