Want to hear the top complaints made by wedding guests? Planning a fab experience-based wedding takes precision and attention to detail at each & every turn. But, above all, it means making sure that your guests arrive feeling like a VIP, and leave chatting about your wedding for years to come. In order to make that happen, try to avoid these top complaints made by wedding guests!
Unclear or Missing Instructions & Information
Nothing can kill a wedding day vibe quicker than guests who are scrambling to find information while your phone is in a constant state of notification central. Guests don’t want to overpay for parking because they missed the memo that there was a free valet. Or, worse yet, get lost on their way to a multi-venue wedding and decide to turn around and go home (yes, it’s happened before!). Communicating these details to your guests is so important for an unforgettable wedding day experience! Everyone wants to arrive at your wedding ready to spend the night celebrating. Do you know what it feels like to arrive at an event after getting lost or not getting the memo that it was coastal chic attire required for the night? It doesn’t exactly set you up for a night of fun!
How to Avoid It: Have information that your guests absolutely have to know in order to enjoy your wedding day experience to its fullest? Whether it’s parking info, time changes, shuttle transportation, or rain plans, there’s only so much info you can fit into a wedding invitation suite! Keep your guests informed and up to date with the latest information by sending them text alerts from your Guesite event!
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Long Gap Of Time Between Your Ceremony & Reception
This has to be one of the biggest complaints by wedding guests, of all time! Nobody, and we mean nobody, wants to attend a 10 am wedding ceremony, dressed in black tie attire, only to have to go home and wait it out until the reception kicks off at 5. There are some instances where you may not have a say as to when your ceremony takes place. This is especially true if you plan on getting married in a house of worship. You are kind of at their will and your ceremony will have to be fit in around their weekly schedule.
How to Avoid It: If your ceremony and your reception are taking place in two totally different locations, and your ceremony, for whatever reason has to happen earlier in the day, it is beyond ridiculous to plan a nighttime reception. Break the mold! Cocktail hours and receptions do not have to take place at a specific hour of the day and a brunch or lunch reception is just as fabulous as a nighttime reception! Plus, it leaves plenty of room for after-party options.
Food & Beverage Service is a Big Part of Your Guest’s Experience
Look, we love a fab fusion wedding dinner menu! Sushi stations with a raw bar and soba noodles? Sign us up! But, we know it’s not for everyone, especially the younger and older crowd. Guests who have a less-than-adventurous palette might straight up groan when they see the no doubt amazingly unique wedding dinner experience you’ve painstakingly spent countless hours planning. So how do you ensure that everyone has an equally amazing food & beverage experience regardless of their taste level?
How to Avoid It: One way to remedy this situation for your guests is to offer one of two alternative plates that they can order for the evening. If you want to keep it safe narrow it down to a chicken, pasta, or beef dish. The second way to make sure that all of your guests have an amazing food and beverage experience is to work with top-notch catering staff. Knowledgeable wait staff will be able to answer any and all of your guest’s questions about ingredients and flavor palettes. And who knows, they might even use your wedding dinner as a fun way to try something new, even if they end up sticking with the chicken dish in the end!
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The Bar Can Be a Top Complaint From Wedding Guests
While we are discussing food and beverage experience, there is one giant thing we need to discuss. Cash Bars. Have you heard of them? Let’s say you decide to forgo the open bar at your wedding, totally fair considering how easily it can blow a wedding budget out of proportion. But, you decide to opt for a cash bar instead. Which, you figure, will allow your wedding guests to order their favorite drinks, on their own tab, at a more relaxed pace. Fair enough. Cash bars are great offerings for large-scale weddings, or weddings who want to shift a bigger part of their budget to dinner service. However, there is one big caveat with having a cash bar at your wedding. Your guests need to know about it in advance!
How to Avoid It: So maybe you don’t exactly want the words “cash bar” to appear at the bottom of your wedding invitation. We totally get that. However, you still have to alert your guests of the bar situation for the night so that they come prepared. The message board of your Guestie event is a great way to let your guests know to remember their wallets so they can order French 75s all night!
Your Only Form of Entertainment is the DJ
How do you picture your wedding reception? All formalities are out of the way, the cake has been cut and the family formals have been shot. What expectations do you have? Is it being on the dance floor with your shoes kicked off, drink in hand, belting out Taylor Swift songs with everyone you love? Do you want to look over and see your cousins and your college roommates standing side by side singing along with you? Amazing right? We positively love a lit dance floor!
But, we get that some guests don’t exactly love getting on the dance floor!
You have to consider, that not everyone loves music & dancing quite as much as you. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that! The issue that arises is when your DJ is the one and only form of entertainment for the night and your non-dancing guests sit in their chairs until they find a reasonable hour to leave. If you’re planning an experience-based wedding, we know you don’t want to see chairs filled at your reception. So how can you make it better for the non-dancing guests in the crowd?
How to Avoid It: Music does not have to be the only form of interactive entertainment for the night! You can delight your guests with a fun experience like a La Hora Loca. Treat them to a show by a local fire dancer or circus performer. Allow them to step into the 360-degree photo booth. Or you can kick off your cocktail hour with a temporary tattoo station and a fun bounce house! Find a way to entertain your guests that includes more than just the dance floor. Maybe you want to have a palm reader walk through the crowd or a magician surprise and delight guests of all ages. The sky is the limit when it comes to wedding day entertainment!
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The Seating Chart
You know we had to bring it up! One of the top (easily avoidable) wedding guest complaints is seating. Spending the night sitting next to people they don’t know. Trying to make small talk about the weather (ugh!) and waiting for a polite time to make a beeline to the bar, or worse yet, the exit door! We have all been there! Walking into a wedding, card in hand, wondering who exactly you will be spending the night sitting next to. Whether you’ll find fun engaging conversation at your table or awkward unbreakable silence.
How to Avoid It: How amazing would it be for your guests to arrive at your wedding and walk into a room full of familiar people? It sounds like a dream right? Introductions are kind of our thing around here and they can be yours too! You can introduce your guests to each other ahead of time through your Guestie event! In your Guestie event, your guests can read fun facts about other guests, see what they have in common with each other, and play the name game so they can put the face to the name when wedding day arrives. Think about it like this, how much more fun would it be for literally everyone in attendance to walk into a room of people they already know?
Weather & Elements
Sand, grass, snow, and the beating hot sun. All things that are out of your control, but play into the experience of your wedding day. No matter the season you opt to get married in, or the weather that the day brings, there are plenty of ways to make sure that you and your guests are comfortable and prepared for anything that comes your way!
How to Avoid It: You might plan on having wraps, blankets, parasols, fans, or cold beverages on hand to make your guests comfortable, and that’s amazing! But it’ll be the unmoving things about the weather & elements that will have your guests questioning why they chose the outfit they have on. For example, if your ceremony is outside in a grassy knoll, stilettos are probably a big no. Nobody wants a pair of ruined muddy shoes or the inability to easily walk to their seat!
Let your guests know what conditions to expect ahead of time with a quick note on the message board of your Guestie event! Text alerts are another great way to let your guests know, in advance that they’ll be taken care of. If you’re having a beach wedding but you’re providing guests with parasols, a quick “We’ll have lots of parasols on hand, but we encourage you to share!” lets them know they won’t have to worry about braving the beating hot sun!
