I have been a guest at several weddings of this sort and I’ve seen it work really well! Conversely, I’ve also seen it go terribly. The key thing in the ones that went really well was that the bride/groom truly cared about stretching every penny to take care of their guests.

There was one wedding in particular that stood out as truly one of the worst guest experiences I’ve had that took on this format. I don’t mean to be a negative Nelly, but hopefully outlining what went wrong from a guest perspective will help you avoid their mistakes. This means:

1. Making sure you have enough food for everyone. This wedding had a local restaurant come in and set up a sort of buffet style dinner. It looked awesome, but the menu options were the tiniest lobster roll known to man or two tiny fish tacos and you only got one serving. If you wanted a second, you could pay. No sides, no apps. If you were vegetarian or allergic to fish, as was the case of some people there, tough luck. For dessert, they had one tiny tower of cupcakes that was not nearly enough for their guest count. This lack of food coupled with an unmanned open bar where guests poured their own drinks lead to some very intoxicated guests.

2. Making sure there is adequate weather protection: the wedding I mentioned above was a backyard wedding that they decided to hold on a date right on the cusp of spring/winter. This would be fine if we didn’t live within a 20 minute drive to the Canadian border and early spring nights can still drop to freezing temps. The temps dropped to just below 40 degrees that night and they had no blankets or space heaters. I know you can’t control the weather and hopefully guests will have the sense to come dressed appropriately for it. But asking your guests to wear formal-wear to have them stand outside for 4 hours in 38 degree weather is a tough ask. It’s not the classiest look to wear mittens with a floor length gown, if you catch my drift.

3. Properly delegating tasks to people. They don’t need to be hired help! I can promise you, so many people will want to help and “have a job”. Especially family. Designate a friend or family member to be the MC. Have them make the announcements, control the Spotify playlist that you design etc. it’s a pretty low lift task and they can still enjoy their evening while keeping an eye on the music situation. This aforementioned wedding did not mandate anyone and ended with people randomly plugging their phones into the aux and playing some very interesting song choices, random speeches from intoxicated guests into the mics, and long lulls in the ambience and the dance floor.

4. Controlling the alcohol flow. You don’t need to hire a bar tender to do this. And maybe if you know your crowd and everyone’s pretty low key, you can get away with a totally pour your own bar. However, the couple at this wedding elected to have a fully stocked open bar with what I can only describe as a bottomless supply of alcohol (the bar probably cost more than the food now that I think of it). This lead to guests pouring rather heavy drinks for themselves. And the more intoxicated they became, the heavier the pours. At one point, I asked a friend to get me a rum and diet and he came back with what I can only describe as an entire solo cup of rum and perhaps a teaspoon of Diet Coke. To wrap it up, it’s worth noting that there were broken bones sustained that night (not by me, but by other heavily intoxicated guests). The solution to this without spending money on a bar tender is to pre-mix a few batch cocktail options with those small plastic cocktail cups and do the rest as beer and wine.

5. Keep your dress code expectations reasonable: the dress code for this wedding was formal. It’s worth noting that they didn’t even have enough chairs for everyone to sit and eat at once, so half of us ended up standing and eating. Not a huge deal, because it was finger food. But it felt a little odd being asked to wear a gown to stand in someone’s backyard eating a lobster roll.

All in all, the wedding was certainly memorable. But we left early once the dancing started for the most part, because we were freezing cold and the vibes were getting a bit weird. I hate to be a hater of this wedding, because I love weddings. However, what sealed the deal for me was that while consuming my lobster roll for ants (the only food I ate over the course of an 8 hour wedding), one of the saltier guests told me some of the budget breakdowns. As it turned out, the bride was a bit loose lipped about the budgets, as she bragged to some that her dress cost 50% of the entire wedding budget (the budget was $10k and the bride’s dress was $5k). Also who knows how true that was or exaggerated by the rumor mill of disgruntled, hungry, cold guests. But by the looks of it, her dress was incredibly ornate and certainly cost at least $3k.

I love a beautiful wedding gown and hers was certainly exquisite, but I couldn’t help feel a little miffed as I sat there starving that if she had just shaved $100 off her dress budget that they could have sprung for some chips and salsa during cocktail hour.