Author: Kylie Sammond, Wedding Planner

Ever receive an invitation to a wedding and wonder what the dress code means? Weddings are a time for celebration, and understanding the dress code can help guests dress appropriately and feel comfortable. Here are some common wedding dress codes and what they typically entail.

Black Tie

Black Tie is one of the most formal dress codes for weddings. Guests are expected to dress in elegant evening wear.

• Men: A classic black tuxedo with a formal white shirt, black bow tie, and black patent leather shoes.
• Women: A floor-length gown or a chic cocktail dress. Elegant accessories and high heels are also appropriate.

Black Tie Optional

Black Tie Optional offers some flexibility while still maintaining a formal tone.

• Men: A tuxedo is preferred, but a dark suit with a white shirt and conservative tie is also acceptable.
• Women: A gown, a dressy cocktail dress, or a formal pantsuit.

Formal or Black Tie Creative

Formal or Black Tie Creative allows for some personal expression while sticking to a formal theme.

• Men: A tuxedo or a dark suit, possibly with a trendy tie or pocket square.
• Women: A gown or a cocktail dress with room for creative touches such as bold colors or unique accessories.

Semiformal or Cocktail

Semiformal or Cocktail attire is less formal than black tie but still dressy.

• Men: A suit and tie, though colors can be lighter than black tie events.
• Women: A cocktail dress, a dressy skirt and top, or a smart jumpsuit.

Casual

Casual dress codes are relaxed and comfortable, often for daytime or beach weddings.

• Men: Dress pants or chinos with a button-down shirt. Jackets and ties are optional.
• Women: A sundress, skirt and blouse, or nice trousers and top.

Festive

Festive attire is fun and allows for more creativity and color.

• Men: A suit in a fun color or pattern, or a shirt with bold accessories.
• Women: A dress with vibrant colors or playful patterns, paired with fun accessories.

Beach Formal

Beach Formal combines elegance with practicality for a beach setting.

• Men: A summer suit with a linen or cotton shirt, and loafers or dressy sandals.
• Women: A formal sundress or a dressy jumpsuit with flats or sandals.

Understanding these dress codes can help you choose the perfect outfit for any wedding, ensuring you look great and feel confident while celebrating the special occasion.

Hiring the right wedding vendor team to assist you on your wedding day will play a huge factor into how your day will go. You want to select a team of wedding vendors who are experienced, passionate, and attentive to their role on your big day. With a large market, it’s easy to get overwhelmed deciding who to hire. Fear not, we are here to help you break down who you need to hire and what you need to look for.

Your Wedding Vendor Team

Wedding Vendors You Should Hire ASAP
Wedding Venue
Wedding Planner
Photographer
Caterer
Entertainment (Band/DJ)
Florist
Cake Baker/Decorator

Some Others to Consider
Videographer
Content Creator
Rentals (Champagne Wall, Guest Book Phone Booth, Photo Booth, etc.)
Dessert Caterer

Wedding Planner

Hiring a wedding planner from the start will take away much of the stress and keep you on the right track for where you should be in your planning. A good planner will have great attention to detail. A good sign that they have this is if they are asking a lot of questions about things you never thought of. This shows their level of experience, as they’ve dealt with many situations before, meaning they will be able to tackle any hurdles with ease.

Some other things to consider when hiring a wedding planner is their style, how involved they will be with you, and how accommodating they will be. Before shopping around for the right wedding planner, ask yourself what you’d like to have your wedding planner do for you at the wedding. This will help you determine how involved you’d like the wedding planner to be and if they are the right one for you.

Wedding Venue

If not before the wedding planner, finding a venue is one of the first things you should do when planning your wedding. The venue will help you determine many other factors depending on what they include in their rental. Do they have on-site coordinators? Caterers? Tables and chairs you like? Not only will seeing all a venue has to offer will help you determine if you would like to use it, but also who you need to add to your wedding vendor team.

In addition to what you’ll need and finding the perfect space for your wedding, booking your venue also locks in your date. Most vendors will not work with you unless you have a date secured, as they will need to put the date on their calendar.

Photographer

Hiring a wedding photographer should also be done rather sooner in your wedding planner process. The reason being photography is a highly desired service at weddings, meaning the best of the best are booked early. You’ll want to reach out as far out as possible to book your date with your photographer before someone else gets it.

Finding the right photographer can be a challenge with all of the beautiful photos to go through in each one’s portfolio. One thing you should look out for is how responsive a photographer is. Are they replying to your emails within a timely manner before you even hire them? Are they communicating their availability (for their responses, not just your wedding date!). Making sure you have a photographer that is thorough in communication is important.

