Traditionally, weddings are usually held in restaurants or outdoors, but sometimes newlyweds simply do not have the opportunity to rent a chic restaurant or mansion outside the city.
In addition, some people are concerned about their future and do not see the point in throwing away huge amounts of money for one single day. And sometimes spouses take a creative approach to celebrating their anniversary, deciding to get married again.
In such a situation, the solution would be a wedding at home. This is a serious challenge for young people, because you need to organize everything yourself from start to finish. But if you approach the preparations responsibly, your warm home celebration can outshine any pretentious and luxurious wedding.
So, what needs to be done to successfully hold a celebration at home and is it worth holding it at all?
Advantages and disadvantages of a wedding at home
Before making a decision about organizing a wedding at home, carefully consider all the pros and cons of such a celebration.
What's good about having a wedding at home?
- First of all, this is an opportunity to save significantly on wedding expenses, and then spend the money on something important and useful, for example, a honeymoon or furnishings for a family nest.
- Elderly guests will enjoy a cozy home wedding much more than a noisy and crowded celebration in a restaurant.
- The apartment will not allow inviting a large number, so only the closest and dearest will be at the celebration. The opportunity to be close to the people you love is much better than a wedding where you won’t know half of the guests by sight.
- The time for celebrating the wedding depends only on the wishes of the owners of the apartment; you can celebrate for at least a day, at least three days.
- The food prepared for the wedding will last for another week.
- Silver wedding and golden wedding are events that simply cannot be ignored. In order not to spend money on a restaurant, you can celebrate your anniversary at home with your family.
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We’ve sorted out the advantages, but there are also disadvantages that you simply need to know about.
- A wedding at home is clearly inferior in terms of entertainment and solemnity to a wedding in a restaurant or outside the city.
- Setting the table yourself is a very difficult and tedious task.
- If the apartment is not distinguished by its dimensions, then there will be catastrophically little space, not only for dancing, but also simply for seating guests.
- You may not have enough dishes and furniture for guests; besides, at home the dishes, as a rule, are all different, it will not look very nice.
- A huge amount of food after the wedding is certainly good, but do you have a place where you can store it?
- You won’t be able to invite many guests; you may even have to choose who to invite and who not.
- The wedding may last until late at night, and tipsy guests will have to be left overnight, so think carefully about where and how to spend your first wedding night.
So, you have carefully weighed everything and come to the conclusion that a wedding at home is what you need. What to do next?
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Gingerbread wedding house as an alternative to cake
Traditionally, at the end of the feast, guests are offered a luxurious cake. It must be ordered from the pastry chef the day before. But we suggest presenting a gingerbread house instead.
This product made from special dough appeared in ancient times in Rome and had a shape symbolizing the dwelling of the Gods. In Rus', such a confectionery masterpiece was prepared during the Christmas period.
Nowadays, such masterpieces of confectionery art often appear at wedding events.
The gingerbread house is the personification of the cozy life of the young - everything that symbolizes the beginning of something new and important. In addition, the delicacy is often stylized in a wedding spirit: it is decorated with marzipan hearts and doves.
Photo of wedding gingerbread house
In a word, such a house is an unusual variation of a wedding cake that will look very attractive on the table. Such an extraordinary house can be a gift for newlyweds and will elegantly decorate a feast.
Wedding organization
When planning an ordinary wedding, you can use the services of professionals, but in your case you will have to shoulder all the worries. Keep a notebook and write down everything that needs to be done to organize the wedding. a celebration at home in the cold season, then the guests will not be hot and stuffy.
The apartment must be thoroughly cleaned, all inappropriate things hidden and the room ventilated.
Fabric draperies, balls, satin ribbons and, of course, fresh flowers can act as decorations. If you wish, you can purchase or draw posters with congratulations and jokes. For the celebration, choose the largest and brightest room so that the photos turn out beautiful and successful.
Decide on the wedding scenario in advance. Some people simply cannot imagine this celebration without traditional fun. This scenario includes dancing, karaoke songs, funny competitions, funny pranks, etc.
Think about who you can trust to host the holiday. If you wish, you can use the services of a professional, and if you decide to do without a toastmaster, invite a friend or relative with a good sense of humor to play this role.
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Scenario
Before you write a script, choose the direction in which you will move. It could be:
- traditional celebration (observance of all rituals and signs);
- creative celebration (rejection of traditional themes in favor of unusual and even slightly shocking ones);
- mixed celebration (there is a traditional flavor, which is diluted with interesting competitions and plot twists in the script).
You can take the classic wedding plan as a basis for creating your own scenario
- The bride and groom are greeted with a loaf of bread , and the mother-in-law sprinkles millet on the young couple. Then the newlyweds are seated at a specially designated place and the parents make a parting speech (introductory words prepared in advance). Then the word is passed on to the relatives and friends of the newly-made family.
- After all the guests have drunk a couple of glasses and the first toasts have been made, you can move on to the competition program. Active games are diluted with table games . Relay races are held in between meals and congratulatory words (if guests express a desire to voice a toast). The hosts of the event, focusing on the mood of the people, can announce musical breaks (disco).
- The first dance of the bride and groom is announced when the guests have drunk no more than 3-5 glasses of alcohol. It is very important to properly lead the script to this touching moment. For example, before the dance, a musical gift from parents may be presented, and beautiful poems may be read by close family friends.
- Towards the end of the festive evening, a disco and group games (for example, boys against girls) are announced. ALL guests must be involved in the final competitions. A home wedding scenario without a toastmaster can be planned without a disco, replacing it with karaoke singing or mini dance competitions.
