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Small wedding

  • 11-07-2020 8:33pm
    #1
    Livi79
    Registered Users Posts: 4 ✭


    Myself & my fiancé have booked our wedding in the registry office for November 2020. We are trying to keep it as a surprise, planning on having an "engagement" party that will actually be our wedding party. We're looking for small venue in Dublin. We will be having both mothers, 2 witnesses and my fiancé's children at the ceremony but will have possibly 80 guests in total for the party. Has anyone had success before in organising a surprise wedding and any ideas for a venue?


Comments

  • #2
    Shelli2
    Registered Users Posts: 928 ✭✭✭Shelli2


    Livi79 wrote: »
    Myself & my fiancé have booked our wedding in the registry office for November 2020. We are trying to keep it as a surprise, planning on having an "engagement" party that will actually be our wedding party. We're looking for small venue in Dublin. We will be having both mothers, 2 witnesses and my fiancé's children at the ceremony but will have possibly 80 guests in total for the party. Has anyone had success before in organising a surprise wedding and any ideas for a venue?

    We were looking at doing the same in October, buy couldn't get any venue to commit to a booking for the after party. Given that done sort of social distancing restrictions are likely to still be in place we decided to wait until next year or possibly even 2022.

    We're going ahead with Registry office in July instead, and a small BBQ for 20ish people afterwards.

    It was back in June we were venue searching, hopefully you'll have more luck now that roadmaps are in place.


  • #3
    Livi79
    Registered Users Posts: 4 ✭Livi79


    Shelli2 wrote: »
    We were looking at doing the same in October, buy couldn't get any venue to commit to a booking for the after party. Given that done sort of social distancing restrictions are likely to still be in place we decided to wait until next year or possibly even 2022.

    We're going ahead with Registry office in July instead, and a small BBQ for 20ish people afterwards.

    It was back in June we were venue searching, hopefully you'll have more luck now that roadmaps are in place.

    Thanks for your reply,
    We were thinking of function room locally that would be able to accommodate the numbers within the guidelines. Fingers crossed we can sort it


  • #4
    pwurple
    Closed Accounts Posts: 12,449 ✭✭✭✭pwurple


    I've been to a 'surprise' wedding, and honestly, it was disappointing for the guests to have that sprung on them. People like to prepare for weddings, to look their best for photos that will be looked at for decades (hopefully). Get the hair done, you know.

    I understand you're probably trying to avoid the hoopla, but I think it's nice to tell people what's going on.


  • #5
    Batgurl
    Registered Users Posts: 1,208 ✭✭✭Batgurl


    pwurple wrote: »
    I've been to a 'surprise' wedding, and honestly, it was disappointing for the guests to have that sprung on them. People like to prepare for weddings, to look their best for photos that will be looked at for decades (hopefully). Get the hair done, you know.

    I understand you're probably trying to avoid the hoopla, but I think it's nice to tell people what's going on.

    I second this.

    Additionally, you may have people who will decline (because not everyone thinks engagement parties are high priority, especially if money is tight) and when they find out it was your wedding will be annoyed because they would have prioritised that if they’d known.


  • #6
    woodchuck
    Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 15,409 Mod ✭✭✭✭woodchuck


    pwurple wrote: »
    I've been to a 'surprise' wedding, and honestly, it was disappointing for the guests to have that sprung on them. People like to prepare for weddings, to look their best for photos that will be looked at for decades (hopefully). Get the hair done, you know.

    I understand you're probably trying to avoid the hoopla, but I think it's nice to tell people what's going on.

    Personally I disagree with this. However while I do make an effort to look well when attending a wedding, I'm not the type of person who feels the need to buy a new dress for every wedding, get my hair done professionally, apply fake tan etc. I don't care that much what I look like in other peoples wedding photos. Unless you're in the bridal party or immediate family, you're hardly in the photos anyway.

    Often preparing for weddings can be a good deal of work ("what will I wear" etc), so I think the surprise element is actually a good idea to reduce the stress for everyone.
    Batgurl wrote: »
    Additionally, you may have people who will decline (because not everyone thinks engagement parties are high priority, especially if money is tight) and when they find out it was your wedding will be annoyed because they would have prioritised that if they’d known.

    This would be a concern though...


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  • #7
    lazygal
    Registered Users Posts: 12,644 ✭✭✭✭lazygal


    Personally, I wouldn't attend an engagement party. We've kids, it isn't worth getting a babysitter etc. For a wedding we'd make more of an effort to go and parents etc are more willing to take the kids for a big event like this.



    Why does it need to be a surprise? Can you not just have the small ceremony and then invite people to the wedding celebration afterwards?


  • #8
    GreeBo
    Registered Users Posts: 27,003 ✭✭✭✭GreeBo


    Livi79 wrote: »
    Myself & my fiancé have booked our wedding in the registry office for November 2020. We are trying to keep it as a surprise, planning on having an "engagement" party that will actually be our wedding party. We're looking for small venue in Dublin. We will be having both mothers, 2 witnesses and my fiancé's children at the ceremony but will have possibly 80 guests in total for the party. Has anyone had success before in organising a surprise wedding and any ideas for a venue?

    We had just under 80 people in Fallon & Byrne and it was great.

    Basically a fancy, private dinner with as much or as little "wedding-ness" around as you want.

    We had family only (under 20) at University Church, then the pair of us walked down Grafton St and had photos there and in the green, was great craic!

    We brought our own wine and then just had a free bar, top quality food and finished up around 1am I think.

    Highly recommend it.

    (I would second the idea of letting people know its your wedding!)


  • #9
    listermint
    Registered Users Posts: 33,570 ✭✭✭✭listermint


    80s not small tbf. Small would be 40. 80 sounds fairly normal size wedding.


  • #10
    rainbowtrout
    Registered Users Posts: 15,381 ✭✭✭✭rainbowtrout


    November is a quiet month, people try to save for Christmas, don't go out, go off drink for the month. You might find if people think it's 'only an engagement' they mightn't bother to show up or just drop in for an hour, when you've planned a sit down meal for them. Only a couple of my friends have had engagement parties and it's been in a pub, so very informal. If you have friends with kids who have organised the babysitter for two hours based on the fact that they are only expecting to go for a few drinks, they might be disappointed that they have to leave because they didn't know it was going to happen.


  • #11
    Livi79
    Registered Users Posts: 4 ✭Livi79


    Thanks for all the replies so far, you have all given us plenty to think about


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  • #12
    Livi79
    Registered Users Posts: 4 ✭Livi79


    listermint wrote: »
    80s not small tbf. Small would be 40. 80 sounds fairly normal size wedding.

    I'm from a large family so they would account for 30 before my fiancé's family & the close friends we would like to have there


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