Dear ESB,
I liked your advice on first looks, and I am wondering what your thoughts on spending the night before your wedding with your partner.
It seems that even the most modern brides are still spending nights apart. Then again, these modern brides invented The Knot. Most people are living together before they are married right? So wouldn't they get ready together and see each other the day of?
What did you do?
Sincerely,
Apart we are together.
*****
We spent the night before the wedding together (I mean, COME ON) and then spent the morning together running around setting up tables &c. But we split up an hour or two before the ceremony and I took a bath, shaved my legs, spent a few minutes alone contemplating the enormity…. and got ready with my bridespeople. And he did whatever he did with his groomspeople.
So we saw each other for the "first time" at the altar. Which was incredible. Which is what everyone should do. (OPINIONS! I'VE GOT EM.)
Photo by Mikael Jansson for Interview Magazine
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My husband and I had lived together for 6 years before we got married. We were all set to spend the night together but at the last minute my husband changed his mind and wanted to spend the night apart, so he stayed in my sister's room and she stayed with me. I didn't see him again until we were at the altar, and it was great. but i really think to each their own. I actually liked having my sister there to talk to me as I fell asleep; i was far more nervous than I thought I'd be.
ReplyDeleteI have to jump in here and encourage you to consider spending the night together if you live together. I had actually thought I wanted to be traditional and my husband was the one who pointed out that he wakes up with me every morning so shouldn't I be there on our wedding day too? I am so glad because it helped keep me calm getting to be with him that morning and then separating a few hours before the ceremony to get ready. And I want to keep it classy, but let me just say that the night before our wedding was pretty amazing as well and a nice way to relax before the big day.
ReplyDeleteWe spent the night apart, but to be honest this is the one major thing I would do differently. I'd like to have done it the way you did, with a bit of Dan Savage's method thrown in for good measure. Would have made all the difference the night before, and probably the night of too. SO. MUCH. PRESSURE.
ReplyDeleteYep. Mike and I did the exact same thing as ESB and H and it worked for us awesomely. It was September and already there was a nip in the air and the lake at the resort had turned cold but we jumped into the water the morning of the ceremony with our bridal party (and then ran out screaming) and it felt like a baptism. And then we all had coffee and bagels together in our cabin before going our separate ways to get ready. I wouldn't have traded those early wedding morning moments for the world.
ReplyDeleteWe spent the night apart, bc the wedding was out of town, and we each stayed with our families. Then we did the first look, which was awesome - I loved showing myself off to him in private first. My main point, however, is that the moment when I walked down that aisle was AMAZING - my head was full of chaos, I was looking around at everyone, and then we locked eyes, and all was right with the world. Seeing him first didn't change that.
ReplyDeleteWe spent the night before together, got up early to take Dan Savage's advice, ran around picking all our guests up together (NYC's whole transit system was out of commission, and everyone was stranded), and then got ready together, along with our stranded friends and family, in one big hotel room. From the hotel, we crammed into another car to drive to the ceremony, and we ended up doing our "newlywed" portrait session before it started. (The officient was stuck in traffic.) We never separated before walking down the aisle, and it didn't take away any of the magic.
ReplyDeleteMy fiance and I will stay together the night before. I'm hoping we'll be able to get coffee and bagels together and then take the bus to the venue. If I have to be with my mother and sisters for every single minute from waking up until the ceremony, I'll probably pull all my hair out.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of doing portraits before the ceremony (I refuse to call it a "first look," blech) so we can squeeze in a few minutes alone during the cocktail hour. But who knows if we'll have time for that.
Totally spot-on, ESB. I am a MoH to my best bud in June and she asked me to stay with her the night before the wedding...I'm more than happy to but I just think if it was me, I'd want to be with my other half.
ReplyDeleteKate
www.thrillofthechaise.com
srsly?
DeleteYesssss.
Deleteoh come on now...
Delete...drinking game alert!
DeleteI am so in on this drinking game. Let me go raid the minibar...
DeleteWe stayed apart just for fun. We got married at a summer camp and stayed with our friends in bunk beds in neighboring cabins on Friday night. During the day on Saturday, we didn't see each other much because he was off ziplining and shooting arrows while I put together our flowers and did other wedding crap with my very patient friends. I would have changed THAT (it took ALL DAY).
ReplyDeleteThen we got ready in the separate cabins and took pics and then went and joined everyone for a pre-ceremony cocktail hour. We had planned to bartend but were just too late.
If we had got married in Chicago, where we live, I would have wanted to stay together and get ready together.
