Welcome Package

There is a trend that seems as if it's been around forever, but has only gained mainstream popularity in the last decade or so. If you have traveled for a wedding in recent years and checked into the hotel listed on your invitation, you would have most likely been greeted by a welcome package. And nothing says "welcome" to a weary traveler with motion sickness or jet lag than a little acknowledgment from the happy couple in the form of a filled-bag (or basket, box, empty shoe, flower pot, whatever). Suddenly the previous six hours stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic before the $7.00 bridge toll seem to evaporate quicker than the water on your guest's rain-soaked windshield.

While money may be an object, this is a gracious touch that should not be overlooked. You needn't spend a fortune on the packages, but you must put some effort into the endeavor. Here is a list of things that a Professional Wedding Guest such as myself will look for:

1. Food. Chances are, your guests didn't pack a whole lot of food for the trip, especially if taking an airplane where they had to dump their remaining 4-ounces of water before boarding. Think quick energy. This is important as check-in times for hotels tend to be right around the time your guests are supposed to be leaving for your ceremony. There will be no time to hit a drive-in, and if like most weddings, there's a large gap of time between the ceremony and the cocktail hour, it could be hours before your guest gets a bite. Protein bars, crackers, fruit, cheese, and even chocolate are a good way to get your cranky travelers over the hump. Make sure to include bottled water or juice to the mix.
2. Small Gift. Yes, I know you shouldn't have to give a gift, but why not show a little token of your appreciation by including something just for your guest. This could be as simple as an inexpensive bottle of wine (or even mini-bottles), to a small handmade craft. People especially enjoy local items. Speaking of local, many brides and grooms litter their welcome packages with tourist information, most of which end up lining a landfill somewhere. Unless you are getting married in the Bahamas, we are not working our week-long vacation around your wedding. I can assure you that we are not interested in historic sites in or around Rome, New York. A small list of eateries or places to pick up miscellaneous sundries forgotten in our haste to pack is all that is necessary.
3. Interesting Facts about the Couple. This is a cute idea and will make all of your guests, even the most obscure ones, feel a deeper connection to you upon your wedding day. Tell us how you met, where you both grew up, and how the first meeting with the soon-to-be in-laws went. Make it funny and humble and let us relate to you.
4. Coupon or Gift Certificate. Just $5 of our next Quizno's sub is all we need to feel appreciated. Or pay for our parking at the hotel. Remember, your guests have traveled far enough to need to shell out the money for a hotel, and it's almost a certainty that it's not the same chain we have accrued 3-million rewards-points for.

Spending $15-$20 per room should be included in your overall budget, and will go a long way to pleasing your guests.

Desserts!

Nothing scores points with a Professional Wedding Guest as easily as dessert. Yes, the cake is important. Out with old cardboard tasting yellow cakes with fake-whipped cream and rolled fondant; in with raspberry tiered tortes and lemon chiffon masterpieces. But the cake is expected. It's supposed to be there and served in between renditions of Wonderful Tonight and Brown-Eyed Girl. But to be brave and put out something so magnificent, so mouthwatering, so unique...will keep your guests talking about your wedding for years to come. A platter of truffles, cookies, pastries or other miniature desserts to be passed around, family style, at all the tables is just the small touch that people appreciate even more than those sweet little gift baskets we receive when checking into our hotels. One recent wedding I attended actually did away with the wedding cake entirely, and replaced it with a tiered tower of brownies topped with chocolate covered strawberries and a make-your-own ice cream sundae bar. Genius!

The Money Bag

If you're under 40 years old, you probably have never seen the money bag. Truthfully, I'm not sure anyone under the age of 60 has seen one in action. For those of you unfamiliar with the money bag, it's a silk pouch about the size of a greeting card (go figure) that brides are supposed to carry around with them to receive their gifts of money. Seen mostly in old Italian neighborhoods where gifts are still given in the form of actual cash and where bills may be removed throughout the night by the gift giver in the event that certain cultural norms have been violated, the money bag is a tradition that hasn't been the norm in quite some time. An example of a gift reduction penalty might be that your wedding ceremony wasn't a full Catholic mass held by a real ordained priest. Or perhaps your best man refused to kiss old Auntie May on the lips when she went through the receiving line. Such infractions would be sure to infuriate my mother Marge, Professional Wedding Critic, and she would not only remove a twenty-dollar bill from her gift card, but would do so at the microphone while the previously-referred-to best man was trying to give his speech.

