The Best Toasts Are Never Magic

The truth about giving the perfect toast – no matter the occasion – is that it does not come easily to most people.  And, while your wedding may feel magical to you – there is no amount of magic that can save a bad wedding toast.

Wedding Toast Reality:

1) The wedding toast is a part of the reception to be considered when planning, just as you take into consideration plans for your first dance together, your entrance to the reception together, and so on…

2) Just because others are toasting you – this does not make it wrong for you to plan for it, around it, or offer your assistance when it is needed.

Planning the Perfect Toast

For the Bride:

• Decide how many toasts you want, and how much time you want to leave open for them in the reception schedule.  You can then schedule other events around this time frame, such as cutting the cake, first dance, etc.
• Choose your “toasters” and confirm with them (far in advance) that they would like to give a toast.  Give the toasts an order, and make sure that somebody is in charge of keeping the toasts going – in order – during the reception.  This will eliminate confusion for the toasters, the guests, and will also prevent random guests form getting up to give toasts.  The whole point of scheduling the toasts is to keep a good flow going, and to prevent random toasts that could last for hours on end.
• Be sure to check in with your toasters leading up to the wedding: offer your assistance when needed, and remind them that they need to be prepared, etc.
• Be realistic about the number of toasts scheduled… planning anywhere between one and four is reasonable in terms of time.  Think about your guests, and how long they will have to sit before they can eat, dance, talk, etc. (depending upon your specific schedule.)  You do not want your guests to be bored and “antsy!”
• Be realistic about when to schedule the toasts: schedule them at a time when guests are already seated (like after dinner is served, etc.)  Scheduling earlier may also prevent the “drunk toast” – remember this one from The Wedding Singer?)

For those giving the toast:

• Be prepared, be prepared, be prepared…
• Listen Here – it is a great podcast with some basic pointers for preparing a wedding toast.  In fact, it pretty much covers everything that I would have written any further. 
  (Podcast site link here.)

♥ Enjoy the podcast, and good luck! ♥

DIY Wedding Programs… Easy Enough!

Programs for the wedding… it is one of those little details that many brides could take it or leave it, and then again – others find it to be as necessary as the invitations…

I didn’t really mind whether or not I had them until a very unfortunate reason came up.  In November, one of our dearest friends, and Groomsman, passed away – and, immediately, we felt that we had to do something to remember him during our wedding.

We did the simplest thing that I could think of – leaving a space between two of the Groomsmen where he would have stood during the wedding.  But, I knew that it was one of those things that our guests would not “get” unless we told them why there was a deliberate gap in the wedding party.  Hence, I knew that we needed programs.

I was able to pull off our programs as late as the day before the wedding, believe it or not!  You can too, if you have Photoshop, and a local Kinko’s – easy as pie!

This was the final design – about as simple as it gets as far as information is concerned:

You can see at the bottom where we explained the absence of our friend – the rest of it was simply a rundown of the wedding party, etc.

I designed this in about an hour, and emailed it off to my Dad – who then took it to Kinko’s to be printed.  But, there are a few things about this design that made it even more easy than usual…

• I didn’t use a “booklet” type program – instead, I designed a full 8.5 x11 sheet that could easily be printed on single sheets of card stock.
• Not only did this make the printing easy, but there was not work involved with binding, or even folding, etc.  Once it was printed – it was ready to be handed out by my ushers at the church!

So, if you decide to use a wedding program – it is completely do-able.  Just match it up with your other “paper” items – such as table cards, invites, etc. and no one will be the wiser!  (I will show my table cards in an upcoming post!)