A Word About Themes

I am planning a wedding now for June next year with a splendidly fun couple, Michele and Pascal. Pascal is from France and is a quiet but very funny dude. Michele is sweet and also quite the card - somewhat resigned to her many, and complicated, family pressures. She's handling it all like a champ - just isn't sweating the small stuff, what a treat these two are!

They are world travelers and hence have gone with a travel theme for the reception. This will be handled tastefully, with a bit of reining in of the groom who seems taken with the whole theme idea - we barely skated through without costumes, but I think he was kidding, it was hard to tell! He's really jazzed about a cake decorated up like a piece of old luggage. I think the fact that he's jazzed about it means he'll get it - the bride has given him full reign with the cake. Luggage tags for escort cards and we'll call the theme a day. I hope.

Themes can be taken a bit too far unless one goes whole hog with the costuming, location and mariachi band and turns the party into a bit of a circus. That can be kinda fun but really, the theme IS (or ought to be) celebrating a marriage and sometimes that gets lost in the confetti.

If you are going to have a theme I recommend trying to keep it centered around something that reflects you as a couple. If you travel, show pictures of all the places you've been or use those places to name your tables. If you are Star Trek fans, name the tables after favourite episodes rather than have the groomsmen in those red shirts (the red shirt guys get killed every time, way bad omen) and I'm not sure pictures of the groom as a Klingon is something you really will want to see in 30 years. But that's just me.

Courtesy of Bridal Mania