UNRELATED: I just discovered this amazing blog. I'm not sure if you guys have seen it yet...it's: www.thrillofthechaise.com
You win the internets today.
Deletefantastic
Deleteyou should have made it a fancy link. too lazy to copy and paste. oh well.
Deletehahahah!! just laughed out loud and everyone looked at me (i'm sitting in a pub waiting for my huzben to meet me for lunch.) i raise my very tall glass of very dark beer to you, hillary.
DeleteYES!
DeleteYES!
DeleteI felt pressure from my sister to stay apart, even though we lived together for 3 years. We already spent 2 months apart before the wedding, so it sucked more than it should have. It was lonely and stressful for me, while he got to stay at the hotel and hang out with our friends. It is the ONE thing I would do differently. It would have been so nice to fall asleep together that night thinking about how we were getting married the next day.
ReplyDeleteWe're definitely spending the night together; after 5+ years of living together, neither of us sleeps very well alone. I feel like waking up next to each other will be one of the sweetest parts of the day.
ReplyDeleteWe will be taking photos before the ceremony. We are ridiculously excited for our cocktail hour and hate having our pictures taken, so there's no way I'm missing out on the fun to go take stupid pictures.
I was all about spending the night together, since we had lived together for years, but my husband decided he wanted to be apart and stayed with a friend who lived close by. So the night before our wedding, I picked up my wedding dress from my dad, dropped off my future husband at our friend's, and drove home to get some shut eye. Honestly, the feeling of being utterly independent for one last night turned out to be important to me - driving home and parking, hauling the wedding dress upstairs, taking some time to be quiet and alone with my thoughts. And I didn't see him until I was walking down the aisle the next day, and it made it such an amazing experience, because by that time I was really missing him. We spent so much of our time together, living together and being partners, that having that separation for several hours before our wedding really meant something.
ReplyDeleteThe end point is, go with whatever feels best for you both. But just know, one of you may want to go traditional, and it will work out just fine.
We haven't decided yet, but leaning towards spending the night apart - mainly for logistical reasons. We are getting married away from our home and it's an early wedding so we wouldn't have time to spend the morning together and then split to get ready. I'll be up bright and early with my bridal party getting made up. So I'll see him down the aisle. I guess I don't see it as that big of a deal, we've lived together 5 years, and one night apart will just build the anticipation I guess.
ReplyDeletewe spent the night together, then the day of apart. looking back, i would have spent some of the day together because joe got really stressed out while dealing with one of our vendors over a minor complication. had i been there, i know the situation would have been handled differently/better. i'm all for taking a break from each other before the actual ceremony, though. it truly is indescribable how amazing it feels to see your partner for the "first time" at the alter.
ReplyDeleteI had every intention of making us spend the night before apart. I had been teasing him about it for months! But that night, we were tired from rehearsal dinner celebrations, we were up so late making decorations, and we had this mounting list of things to do at 6 am the next morning, and so much excitement/anxiety about everything going well, that we completely forgot! We spent that night together (the same way we had living together for 3+years) and woke up together. Those few minutes waking up all cuddly-happy before the craziness of set up, 100 degree weather, 200 people, and break down of the party, just thinking to ourselves and saying, "We're getting married today." Was totally worthwhile. I don't regret our momentary forgetfulness and throwing away of tradition.
ReplyDeleteWe were living together, and spend the last night of our single lives together! We cherished each other and experienced the antipication of the next day together. My favorite feeling was waking up wedding morning and us looking at each other thinking "today's the day!". No one else in the world I would've wanted to share that feeling with.
ReplyDeleteWe lived together and had our wedding in our town so we spent the night before together at our home and it was fun to wake up the next day and have it be THE DAY! And not to be boring, but logistically it just made more sense - otherwise someone would have had to crash on a couch or get a hotel room. We got married at the courthouse though so we didn't have a first look at the alter because there was no alter. Maybe if I were to do it differently I would have gone separately to the courthouse, I don't know. On the other hand, my sister had a more traditional wedding and got married in a small town in another state so we were all in the same hotel, and the night before the wedding her husband stayed in my room and I stayed with her in the giant fancy bridal suite. I can't speak to her feelings about it, but for me that was also fun and special - to have a girly sister night together right before this momentous occasion. So, I think there are pluses to both ways.
ReplyDeleteWe rented a vacation house for the wedding and it had a ginourmous master bedroom that had a small bedroom attached to it. We called it the "bitch room". He slept in the bitch room while I stayed in the big room. I guess we wanted to be a little traditional and it did make things extra exciting.