Caterer

One thing your guests are depending on at your wedding is food! When handling the catering part of your wedding vendor team, you’ll want to make sure the food will taste great, be of great quality, and served with the utmost hospitality. Check with a caterer to see if they offer tastings or if there is a restaurant affiliated with the caterer, have a date night and try out the food and service.

Also make sure you’re going to like the type of food the caterer makes. You want the food to make you happy! It’s also important to ask how they handle food allergies or special meals such as vegan. A good caterer will have dishes to accommodate any dietary needs you or your guests may have.

You’ll also want to ask if your caterer offers bar services. If not, you may need to find a bar service that is licensed and insured and add them to your team!

Entertainment (Band/DJ)

The entertainment you select for your wedding reception will make the lasting impression your guests will remember for your wedding. DJs are great to hire because they can also manage the audio for your ceremony, and emcee your reception, keeping everyone and everything on the timeline. Bands are a wonderful element to a wedding that can put a personal touch on the memories that will be made – who doesn’t enjoy live music? If hiring a band, ask them what all they provide in terms of entertainment. Most will not be able to manage the ceremony, in which you’ll need to hire an audio tech for. Some bands will emcee the reception, but not all will. Also check with bands to see how long they will play for and if they will need to take breaks.

Florist

Reaching out to your florist of choice early on is always a good idea. Flowers are imported from all over the world, so it’s important to give your florist time to ensure they can source the flowers you envision by the time you will need them. You can vet florists by their portfolios online (social media!) and visiting their shop to look at some of their current projects.

Cake Baker / Decorator

The final needed wedding vendor you want to make sure is on your team is the cake baker of course! You can vet a bakery by visiting and sampling some goods before investing in the entire wedding cake. Also check with the bakery to see that they can accommodate any dietary needs you or your guests might have. Most bakers are able to make this happen and can make one of the layers allergen free so that everyone can enjoy!

Other Vendors

You may want to add more members to your wedding vendor list to add extra elements of pizazz to your wedding. Videographers are a nice complement to photographers and give you multiple sources of media to look back on your day. You may want to add some more entertainment for your guests like a photobooth or guest book phone booth, or even add a touch of style with a champagne wall. Be sure to ask good questions and vet your vendors before hiring them. Your wedding planner can help you do all of this with ease.

When your wedding day comes, you’ll find that most of your wedding vendors will care for you more than most of your friends and family. A passionate wedding vendor does their job because they love making the magic of weddings happen and they want the couple to be in wedding bliss! Finding your wedding dream team will take some time and effort, but once you have them on your roster, they will make sure you get the wedding of your dreams!

Ready to start building YOUR wedding vendor dream team? Let’s start planning today!

Spring is a wonderful time of year to get married! Nature’s colors are at their most vibrant, the weather is perfect, and love is in the air. “Wedding Seasons” are usually in the Spring months – March, April, and May, and the Fall months – September, October and November. This is due to the weather being perfect for guests to enjoy indoor and outdoor weddings!

With every wedding season, there are some things you’ll want to prepare for. The phrase, “April showers bring May flowers” can be true, but it also can be really misleading. We have some tips for you to make sure your Spring wedding goes just as planned, even if you need to implement Plan B.

Check the Forecast

While it’s never going to be a sure bet what the weather is like on your wedding day, you can often look well in advance at what the weather may be like based on weather patterns in years past, and any weather showing up on radar so far. This can help you determine if you need to have a backup plan in place, although, you probably always should anyway! You can look this up on websites like The Farmers Almanac.

Spring Wedding Dress Code

It’s always a good idea to let your guests know in advance what they should consider wearing to your soiree. You may want to suggest bringing a sweater or umbrella depending on the weather. It’s also important to consider any weather that may affect footwear. You don’t want your guests’ stilettos to be falling through the lawn in muddy conditions.

Consider the Date for your Spring Wedding

Spring is great, and you’ll likely get more yeses from your guests as it is not the holiday season, and you will not conflict with planned summer vacations. However, there are some holidays you will want to avoid coinciding with. Some of these days include Mother’s Day, Memorial Day, Easter, Passover, Palm Sunday, Father’s Day, and Ramadan. Luckily most of these fall on Sundays and Mondays, not usually bringing conflicts for your guests!

Create a Plan B

If you are planning to have any part of your wedding outdoors, it’s crucial to consider rain. While rain rarely becomes an issue, having a plan is the best way to work around unwanted weather. If a light storm comes about, waiting 30-45 minutes for the storm to pass is generally okay to have the beautiful ceremony of your dreams, as long as your guests have a dry spot to wait. It’s also a good idea to plan for the worst. Speak with your venue about what would happen if rain won’t let up – will they set up indoors? Is there a way to cover the ceremony site? Planning ahead is the best way to avoid any stress on the big day.

