Groom Advice: After the Ceremony
Extra duties for the Groom once the ceremony is over, including Wedding Favours,
Photos.. even the Honeymoon!
Yes, the wedding day itself is over. But neither the inherent responsibility nor
the unabashed excitement stop there. You'll soon be off on your honeymoon, but
in the immediate aftermath a plethora of smaller tasks and traditions stand
between you and that flight, so you better get them nailed down or folk will
think you've faded at the death!
Some of these tasks will be looked after by the bride, but it's safe to assume
that you need to familarise yourself with all of them so that nothing is missed
off the checklist, resurfacing in your head a few weeks later when the wedding
is a happy but distant dream..
Did you know: You can build your own stag party online.
The Wedding Night
Let battle commence. It's the night when legends are made, and when chandeliers
are broken. The stuff of countless jokes and innuendoes over the years, the
wedding night is now marginally less significant given the fact that most folk
have the good sense to acquaint themselves with their life partner's bedroom
habits before it's too late to run screaming for the hills. However, the
importance of spending your first night of married life together is still a
major one, and you'll want to put in the performance of a lifetime if only so
that when your new bride's mucky Auntie Val bends her ear about whether she'd
felt "the earth move" after the party ended, you can rest assured that your
Herculean efforts will be immortalised forever. Alternatively, as for most of
us, if the Boddingtons and Guinness has conspired to turn Hulk Hogan into
Ronnie Corbett, just laugh it off next morning and talk instead about the
quality of the hotel's fried breakfast. It won't be the first time, and it
certainly wont be the last.
Wedding Favours
Just make sure that those who need thanks most - your bridesmaids, Best Man,
reception co-ordinator, head chef, ushers and whoever - have safely received
their Wedding Favours, a nice little token of appreciaton on behalf of both of
you for services rendered. These are some of the nicest gifts you will ever
give, not so much in terms of expense, but in heartfelt gratitude, because by
the time you give them the day is normally coming to a close, and your sense of
relief, coupled with the flow of alcohol, makes for intimate hugs and raucous
backslaps here and there as your Best Man tries on his new shirt, or drinks his
whisky, or checks out his tickets to Rio (just joking). These are people you
know very well, so buying for them should represent no problem.
Photographs
Everyone wants a copy of the photo album, so you better know where they are and
when folk can see them. You'd think it wouldn't harm people to wait a few
weeks, but if you return from honeymoon and there's been a hiccup in processing
them for whatever reason, frustrated relatives will jam your phone line in
their droves and you'll start to wish you'd paid sold your kidneys and booked
David Bailey in the first place!
The Honeymoon
If the proposal is your starter, and the wedding day is your main course, then
the honeymoon is most definitely your dessert. As with any dessert, you want to
cast your eye over the many mouth-watering possibilities before picking out the
most appetising one. And you want to savour it too, as you also should with the
wedding suite, so leave at least a day's gap between the end of the ceremony
and your flight out of the country. Why book an expensive hotel suite and then
spend only 3 hours in it before getting a cab to the airport? With any luck,
you'll both be walking like John Wayne by the time you disembark at your
destination, your heart and loins joined in happy unison for a fortnight of
blissful peace with lots and lots of married sex. And absolutely, utterly,
completely and totally NO wedding planning whatsoever! Now that's worth raising
a glass to. Ladies and gentleman.. The Bride and Groom.