How can UX Principles help make your wedding smoother and more enjoyable?
Overwhelmed by wedding planning? Start with the end goals in mind, then decide which aspects best support those goals
Once we got engaged, we started to be overwhelmed by all the possibilities of our wedding. Should we have it in another country? In one of our hometowns? Do we keep it to just family or do we invite more friends? What would be worth spending a bunch of money on? On top of that, we both had complicated family dynamics (don't we all) that were at times quite opinionated about our wedding. Where to start?
UX Principle: Conduct user interviews. Starting with ourselves, our parents, special relatives, and some of our wedding party we conducted informal interviews based on the following questions:
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We want to make sure you enjoy the wedding and get what you want out of it. Which wedding traditions are you most looking forwards to or would you be upset about if we skipped them?
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What do you think the purpose of the wedding is? What are the goals?
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At the last wedding you attended, what were some of the most memorable parts that you enjoyed?
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How do you want to feel before the wedding? At the beginning of the wedding? During the happy hour? During the reception? Afterwards?
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Are there any special traditions you would like to share with us?
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We're considering changing _______ tradition, what do you think about that?
UX Principle: Out of this we found our unique goal statement: (Yours may be different)
The goal of our wedding (besides getting married) is to have important memories with our favorite humans, merge our families and friends together, share our lives in the city with out of town family and friends, honor our family and friends equally, and enjoy as much of the wedding as possible.
This lead to the following decisions (user stories) to support each of these goals:
1. We will have three events so that there is ample time to talk to all of our wedding guests and so that we can share three different ways to experience the city. We picked a welcome happy hour the night before, the wedding and reception, and a day after picnic. We felt this somewhat replicated an ideal weekend in the city. At the end, I can confirm that I was emotionally so grateful to have all this time to talk to our 110 guests, make so many special memories, and see our friends and family merge together.
2. We will invite friends and family 50:50 and make guest list cuts based on this ratio so that we can honor our family and friends equally and so that we can make memories with those whom are most important to us. Not everyone may agree with this, but for us who view our friends as our chosen family, we wanted to shed the idea that the wedding is only for blood related family members.
(above) Our co-ed wedding party that honored our actual friends and family according to our actual lives. The Law of Proximity: Objects that are near, or proximate to each other, should be grouped together. (A fancy way of saying, my brother should get to be on MY side regardless of his gender, thank you!)
3. We will not skip the most important traditions for our each of our parents, but will modify other traditions to fit our actual lives so that we can honor our friends and families equally, so that we can make important memories with our favorite humans, and so that we can enjoy as much of the wedding as possible. For us this meant curating a very specific list of traditions:
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We upended the wedding party norms and had co-ed wedding parties (Bridespeople and Groomspeople). Additionally, each wedding party member walked down the aisle during the ceremony with their partner, and the partner had an assigned seat in the first 3 rows. Solo wedding party members walked down with each other (it happened to work out that most walked down with their best friend as well). We felt this honored our siblings and friends the best. If a wedding is about love, why wouldn't we celebrate our best friend's partners as well?
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Both of my parents walked me down the aisle to help honor my mother
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My husband's mother walked him down the aisle to honor her
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My new father in law and step mom in law gifted me a necklace during dinner - this was the most important tradition they wanted us to uphold, we will do the same for any future daughter in laws we may have.
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We did simultaneous Father/Daughter and Mother/Son dance, then a Best Friends dance afterwards to get people back onto the dance floor.
4. We will have our wedding in our city, despite the additional cost of doing so, so that we can share our lives with our friends and family; and so that we can honor our friends and family equally (especially those who were travelling). About half of our guest list flew in from Texas and the other half drove up from San Luis Obispo. In the end, this split the difference and both halves had a reduced travel time of about 4 hours.
5. We will be accepting of mismatch so that we and our closest family and friends can enjoy as much of the wedding as possible. I had never seen this done with the entire wedding party before, but we started with a color palette then told our wedding party to choose outfits based on this. For the men, we said "Use this as an excuse to buy the blue suit you actually want" and embraced mix and match blue suits and tuxedos with all different ties. For the women, we said "Choose a floor length dress from this color palette". Those were the only limitations we gave and it ended up working out beautifully. A mix and match set of outfits that were still cohesive because they followed a well designed color scheme.
(above) We embraced mix & match. We based all of our decisions off of a color palette to minimize the amount of decisions and pickiness that we needed to have while still keeping everything cohesive. Law of Uniform Connectedness: Elements that are visually connected are perceived as more related than elements with no connection. Group functions of a similar nature so they are visually connected via colors, lines, frames, or other shapes.
(above) The outcome of the mix & match guidelines. Our entire wedding party and their partners who walked down the aisle with them. Everyone had the comfort of an outfit they loved and felt like themselves and they got to be with their partner throughout the day. Peak-End Rule People judge an experience largely based on how they felt at its peak and at its end, rather than the total sum or average of every moment of the experience. Remember that people recall negative experiences more vividly than positive ones.
