Expecting The Best and Preparing for the Worst
Your special day is meant to be one of joy and celebration, but there’s no denying that the preparation for your big day is a mammoth task and generally a source of stress. This article is going to take you through all of the aspects involved in wedding planning, paying special attention to the small mundanities such as parking management, which is often overlooked. Read this piece if you’d like to know how bollards can be instrumental in parking management for your wedding day.
The Challenges of Wedding Planning
Planning a wedding ceremony is no easy task. It requires time, patience, a lot of conceptualisation, and even more administration. From setting a budget to alerting and communicating with family members, wedding planning is a full-time job. Most brides and brides-to-be will know that it is virtually impossible to pull a wedding together without the enlistment of help or the paid services of a professional.
This is especially true if the couple to be wed are both busy with their professional careers. They cannot be expected to handle all of the gruelling communication, coordination and conflict-management that comes with wedding planning. No, the couples’ task should simply be to bask in the excitement of their blooming love. The wedding planner, on the other hand, is responsible for translating this love into a fabulous celebration.
The Pre-Wedding Tick-List
Once the romance and the joy of a couple’s engagement have settled in, they have to get organised. Weddings can take months, even years to plan. So, if a couple has not already had an opportunity to discuss what they imagine their weddings to be like, there will be a lot to discuss. Both parties, the bride and the groom, will have to put their heads together to decide how they envision their special day, and what it will take to make that day happen.
Are they a traditional type of couple? Do they want to have a themed wedding? Will they be having a religious ceremony? There is a massive list of questions and tasks that the couple has to attend to if they want to create a celebration that is sufficiently aligned with their dreams.
While the wedding planner will be responsible for pulling it all together, the couple will still have to be considerably involved in the creative and decision-making processes of the planning phases. The wedding planner will pose a series of questions to the couple, and they will be expected to choose their favourite options. While this isn’t so technical as putting down deposits, hiring wait staff or booking the honeymoon hotel, it is equally important because it will determine the atmosphere and the mood of the evening. So, the couple and their wedding planner will have to gradually work through the lengthy list below before they can get hitched.
- The Engagement Party
- The Save-The-Dates
- The Invitations
- The Venue
- The Guest-List
- The Officiator
- The Catering
- The Bar Service
- The Floral Arrangements
- The Registry
- The Bachelor Party
- The Bachelorette
- The Wedding Favours
- The Bridal Gown
- The Bridesmaids
- The Groomsmen
- The Rings and the Ringbearer
- The Make-up and Hair Stylists
- The Photographer
- The Seating Arrangements
- The Honeymoon
Long-Standing Wedding Traditions
Besides all of the normal administrative tasks to manage, the couple must also consider how much they want to incorporate and honour longstanding traditions such as the ones explained below. These rituals have been widely adopted by many different cultures, and they are still practised today. While the practices have become removed from their historical logic and intentions, the symbols remain.
Something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue
This tradition, like many others, is a symbolic gesture of the past, present and future of the couple. Originating from an old English rhyme, it suggests that a bride must have something old, new, borrowed and blue on the day of her wedding. The old item represents her past and the new item represents her future. The borrowed item is usually a loan from a happily-married couple who offers the young couple a model for marriage, and the final item is blue because this colour is said to represent fidelity and love.
Giving the bride away
This particular tradition is a relic of ancient times when marriage represented the transfer of ownership of a woman from her father to a husband. Today, it is simply an opportunity for a bride’s father to participate as a key figure in the ceremony. The father will have the opportunity to walk his daughter down the aisle and wish her luck as she starts a new chapter in her life.
Throwing the bouquet
This tradition has existed for centuries. At the reception, the bride will take her bouquet and throw it over her shoulder without looking. At this point, all of the single women at the wedding will be expected to line up and try to catch the bouquet. The woman who catches the bouquet is believed to be the next woman to get married.
Tying the knot
Another symbolic gesture, this tradition stems from the Hindu wedding tradition called hastmelap as well as the Celtic wedding tradition called handfasting. The gesture involves tying the bride and groom’s hands together after their vows to symbolise their unification. The act is performed by the priest or the officiator, and it is done to further emphasise the new bond between the couple.
Cutting the cake
This is one of the classic traditions that you’ll see at all weddings, regardless of the couple’s religious orientation or nationality. Cutting the cake together is one of the couple’s first shared moments, and it is always a wonderful photo opportunity. Usually, you’ll see the couple feed each other the cake with entwined hands, reflecting how they will nourish each other in their life to come.
