Planning Your Wedding - How To Choose Your Wedding Party
Getting ready for your wedding, one of the biggest events of
your life, is a huge task which can be easy or hard depending
upon your preparation. Your wedding day should be a day of fun
and celebration, not one filled with worry and stress about
things going wrong. When choosing your wedding party, always
keep in mind that these are the people whom you will need to
help and support you the most throughout the time before your
wedding. To make sure that you understand the ins and outs of
picking your wedding attendants, here are some tips and hints.
For your bridal party, select dependable attendants and give
each one a copy of the tentative timeline for the day. Make sure
they understand and will be able to accept the responsibility of
being a member of the wedding party. Avoid asking children under
three years old to participate in the wedding. If you must, let
one of the attendants walk with the child or pair them with an
older child.
The number of ushers and bridesmaid depends on how big and
formal the wedding is. Generally speaking, the more formal the
wedding, the more ushers and bridesmaids you have to include.
Although there is no formal rule, you will probably need to have
at least one usher for every fifty guests, and also same number
of bridesmaids. However, you can always have as many ushers and
bridesmaids as you wish.
In today's weddings, you may find as many as a dozen ushers and
sometimes even more bridesmaids. It is not necessary to have an
equal number of ushers and bridesmaids. If you are concerned
about keeping the numbers even in the processional or
recessional, you can have two ushers escort one bridesmaid or
you can have one bridesmaid walk alone. For the dances that are
scheduled at the reception, you can have a guest dance with the
extra usher or the extra bridesmaid.
Your bridesmaids are your attendants and they stand by your side
during the ceremony. Your future husband's ushers are his
attendants and therefore will stand by his side. If your best
friend happens to be male, he can still be your attendant and
should stand on your side. If he is going to take the place of
the maid of honor, he will be referred to as the honor
attendant. During the processional and recessional, he may
escort one of the bridesmaids if there are more bridesmaids than
ushers, or he can walk alone before the rest of the bridesmaids.
Similarly, your 'husband to be' can have a female attendant who
can stand on his side during the ceremony. She is also referred
to as an usher but should not escort guests, especially female
ones, to their seats.
You and your fianc