Learning from Experience: After being a catering event manager, I knew that not every wedding is as joyous as it could be.
In a previous life, in my college summers I worked at a local catering company (shoutout to Popolo Catering in San Luis Obispo). In my years with them, I did all sorts of jobs - from helping prep food, working as a server during weddings and local functions, designing graphics for print advertisements, photographing food, and eventually worked as an event coordinator - settling the finer details of wedding contracts with couples and planning the day to day logistics.
Through all of these roles, I can confirm that if you're doing your wedding correctly - everyone enjoys it - there's the tears of the ceremony (including us catering staff in the back of the room quietly setting up happy hour and holding back tears "I'm not crying, you're crying!"), there's the joyous greetings during happy hour, there's the laughs and tears during toasts, and then finally the unabashed dancing to the wedding classics such as Abba, Whitney Houston, and Britney Spears.
However on the opposite side, I also saw some weddings that didn't go so well - most often the people who aren't enjoying it are the bride and groom themselves. I saw the forlorn looks of couples taking photos during happy hour while all their favorite people are in the next room. I saw the exhaustion, the confusion about what event was happening next resulting in some guests leaving early and missing out on entire event (don't miss those late night breakfast tacos and ice cream truck!!).
Most wedding vendors (who are worth their salt) have seen most of these things happen and will steer you to avoid the largest mishaps. At Popolo, we personally served the bride and groom their dinner, appetizers, and signature cocktails first to help keep the bride and groom fed (a super common complaint from newlyweds is that they "never even got to try ___ and they paid $1000+ to have it there"). We also had a cost saving method of calculating the correct number of wine glasses, beer glasses, and cocktail glasses to prevent there from being too many of each glass type. At $1-$3 per glass, that can save you about $1000.
However some of the largest mistakes happen long before we ever got involved. Why, oh, why are stopping the dance floor just to cut the cake. (This ends the party because once the dance floor empties and people sit down with their cake, they get the impression that it's over). Why did they book a shuttle, but since no one knew about it there were only a few passengers? Why were thousands of dollars spent on entry way flowers, while the main areas were devoid of decor? Why are the lights on full blast in the middle of the dance floor?
(above) A photo of me and my Popolo Catering coworkers working at a wedding in 2012. I saw many weddings inside and out during those summers. UX Principle: Use what you know to be true.
There were some best practices that I learned on the catering job that I wanted to include in our wedding
From my years working in catering, I knew I had a few memorized learnings that I wanted to apply to my own wedding.
1. Photos happen before the ceremony. It may seem odd, but photos can take anywhere from 2-4 hours. Traditionally photos that happen during cocktail hour prevent the bride and groom from seeing their guests, they miss out on a whole section of their wedding. To me it was a no brainer. We our wedding started at 4pm, so we did a first look at 1pm then left together to take photos in a park, then met up at the venue at 3:00pm with our wedding party to take photos ahead of time. This meant at about 3:45 as guests started showing up, we were down in our get ready room resting and preparing for the ceremony that ultimately started at 4:30pm.
2. Cut the cake before the dancing starts. You don't have to eat it right then - some couples cut the cake before dinner. However, no one can eat dessert until it's cut and getting the dance floor started is a unique art that you don't want to interrupt and accidentally cut the party short. The thought process is - get the big things out of the way as early as you can. When the party officially starts, people are dancing around you and talking your ear off, you'll be completely out of touch with what time it is and what else is supposed to happen.
3. Not everyone does everything. If you're planning a wedding for 100 people, you certainly do not need 100 wine glasses AND 100 beer glasses. It highly depends on the crowd, but at Popolo we assumed about half of the legal adults would drink wine and half would drink beer. Some adults do not drink at all. Some members will need multiple glasses and some will need only one. Our glass orders back then for an 100 adult event typically included 60 wine glasses and 60 beer glasses. This might shock some people and get them worried that there aren't enough glasses, but there was always enough. These rules similarly apply to wedding favors, desserts, appetizers, and anything else that is a per person cost. Couples often share one wedding favor, while some aunts take 2. We ordered about 80 favors for our 110 person wedding and it was just the right number with about 10 left over for me to send to friends and family who didn't make it to our wedding.
4. Consider the needs of your guests and vendors during transitions. For example, upon arrival, how will they know where to go? Will they need a bathroom or a drink? What if they want to stash their belongings? How will these things affect the event coordinator who is still setting up the dining room as guests are filtering into the ceremony space? For us, this meant that we spent the money on a curtain that blocked the main reception space (see image). Guests didn't get to see the reception space until after cocktail hour, and a staff member directed them upstairs to the roof and answered questions about bathrooms and elevators. Then upon arrival to the roof, guests were handed their choice of champagne or water and directed to sit where they'd like in the ceremony space. Each one of these choices felt relatively small and invisible to our guests, but allowed us to cut transition times to focus on the main events.
