Worried about choosing your wedding party? Well picture this: It’s your wedding day. You are wearing the outfit of your dreams, made up to look more amazing than you ever have before, and you’re about to commit your life to the person you love in front of an audience of friends and family. You’re nervous, as anyone would be, and preparing in a room along with a handful of your closest friends.
Who are those people there with you?
The ones helping you to put the finishing touches on your look, as they do the same. Wearing the outfits you picked out for them, smiles plastered across their faces, ready to support you on the biggest day of your life.
Choosing your wedding party can be an exciting part of wedding planning. But it can also be a bit stressful; as you worry about hurting the feelings of those you simply aren’t able to ask to join you up front.
Who are the friends you who will be there for you??
Remember that being a part of the bridal party is a commitment, though. It’s one that typically requires extra expenses on the part of your bridal party, as well as time committed to the various pre-wedding activities. As such, you only want to ask your closest friends and family to be a part of your bridal party. You want those friends to be the ones who will surely be in your life for the next several decades to come.
Finally Choosing Your Wedding Party:
Start by sitting down with your partner and determining how many people you want in your wedding party, total. You and they may differ some, and that’s OK. There is no rule saying you each have to have the same number of people standing behind you. But getting a general idea of how many people they are thinking of asking to be on their side may help you to narrow down your list as well.
Then, start from the top and work your way down. Who do you want to be your Persons of Honor? A lot of people choose a sibling or their best friend for this role. For some, the simple choice of designating the honor here may be a bit too much – so just know that you are the one who gets to make the rules. You could have two people of honor, or none at all, if making the choice really does start to seem too difficult.
From there, start designating the other friends you want standing with you. Keeping your original number in mind, work through the people you have considered yourself closest to over the years. Don’t allow yourself to feel obligated to choose someone to be in your wedding party just because you were in theirs, though. This is your wedding and your wedding party – you get to decide who you most want to fill the shoes of your bridal party.
When it comes time to ask those special people in your life to join your wedding party, try to do so individually – make a mini-event out of it, if you can. Invite each of the friends to coffee or dinner and tell them you have something important you want to talk to them about. For those who are out of town, schedule a video-chat date and send a bottle of wine along ahead of time. Then extend the honor, and let them know how much it would mean to you for them to be standing up with you on the big day.
If these truly are your closest friends and family members, they will be ecstatic to have been included in your plans. Remember, though, that sometimes extenuating circumstances may keep people from joining your wedding party – even if they desperately wish they could be a part of your big day. So understand if a potential brides-person declines and don’t feel pressured to fill their space. This isn’t about keeping quotas or trying to achieve even numbers for photo ops. The friends standing beside you will be fulfilling important roles, and it is better to keep them limited to those you truly are close to, rather than scrambling at the last minute to fill slots.
And now that you’ve got choosing your wedding party in order… let’s get planning! Go read my other post:
WEDDING PLANNING FOR GREAT PHOTOS
Hope to meet you soon! – Jen