Back to the money bag. In the last several decades, the money bag has been replaced by the silk covered mailbox or the intricately woven wishing well basket set on a gift table somewhere between the front door and wedding cake. It's usually provided by the banquet facility hosting your reception, but sometimes comes in the form of a gift at the bridal shower. The plus side of this change in tradition is that, blessedly, the bride does not have to visit each guest, pushing the silk bag in between the fork and the diner's mouth, in essence, to peddle for cash. Or, Heaven Forbid, if a guest did not actually bring a stack of bills in a card, but (gasp) brought an actual wrapped present that doesn't quite fit in the money bag, it saves everyone an awkward moment.

That said, there is something very upsetting about the money bag being out of fashion. Once we took away the incentive for the bride (and groom) to visit every guest, it seems the bride and groom didn't feel it necessary to visit every guest. Professional Wedding Guests and Professional Wedding Critics are saddened by this lack of basic etiquette and want to go on the record as saying, "enough is enough." No matter how much money you have spent on your wedding, and no matter how many people you never actually met before, including your stepfather's former boss at the widget company, say "hello, how nice of you to come," and move on to the next guest.

It may not mean extra money in the bag, but the kindness and gratefulness is worth it's weight in gold...and silk.

$25,000 Wedding Reception or Downpayment on Home?

You can't escape the news. The sky is falling and leaving investors and homeowners scurrying into little tunnels under the ground to escape the debris. Before you seek therapy on how to avoid the financial crisis of late, take a moment to consider your real financial condition. Do you have investments in the stock market? How liquid are your assets? How much debt do you have? Is your job relatively safe?

Do you really need to dump tens of thousands of dollars on a wedding reception when you're still living in your grandmother's basement? And no, "but she's 10 years away from the nursing home and then it will be all mine," is not an answer.

Most newly engaged couples spend 12-18 months planning for one day. Even if parents are paying a portion of the bill, which is becoming more the exception than the rule, many hours of valuable time are spent determining how much of your valuable money should be spent. Somewhere on that honeymoon flight over the Atlantic, you and your new spouse will be sipping $10 champagne from a plastic glass wondering, what have we done? No, hopefully it won't be the marriage you regret; it will be the wedding. Credit card debt will ensure that any hopes you have for upgrading your current living conditions will be put off so far into the future that not even a science-fiction author can predict how the world will operate and whether or not cars can fly.

Before you plan the reception, plan for the week after your wedding and ask yourself where you want to be. If "stuck under a brick ceiling of revolving debt and ridiculously high credit card interest rates" then shoot for the moon! If your answer is a little different, then do some budgeting and figure out just how much you have to spend on your wedding day, and realistically plan for the rest of your life. Where you're going to live and how you're going to get there should be more of a priority than "should the flower girl wear a tiara or fairy wings?"

Things Your Wedding Guests Will or Won't Remember

As you can imagine, the life of a Professional Wedding Guest can be a thankless job. The pay comes in the form of booze and food, which would offset the costs of this career choice if my name were Michael Phelps and I could consume 10,000 calories a day without gaining an ounce. Yet still I have been known to attend as many as two weddings in one day to celebrate the joys of matrimony. As a Professional Wedding Guest, I have amassed years of expertise and am qualified to give the following advice to brides and grooms-to-be. This is the single most valuable article you must read before you make your arrangements for the big day.

Things your guests will never remember about your wedding (so don't spend the money):