5. Instead of ordering stationary for start times, menus, programs, etc - put these details on the wedding website ahead of time. Much of what is on these stationary items is likely to change in the weeks leading up to your wedding and most people do not need these items. A website also allows you to update everyone with changes as they occur and add more details. For example my husband's father really enjoyed the extra details we put in about our wedding party - he got to study up on where our friends live now and reading the stories of why we selected each person. Our friends with kids, allergies, and food restrictions really enjoyed seeing the menu ahead of time so they walked in knowing exactly what they could and couldn't eat. Parents could decide if they would need to pack favorite snacks for picky eaters. Additionally, as our wedding weekend included 3 events that were very subject to change, our wedding invitations mentioned the three events and the general start times, but the website included the actual addresses and real start times as we got them.
6. Spend money on decor where it matters. Get the biggest bang for your buck - as a couple having a wedding in San Francisco, we were VERY cognizant of the fact that this wedding could easily cost us multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars if we weren't careful.
We decided to splurge on lighting and skimp on flowers. We had careful blue, purple, and white up lights around the room to set the mood that slowly transitioned to be darker as the party got going. We also projected stars and a moon onto the "accent wall" behind the head table that drew your attention to our fun wedding theme "National Parks at Night" and had stars projected onto the dance floor that otherwise was just a section of empty floor. The lighting ended up costing us about $3000. Meanwhile, we pieced together my floral bouquet and bouts for our wedding party for $600 with a professional florist and bought $60 worth of Trader Joes flowers in $30 worth of thrifted vases and cheap bulk vases from online. My husband and I had a blast setting up vases for tables and the plus side is now he knows how to make me a professional looking flower arrangement for cheap. We ended up saving about $5000 by doing it this way. The full effect was gorgeous and looks like we spent much more than we did on it.
(above) Our transition curtain that helped us control where guests went at what time. (Closed during ceremony and opened after happy hour.) Hick’s Law: The time it takes to make a decision increases with the number and complexity of choices. Minimize choices when response times are critical to decrease decision time.
(above) We decided to splurge on lighting and skimp on flowers. This was a major driver of the mood of the event, reinforced our wedding theme "National Parks at Night", and also gave us the biggest bang for our decor budget. The Pareto Principle: or many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. Focus the majority of effort on the areas that will bring the largest benefits to the most users.
Secondary Research: I looked into other UX Designers and wedding vendors recommend for wedding websites
For our wedding website I did some quick research into best practices. It's been more than 2 years since I did this research, so I cannot directly quote my sources - so I will do my best to paraphrase what I found. (Much credit is probably due to Zola, The Knot, and other sites).
1. The landing page should direct them to do what you most need them to do: RSVP
A week after our wedding RSVP's were due, the RSVP link changed to "RSVP closed" with the button directing them to contact me directly. (By this point though, I had contacted the missing RSVP's directly and people who now needed to change their minds knew to contact me directly).
The screenshot below shows the final form of our site, but is the third version of how it appeared.
2. Minimize the number of navigation options and place them in ranked importance from Left to Right.
To minimize navigation items, I collapsed all items related to wedding logistics into one dropdown menu.
Additionally, recognize that the website will have different primary goals at different times. and you should highlight this accordingly with the navigation options
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Before the wedding: RSVP, then Wedding Weekend info are the most important items.
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After the RSVPs are due, Wedding Weekend then Gift Registry are the most important items
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After the wedding, Photo Sharing (via google photos) is the most important.
3. I displayed each of the events in the same format, so it was quicker for guests to locate the information that they needed
Because we had four separate events with four separate start times, addresses, age restrictions, dress codes, and acceptance of +1's - we displayed each of of these in the same way.
3. Accept that there is a variety of Tech Savviness - set individuals who need it up for success. For a wedding website, this means reducing the number of clicks needed to get to important information - all of the event logistics were on the homepage. I also ensured that our website worked and was viewable on mobile. For grandparents and older relatives that we knew would not be willing to look at the website we either personally called them and gave them a schedule in a format they preferred OR assigned a trusted family member to communicate with them and help them get to the events.
While I knew we could not spend that much money on signage and graphics, I knew that at minimum I could make them look cohesive and professional with consistent branding.
I decided to center them around a vintage style of postcard created by artist Dr. Tyler Nordgren. (We did reach out to him directly for permissions to use his artwork in our wedding.) I chose two fonts, one blocky san script and another cursive text. While modern UX principles tell us that copy should be the more legible text, I decided to swap it to match the feeling of these old postcards - blocky titles and cursive detail copy. To mitigate this, I limited copy to 1 or two lines in all graphics to keep it as legible as possible.
See how these graphics turned into wedding signage below.
For the rest of our elements, my partner and I created a style guide that matched what we wanted out of our wedding. Then moving forwards before picking any vendor or element that made it into our wedding, we consulted the style guide. Every vendor was shared onto this live document and as decisions were made, we added photos and screenshots to help keep it cohesive and elevate colors or vibes that we were leaving out. In the end the final document was 11 pages of content that all collaborators knew about transparently.
(Below) A sample of what was on our style guide.
(Below) A small sample of how our style guide influenced our wedding and kept it cohesive.