ReplyDeleteMy in-laws got a free upgrade to a suite or something and offered it to us for the night before and night of. It was wonderful. We got to cuddle and chat in bed, slept really well because it was so dark and quiet in the suite bedroom, and there was no clutter as compared to the shitstorm that was our apartment. If the suite wasn't available, we would've just been at our shared apartment. To me, it was much more important to be in a comfortable place and be with my partner during such a stressful and intense time. Together is how we got through all the other stressful and intense times since we've been together. But I can see how some would choose otherwise because of the anticipation, tradition, doing something different, or other reasons.
ReplyDeleteI hope you can see now that there really isn't a *normative* way to spend the night before. Our families are open minded but not radically liberal or anything, and no one cared enough about our spending the night together beforehand to blink an eye or say anything to us. I think you should just think through what you want to do. There really isn't anything dictating what "modern brides" should do.
dang, sorry about that insufferably long numeric moniker. let's try this...
DeleteOur friends and family convinced us to spend the night apart and I HATED it. I froze to death sleeping by myself and was too anxious to sleep anyway. One of the very few things I would do over in a second.
ReplyDeleteEither way you decide - if you've seen each other day off, kept separate, spent the night together before, spent it apart - that walk down the aisle is still going to be BIG. Trust.
ReplyDelete(We ended up spending most of the day together, getting ready with friends and family. We also did all the family portraits beforehand, because we both have HUGE families and it took FOR-EV-ER. I was really glad we did those before the ceremony, because they stressed me out like whoa.)
We spent the night together, ordered room service for breakfast, then got ready together. Our suite was big enough that I could take over one area while he was in another. We walked to the ceremony site together as well. I think I would have liked that first look while walking down the aisle, but I also know myself. I would have been in batshitpanic without him next to me the whole time. Do what makes ya feel good.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking up for the first look for a minute here, it seems like it could work well and give you that special 'moment' if you're not going to do the traditional walk down the aisle thing. We're thinking of walking down the aisle *together* and if we do that we'll have a first look to capture that moment just before we take the plunge.
ReplyDeleteJust a thought from a different perspective.
after living together for 5 years, it never even crossed my mind to sleep somewhere else the night before. we split up for like an hour on the day of to get ready separately, but then met up for drinks and awkward photos in our hotel suite after which we and our besties packed into a janky limo (including an awesome 90's alternative limo mix I had put together and champs all around) that took us to the wedding site. absolutely no regrets!
ReplyDeleteWe had a rather low key, very small wedding and spent most of the morning getting ready (mostly together) and then walked to our ceremony venue and walked up the aisle together. I don't regret seeing my husband/spending time with him before the wedding, and I think it made everything a lot less nerve-wracking.
ReplyDeleteDood, do what feels right. Our photographer wanted us to do a first look, but it wasn't right for us.
ReplyDeleteWe did what ESB did, spent the night and most of the day together then went our separate ways for getting ready and then saw each other when the wedding got started.
I was a basket case the night before because I'd planned EVERYTHING by myself and wouldn't have been content spending that night any way but with him. That is why we're married, we coexist with our crazy.
Don't go with convention or what someone tells you to do, picture the day in your head, each step of the day, and if something doesn't feel right as you picture it, change it, do it the way that feel right.
I think paying attention to this really made our day enjoyable
Do whatever makes you feel comfortable, because as everyone's opinion here shows there are seventeen million ways to do this.
ReplyDeleteBut for the record we spent the night apart and didn't see each other until i walked down the aisle...and it was pretty intensely spectacular.
jess
do whatever feels right to you. We spent the night before our wedding apart - me with my sister and friend, and him with his two brothers. It is all a bit cliche but watching girlie dvds and eating junkfood with my two best ladies was something I was really looking forward to as part of the whole 'wedding thing' and it was great. He says that he had an awesome time too. Worked for us, but to each their own.
ReplyDeleteMy husband and I spent the night before our wedding together. I needed the comfort and couldn't imagine telling him to get a hotel instead of staying at my parents' house! The day of, we both ran around getting things done (some things together, and some things apart). I think going the whole day without seeing him would have been torture. Getting married is such a big, stressful tradition already - it's just mean to take away a source of comfort and support (and lots and lots of cuddles) the night before/the day of.
ReplyDeleteSo, yes, do what you want. Don't let anyone tell you you're doing it wrong if you just want to stay with your fiance.