June is popular for Summer Weddings

June is the month that starts the run of Summer weddings,  My daughter is one of the statistics this month. The Summer months lend themselves to more people wanting weddings than in the winter months for a number of reasons including the longer days, more chance of sun, this makes for happier guests much nicer photographs to remember the day by and  not to mention it being a great time of the year to have a honeymoon. The schools have not broken up yet which means holiday prices have not been artificially inflated. Christmas is long over and the happy couple have had chance to plan and save.

The ceremony is an intricate part of any service, no marriage would be compete without one. Some people like to go for a religious service, others like my daughter will go for a registry office service, and nowadays you can have the service pretty much any where. Gone are the days when it had to be in a church or a registry office itself. A nice hotel like my daughter did, the top of a mountain or anywhere in between is accepted as normal nowadays.

The ceremony itself is the all important part, the part that people can personalise to suit themselves.
The ceremony is a public display of the happy couples love and commitment to each other as they enter into their marital contract. While the vows again can be personalised and some couples do write their own which reflects their thoughts and feelings that they are taking into the marriage to endure the years. My daughter had a couple of close friends doing a reading during her ceremony to add to the personalisation.

signing the register 

The thinking behind weddings changes considerably over the years,. Go back just forty short years ago and people did not cohabit then, you got married before living together and having a family.  The age of the bride is also changing, it use to be that the majority of them were under twenty five. But now due to many more woman enjoying a good career before they get married more of them are putting it off. My daughter is thirty five this year and is only just now settling down to married life and considering having a family. Forty years ago that was very uncommon. Maybe this has something to do with my daughters generation witness their parents marriages breakdown because they got married so young and do not wish to find themselves in the same position.

The weddings these days are more commonly paid for by the Bride and Groom themselves with them asking for contributions towards their honeymoon spending as they generally have a house and all the towels and toasters they actually need. In my day you asked for small presents like toasters and towels, then it went through a phase of wedding lists and bigger items, modern thinking just keeps changing.

making favour boxes and tablet

My daughter had done all her planning well in advance and she found this worked well for her and caused a minimal amount of stress. This suited my now Son in Law as he likes to feel in control and know that things are done. My daughter had left some of the smaller tasks to do towards the latter end, I think was primarily to keep up the excitement for the last week as well as to give her something to do to settle her nerves and keep her busy the last few days. We spent parts of
Thursday and Friday making tablet to add to her favour boxes. We made up the favour boxes and filled them. We also sat and did the table plans keeping family and friends in groups they would be comfortable with and she placed the children on three tables by themselves to give them some responsibility for each other. I have to say they all gelled well together with no arguing and the older ones naturally helped the younger ones.

She had originally been planning a barbecue for the evening before the wedding for the bridesmaids but decided this would be too stressful so we all went out as a big noisy group of twenty to a local restaurant and had a laughter filled evening.

part of the group out for a meal

What sort of wedding would you prefer to have and at what time of year if you were planning one?

This is a collaborative post but all thoughts and pictures are my own