The Idea Girl is here to help with ideas, answers and real-life wedding experiences!  

Send your questions, experiences or even an idea you just have to share to The Idea Girl click here. Anyone can ask for ideas:  Bride, Groom,  Bridesmaids, family, guests or even wedding vendors!

QUESTION 1:

Dear Idea Girl, 

My fiancé and I are inviting about 40 guests to our wedding and he has voiced a concern about how to avoid the usual “timeline” of ceremony, cocktails, dinner, dance, cake and good-bye. I know there are good reasons why this tried and true format works, but can you give me an idea of another way? 

Sincerely, Josie (wanting simple and sensational)

Dear Josie:

Having simple and sensational is absolutely possible! Take a look at your location and the space it has to offer. Then consider time of day (sunset), and the ways to impact your guests through their “senses”. For example, maybe you are on a patio overlooking a vineyard for dinner with a rose garden, or barrel room nearby. Set a table for 40 by pushing multiple small square tables together, with linen over the entire table hiding where the tables separate. After dinner is served, invite your guests to walk to the rose garden for sunset, pour a glass of champagne and serve a chocolate dipped strawberry, encourage a little conversation, thereby giving the wait staff time to clear the large table, change out the linen, separate the multiple tables to individual tables for four people at each set up cabaret style for the dancing to begin. Roll in a specialty coffee bar, maybe a cigar bar and change the color of the LED lights. In a short 20 minutes, the environment they left has now changed and you now have gone, as you wanted, from Simple to Sensational!

With gratitude,   

The Idea Girl