1. Cupid. With the exception of my mother Marge, Professional Wedding Critic, no one will notice let alone remember, the $350 ice sculpture of cupid melting precariously by the espresso bar. The only person who will benefit from this expenditure is the sculptor himself, who while trying to impress his logging friends will say, “Can you believe I get paid to chisel frozen water with a chainsaw?”
2. Shoes. Seriously. No one will glance at your shoes – nor care about the footwear of your bridal party. Long gone are the days of dyed fabric pumps in shades of teal and mauve. Also long gone is the trend of spending a zillion dollars on designer duds you will wear exactly one time. I moonlight as a part-time Bridal Attendant, so I can tell you that your bridesmaids do not like your taste of shoes and would rather pick a style that they like, in a price range they can handle.
3. Bridal Party Equality. When did “we have to make sure every single man, woman and child is accompanied by one person of the opposite sex while walking down the aisle” become the number one criteria of deciding who should be in the bridal party? While your cousin Pete, whom you haven’t seen since the age of 6 when he flushed your turtle down the toilet, may not admit he’s a bit surprised to be asked to be in your bridal party, I can assure you he is not only confused, but a bit put-off as well. You have just obligated him to spend hundreds of dollars in travel expenses, tux rental and a gift – not to mention he must now take time off work to make the rehearsal. All this so the bride’s best friend from Kindergarten won’t be mocked because she had to take 30 steps to the altar holding her flowers and the hand of the 4-year old ring-bearer. Unless you will have a nervous breakdown because the photo symmetry is askew, please pick your bridal party based on relationships, not appearances. Keep in mind, adding superfluous bodies will also cost you money in bridal party gifts and feeding more people at the rehearsal dinner.
4. Your invitations. There is nothing more beautiful than a gorgeous invitation with tri-fold pockets to hold all the pertinent information for your upcoming wedding. And as a Professional Wedding Guest, I can attest to the fact that there is nothing more exciting than needing kindling to start the fire in the wood stove, and finding a stack of old beautiful invitations to spark the flame. I know that you, bride and groom, will keep a copy of the invitation on the first page of your photo album, but out of the 200 printed, yours will be the only copy in existence 5 minutes after the event. This does not make it valuable unless your last name is “Presley” or “Pitt,” so save yourself some money and get (or make) elegant invitations in a single color that conveys the information without the exorbitant graphic design fee.
5. Flowers. This is important, no doubt. But elaborate does not equal more memorable. On the contrary, overdone floral arrangements that reach Venus make it difficult for all the Professional Bridal Guests at the tables to see each other. The added “bonus” of having one guest at each table take home the arrangement is not an incentive. Unless your guest can figure out a way to check the 50-pound- hydrangea-bouquet in baggage check at the airport, those flowers will be left for the maid at the hotel. Think simple, single stalk blooms in bold colors. You’ll save hundreds of dollars and won’t cry when you see someone tipping the valet with your crystal vase.

Things your guests will remember:

1. The Food. Let me clarify. The quality of the food. Professional Wedding Guests, and my mother Marge, Professional Wedding Critic, would much rather have two choices of superb gourmet fare than twelve choices of sub-standard banquet favorites. Scale back on the cocktail hour selection and go up a couple of notches on the main course. Instead of choosing the grilled salmon, ordered only by vegetarians and perpetual dieters, offer the pepper-encrusted sea bass.
2. The Favors. We spent a lot of money to attend your wedding. We endured the chicken dance for your benefit. We politely listened to your inebriated best man slur on about myverybestfriendinthewholewideworldwhousedtodokegstandsismarriedhowtotallyawesome. We stopped eating our dinner to watch you eat cake. And we put up with Uncle Ricky’s droning on about the fascinating industry of window replacement products. It has been a long night and we want something that says, “thanks.” Personalized M & Ms or a statuette of two doves kissing with “forever in love Mike and Michelle” inscribed across the ribbon is not what we had in mind. Something we can enjoy, without having to pretend we really wanted another 2”x3” picture frame. Instant gratification in the form of fine chocolate. Sure, go ahead and donate money to a charitable cause in our names, just make sure it comes with a chocolate truffle attached.
3. The music. As nice as it would be to cater to the diverse tastes of every guest in attendance, it just isn’t possible. However, everyone from Great Aunt Nancy to Marge, Professional Wedding Critic, loves a good spin on the dance floor. As long as the music has a beat you can dance to, everyone will be up and moving. Too many slow dances or long stretches of dinner music will put people to sleep and no matter how upbeat the music gets an hour after dinner, the people you have lost will not return. Start the dance tunes right from the top, even if it means delaying or even omitting some of those long held wedding traditions (seriously, does anyone still take time out to throw the bouquet?).
4. The bar. This is as shallow as it gets, but an unfortunate truth. If you must cut back on something, do not choose alcohol. Unless you are throwing a wedding where alcohol violates religious beliefs, you need to have an open bar. If money is an issue, keep the beer and wine flowing and charge only for mixed drinks. There is no skirting this topic. Do not penalize all of your guests because of your worrisome old Uncle Teddy who just returned from a bender. Simply inform the bartender of potential problems, and let everyone else enjoy themselves. Trust me, my mother isn’t the only Professional Wedding Critic out there, and this is a button you don’t want to push.
5. You. If you remember nothing else, remember this. Somewhere over the years, the tradition of the bride and groom visiting each and every guest has faded away. We did not jump in a rented RV in Omaha, stopping only once to sleep in a Wal-Mart parking lot on our way to your wedding in Sacramento, to look at you from a distance. If that’s all we were interested in, we’d view your album on Kodak Easy-Share. Say “hello & thanks for coming” to every person in that room, even though Cousin Louie is clanking his glass for the 98^th time forcing you to kiss each other until your lips crack. Nothing else means more to the people who love you than a personal visit. We don’t expect a conversation on the presidential race, just a heartfelt greeting and hug will do.