- After cutting the wedding cake or loaf. Parents conduct a ceremony for their children to say goodbye to their bachelor life. Mothers remove the bride’s veil and “hand over” the young wife into the reliable hands of her husband. A beautiful point will be the lighting of a wedding candle, which symbolizes the birth of a new family.
Festive table at a home wedding
Before purchasing products, carefully consider the menu and decide what you want to see at your holiday. You can come up with holiday menu options yourself, look on the Internet, consult with wedding banquet organizers in cafes and restaurants, or use catering services.
There should be a supply of dishes and cutlery, so think about where you can get additional dishes: ask friends and neighbors or just buy? Remember that the same dishes will look beautiful, but mismatched plates will create a feeling of sloppiness and negligence, and the whole holiday atmosphere will immediately disappear.
If you don’t have a festive tablecloth and beautiful napkins at home, it’s better to buy them too. The table can be decorated with vases with bouquets of fresh flowers.
Now about cooking. This is a very complex and lengthy process, in which you will have to involve several more people, otherwise you simply will not have time.
You can order the cake from a pastry shop, or you can make it yourself. A very creative solution would be to bake a loaf. This will surprise and delight your guests.
Treat recipe
To prepare the dough, you need to use flour - about 300 g, 2 eggs, a glass of honey, butter - 55 g, sugar - 60 g and baking powder - 1 tsp. You also need to take some cloves.
In order to prepare the glaze (prepared twice), you should stock up on 0.5 cups of powdered sugar, lemon juice, and egg white.
Dragee and sprinkles are suitable as decoration .
Place honey, regular sugar, vanilla sugar and butter in a saucepan. This mixture is heated over low heat. It needs to be stirred. After which it cools.
Add the spiced egg to the butter-honey mixture and mix.
Flour is mixed with baking powder and added to this mixture. Once the dough is kneaded, it is rolled into a ball and wrapped in film. It cools down within two hours.
All elements are cut out of paper . For the roof you need two products 12x14 cm, for the walls also two - 6.6x12 cm, for the facade - 16x12, the height of the wall should be 6.6 cm. A pipe is also made from the dough. After rolling out the dough into a layer, the products are placed on the very top and elements of the house are cut out.
Baking the dough takes approximately 10 minutes. The baking temperature should be 180 C.
Suitable competitions, mobile and table
A wedding scenario without a toastmaster in a narrow circle can be “seasoned” with the most daring and unusual competitions , which guests intoxicated with alcohol will accept with a bang.
Kisses dear
Couples consisting of girls and boys (at least 6 couples) are called to the center of the hall. Then the representatives of the stronger sex are invited to kiss their partners, voicing places for kissing.
For example, “I will kiss Marina on the cheek.” You cannot repeat yourself, which complicates the task for subsequent applicants.
The losers are those who did not find a place for a kiss.
Heartfelt gift
Couples again participate in the competition. Men write on a piece of paper what they plan to give to their companion. And women, not knowing what they are going to give, tell how they will use the gift. This is quite a fun competition, because in the process girls can dress up for the holiday in a new frying pan or hang new earrings on the wall.
Inflatable tango
Several people go to the center of the hall and randomly break into pairs. At the signal (when the music starts), the people in a pair must join in a passionate dance, holding the inflated balloons between their bellies. Those who burst the balloon the fastest while performing an original dance will win.
Walls have ears too
This competition can be held to raise money. The hosts prepare facts about the bride and groom in advance, and the guests need to guess whether the named facts are true or false. The one who makes a mistake pays a “tax.”
My beloved
You can take any number of people into the competition. Everyone is asked to name the most beautiful part of the body of the person standing next to them. When everyone in the circle voices their option for the neighbor on the left, the presenter announces that now the “place that catches your fancy” needs to be kissed.
Young mother
For the competition you need to prepare plastic bottles and nipples that are put on the bottles.
Next, women must give their partners something to drink from improvised “pacifiers.”
Sprite, cola or fanta can be used as complementary foods.
The winners will be those who drink the contents from the bottle more carefully and quickly.
Guessing game
Several men are seated on chairs. The bride, blindfolded, is brought to the competition participants. She must find her betrothed by touching only the guys' noses.
Knot for good luck
Several couples are selected from those who wish. The united boys and girls are placed shoulder to shoulder and tied with their hands touching. Next, the contestants, using only their free hands, must lace up the sneaker and tie a bow on it. Those who quickly and “cleanly” cope with the task will win.
You can easily create cool wedding scenarios without a toastmaster, the main thing is to make an effort and not be limited by the standard canons of holding a celebration.
The more creative and funnier the organization of the celebration, the more pleasant it will be for guests and newlyweds to remember this exciting and joyful day.
Interesting ideas
If you are ready to allocate additional funds for equipment, you can hold several more competitions, which will leave unforgettable memories.
Hidden camera
Buy a Polaroid camera and give the guests a task: take turns taking one photo of the newlyweds during the celebration . At the end of the evening, the newlyweds choose the three best photographs themselves and reward the authors.
Invite those who wish to record photo and video reports of the event on their smartphone. By the end of the evening, all participants send the results of their work to the groom, and the best directors receive gifts. And the young people receive a lot of memorable recordings, from which they can later edit an excellent film.
A more creative version of the competition for aspiring directors is to leave the room and shoot a film on a smartphone about the love story of newlyweds without their direct participation. To demonstrate masterpieces, the presenter will need a projector.
Another projector-based contest is to show clips of wedding films and have guests guess them.
Feel like Schumacher!
Who doesn't love remote control cars? Give out one machine with a long needle attached to it, pointing forward. Scatter balloons on the floor. Give everyone the opportunity to pop the balls one by one by remotely controlling the machine. The one who bursts the most wins!
