Si­mone Sant-Ghu­ran

You know the line that ap­pears in many wed­ding in­vi­ta­tions? The "ho­n­our of your pres­ence is re­quest­ed at the mar­riage of Jane and John..." Well, this is ex­act­ly how your guests should feel at your wed­ding-like the ho­n­oured guests that they are. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, if guests have less than pos­i­tive ex­pe­ri­ences at your wed­ding, you may be the last one to find out. Most guests will not tell you face-to-face about the things that have an­noyed them, but chances are...they're telling oth­ers! Here are a few pet peeves that guests gripe about:

• Feel­ing strand­ed-Time and time again, guests ar­rive at a cer­e­mo­ny or re­cep­tion venue and there's no one to greet them at the door, no one to tell them where to sit, or where to leave gifts. A good idea is to have ush­ers or your wed­ding co-or­di­na­tor wel­come and di­rect your guests, par­tic­u­lar­ly those who may need spe­cial at­ten­tion such as the el­der­ly, phys­i­cal­ly chal­lenged or those with young chil­dren.

• The nev­er-end­ing pho­to ses­sion-Un­less you're an in­ter­na­tion­al celebri­ty, there's re­al­ly no rea­son why your pho­to shoot (or change of cloth­ing) should last two hours, while your guests are wait­ing for you.

Brief your pho­tog­ra­ph­er be­fore hand, have a pre­pared list of shots you would like and quick­ly as­sem­ble your bridal par­ty at the site. These are guar­an­teed time savers.

• Tardy bridal par­ty-Brides and grooms, con­trary to pop­u­lar opin­ion, be­ing late is not fash­ion­able; it is quite rude to your guests who have made the ef­fort to make it to your cer­e­mo­ny on time.

• Where's the food?-There's noth­ing that ir­ri­tates guests more than small serv­ings of food, bad-tast­ing food or the ab­solute worst-food run­ning out. Re­mem­ber that wed­dings, by and large, are whole-day af­fairs, and whilst guests should not ex­pect a restau­rant-like smor­gas­bord, a fair por­tion of de­cent-tast­ing food is def­i­nite­ly in or­der for them.

• Dis­or­gan­ised dec­o­ra­tors-Guests re­al­ly dis­like walk­ing in­to a hall or cer­e­mo­ny venue and see­ing dec­o­ra­tors scam­per­ing around fix­ing bits of fab­ric, at­tach­ing bal­loons and fid­get­ing with cen­tre­pieces on their ta­bles. How­ev­er, there are some ways that you can coun­ter­act neg­a­tive guest ex­pe­ri­ences at your wed­ding.

Here are a few ideas:

Meet and greet-This is im­por­tant be­cause every guest wants to see you up close and have a small chit-chat with you.

Move around your re­cep­tion venue and try to meet as many of the guests as pos­si­ble and ac­com­mo­date them with pho­tos.

Keep guests en­ter­tained-This does not al­ways mean spend­ing a huge amount on mu­si­cians or vo­cal­ists, it may sim­ply mean en­sur­ing that guests are kept up-to-date by the Mas­ter of Cer­e­monies (MC) on your progress as you take pho­tos off-site.

Oth­er ways to spice up a dull re­cep­tion is to have a slideshow of child­hood and courtship pho­tos, a pho­to ses­sion for the guests where they get their pho­to as the wed­ding favour, a play area for kids, or you can sim­ply keep guests min­gling by hav­ing a cock­tail hour and good mu­sic.

Food and bev­er­age-Al­ways keep your guest list in mind when com­ing up with your menu and drinks list.

Try to have some op­tions in the buf­fet line for veg­e­tar­i­ans. If most of your friends and fam­i­ly are health-con­scious, a good idea may be to have a sal­ad bar or some low-carb items.

Al­ways ask your cater­er to cater for a few more peo­ple.

Fa­cil­i­ties-A wed­ding in an un­usu­al lo­cale may be a sure way to pro­vide am­bi­ence but al­ways keep guests' com­fort up­per­most in your mind. For ex­am­ple, the time of year-will it be too rainy or too hot? Is your site prone to mos­qui­toes or flies? Is the venue spa­cious enough to ac­com­mo­date your guests? Is park­ing and se­cu­ri­ty avail­able?

An im­por­tant ques­tion to ask your­self whilst you're in the wed­ding plan­ning process is: How do you want your guests to rem­i­nisce about your day?