Speeches
Before dinner is served, it is expected that both the groom’s family and the bride’s family share their thoughts in the form of a toast. Quieting the room with a gentle clink of a spoon against a champagne glass, immediate family members will raise their glasses and express their love and well wishes to the newlyweds. Fathers, mothers, siblings and best friends are usually the first to speak. Speeches can be heartfelt, humorous or humiliating, but they’re always somewhat sentimental.
The first dance
To open up the dance floor, the bride and groom will set the stage by performing their first dance as a married couple. The first dance usually reflects the couple’s style, depending on their choice of song and their chosen style of choreography. Many couples choose to take dance lessons in preparation for this moment, as it is always highly anticipated amongst the guests, and the spotlight really falls on the bride and groom. After this first dance, it is traditional for the parents of the couple to join the dance floor.
Removing the wedding garter
The wedding garter is a piece of lingerie that the bride wears on her leg underneath her dress. Much like the bride throws her wedding bouquet to all of the single women present at the reception, the groom will remove the garter from the bride’s leg and throw it to all of the bachelors at the reception. The removal of the garter is historically believed to symbolise good luck and fertility.
The Necessities of Parking Space and Traffic Management
Parking is always one of those things that people forget to consider until the final hour. With so many decisions to be made and so many items on the tick-list, it’s easy to forget about these smaller details. But if you have a large guest list, and only so few parking spots available at your venue of choice, then you’re in for a bit of a nightmarish ceremony.
If your guests don’t have anywhere to park, they’re likely to start climbing curbs and double-parking. This will only draw the attention of law and traffic enforcement personnel in the area, and you could face massive fines for disrupting the traffic flow in the area. Moreover, you’re likely to be met with frustrated guests.
There’s nothing fun about searching for parking. With so much anticipation in the air, your guests want to arrive on your special day feeling happy and calm. But a bad parking situation can lead to unpunctual arrivals, grumpy complaints or even last-minute cancellations. For this reason, it is vital that you establish parking plans in advance.
Using Bollards For Parking Management
There are two parts to any wedding day: the marriage ceremony and the wedding reception. And each part of the day will require a fair amount of logistical planning, especially with regard to parking. Most couples opt to have their ceremony at churches, and this always presents parking issues, as there are usually more guests than there are parking spaces.
In these cases, the wedding coordinators will have to consider hiring additional parking spaces nearby and designating the lots individually so that the guests don’t get confused or misguided. It will then be necessary to hire a staff member to direct the cars into the property. In these scenarios, it will also be useful to install signage and bollards.
Now, you may be wondering, ‘What are bollards?’. Bollards help signal to drivers where they can and cannot park. If you only have a small allocated space for parking, and you want to ensure that your guests do not surpass certain property limits or spatial limits, then you can make use of bollards. These bollards are sturdy items that can be placed according to your unique needs, and they create protective barriers that will prevent vehicles from crossing boundaries.
Bollards are also particularly useful if you don’t want to disturb the surrounding soil and land on the peripheries of your property or chosen parking lot/ field. Smaller, spherical bollards can be placed strategically to show guests the pathway to the venue, while also discouraging them from veering off into the path. This is particularly useful to prevent anybody from venturing off and damaging the natural landscape.
Depending on your venue, you can install a variety of parking management tools to help guide traffic and direct guests to the safest parking spots. There are a large variety of different bollards available at Street Scape. Some of the options are listed below:
Available Bollards
- Rectangular 900 Concrete Bollards
- Ball 400 Concrete Bollards
- Cannon Steel Bollards
- Newton Steel Bollards
- 500 Square Band Concrete Bollards
- 4040 Cube Concrete Bollards
- 500 Cube Concrete Bollards
- Concrete Bollards with Chain
- Bastian Concrete Bollards
- Bloc 560 Concrete Bollards
- Taper Concrete Bollards
- Croydon Concrete Bollards
- Steel bollards with Chain
- Ball Head 50 Steel Bollards
- Round 114 Mitre Steel Bollards
- Round 150 Tri Band Steel Bollards
Buy Bollards Today
Don’t let your special day be tainted by unfortunate oversights in parking management. Rather plan for the worst, and use valuable tools such as bollards to help guide and direct your guests’ movements. StreetScape sells quality parking management tools at affordable prices, offering you a clear solution to any logistical parking problem.