Spring weddings are popular because the weather is usually great. While it’s best to prepare for the worst, you likely have nothing to worry about and will remember your wedding being on a bright and beautiful day!

Sammond Events is located in the Central Savannah River Area near Augusta, GA and happy to serve you with helping you plan your Spring Wedding. Contact us today for your free consultation!

During your engagement, visiting a bridal expo or two will be a great way to get ahead in your planning. What is a bridal expo exactly? A bridal expo, or bridal show is essentially a convention, filled with the area’s best wedding experts! You will get to meet with potential vendors, try delicious samples of food and cake, watch a fashion show, and enjoy some live music! While not every expo is free to attend, many have a very affordable entry fee, and you will get your money’s worth in free swag and samples!

Why Go to a Bridal Expo?

Bridal expos aren’t only for the fun and food. Bridal expos present you with the opportunity to meet and low-key interview many wedding vendors at the same time in the same place. Rather than browsing through websites, you get to meet vendors in person. This allows you to experience if you’ll click well (which is very important!) and see what they have to offer. When you leave, hopefully you’ll have some clarity on a vendor or two that you’d like to hire.

You shouldn’t go into a bridal expo without a plan. Here is what you need to know and how to prepare to get the most out of your experience at the bridal show.

Don’t Go Alone

Bridal Expos are generally going to be very busy and you will be processing a lot of information in a short amount of time. Bringing someone with you is a sure way to make sure you are leaving with the important information you need and not missing a beat. You can bring your partner, a family member, or a friend. It doesn’t matter who you bring, just make sure it is someone that will be focused on helping you execute your plan, keeping an eye out for anything you can’t miss, and will ask all of the right questions you may forget in the moment.

Show Up with a Plan

Before the day of the bridal expo, sit down and think about where you are in your wedding planning process and what you’d like to accomplish that day. Perhaps you are newly engaged and have no clue where to start – it may be a good idea to speak with some wedding planners and find one that understands where you’re at and can help you get you off the ground running. Or maybe you are well into planning and just need some final touches like a DJ that can work the crowd. Of course, stop and try the delicious slices of wedding cake, but also know what your mission is and make sure you focus on that before you walk out of the expo.

Show Up to the Bridal Expo Early

To get the best experience of your bridal expo, make sure you show up at the beginning of the show. Most expos have raffles and you must be present to enter and win. You don’t want to miss out on a free wedding cake or engagement photography shoot. Raffle drawings will usually happen once every 30-60 minutes, so you’ll want to be there for as much of the expo as you possibly can!

It’s also a good idea to show up early to get the best out of vendors. You may find a vendor whose booth is completely packed with brides at the moment and decide to come back to them later when the crowd dies down. If you show up early, you’ll be making sure you have time to come back. If you come towards the end, there is also a chance that some vendors will start packing up early if there aren’t enough clients still walking around – which means you may miss out on meeting the perfect vendor!

Bridal Expo Attire

You will be walking around a lot. Make sure you are wearing comfortable shoes! You want to be dressed comfortable, but with it being your once in a lifetime experience of wedding planning, you of course want to dress for the occasion! Something like a sundress or cute top will be perfect.

Pre-Made Address Labels

There will be a lot of raffles and drawings you will be entering at the bridal expo. Not only does the expo hold raffles, but often times, businesses will be holding their own at their booths, or you may want to give them your information to follow up with you. Showing up with pre-made address labels will save you so much time filling out forms!

Make a Wedding Email Address

After you attend a bridal expo, you are going to receive a ton of emails from vendors. The thing is, after the wedding, you may not want to click “unsubscribe” for every single vendor’s emails. A quick and simple solution is to create an email address specifically for your wedding. After the wedding, you’ll never have to look at it again.

Bring a Bag

You will be receiving so many souvenirs, samples and literature to go through at home. The problem is, you will not have anywhere to carry it! Bring a backpack or large tote to carry your giveaways so that you can keep your hands free. If you’re coming to a bridal expo that Sammond Events is exhibiting in, stop by our booth for a free tote!

Bridal expos are a fun and productive tool for your wedding planning journey! With some preparation, you can set yourself up for success in checking off a few boxes of your to-do list. Now all that’s left is to find some expos to attend!

Check out Sammond Events at these upcoming events:

• Lake Murray Bridal Show – Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center, April 3, 2025