“I’ve been around a lot of weddings and this is what I know.”
Would you believe I was a wedding MC and DJ during my university years? It was a pretty cushy job. I got to meet lots of new people, eat fancy food and dance along as I spun tunes for over-excited bridal parties.
And within a few months, I started to notice something. I was working a lot of first-time-around, as well as, second-time-around weddings and there were glaring differences. I personally came to much prefer working at second weddings.
Here are the six major differences I noticed between first and second weddings that taught me everything I ever needed to know about love, marriage and circus performers.
1. Complicated doesn’t equal committed.
At first I preferred working at first-time weddings. They were always more formal, more focused and ran for hours, meaning I made a lot more money. Ca-ching!
However with that money came expectations. If you think it’s hard to organise a wedding for someone who has never been married before and is incredibly focused on HER DAY being PERFECT, then try running one while the entire thing is being filmed.
First-time weddings were always more complicated and intrinsic compared to second-time weddings were couples seemed to pick and choose the parts of the ceremony and reception they wanted, as opposed to catering to their own expectations and those of family and friends.
"No, we're not intertwining our arms and sipping champagne", one couple told me much to my relief. I lost count of the number of couples who didn't know how to do this and then stuffed it up, and then blamed me.
I had to start giving quick lessons on it during our initial meeting just in case.
2. The success of the wedding day has no bearing on the success of the marriage.
Second-time weddings were so much more relaxed and I realised this was because at least one of them had 'been there done that', and realised that the perfection of the wedding day had very little bearing on whether or not the marriage would be a success.
Oftentimes it was just one member of the happy couple who had been married before and managed to convince the first-timer that it didn't really matter how many tiers the cake was or if they remembered to thank the bridesmaids/bridesgrooms/out of town guests/Aunty Jenny for the bouquets.
It made my job easier because instead of being given a strict itinerary to try and stick to I was normally given a rough guide on when things should be done. Second-timers always wanted it to be more of a party, which meant more time for me to spin some tunes.