I met up with lovely Manchester wedding photographer Jenny from McAvoy Photography earlier this month and we got chatting about my blog post on finding that childish excitement you should be enjoying about your wedding day.
My dream wedding – a child’s perspective
My dream wedding – a child’s perspectiveJenny had the brainwave of asking her daughter and some classmates about their ideal wedding. The lovely Eliza – fan of all things sparkly – and her friends came up trumps with some insightful, interesting and funny wedding themes.
Huge thanks to Jenny and to Eliza McAvoy for being top wedding researchers! This wedding blog post wouldn’t be possible without them. And now we have the results for you… this is the future of weddings in the UK in the eyes of our primary school children!
The Best Wedding Ever! Survey results
What would the bride wear?
Surprisingly perhaps, a variety of wedding dress styles came up in the survey results. Seven year olds are torn over the issue of wedding dress colour: fewer than half of our respondents opted for a traditional white wedding dress!
Two of those who thought the bride should wear white were boys; with one boy choosing the favourite alternative colour choice of red (three children chose red for the wedding dress colour – nice one kids!)
Top answers were:
“a nice long trailing dress, high heels and a white headband”
“a long turquoise fin dress”
“a red straight sparkly wedding dress”
What would the groom wear?
A whopping 62% of respondents chose suits for the boys. Black suits were popular, with the trendiest children dressing grooms in t-shirt and jacket (think The Fonz), another choosing black pants, black cardigan and a red tie (a very cool wedding look). One of the girls who’d opted for a green wedding dress chose a black and pink suit for her groom.
Top answers for the groom’s outfits included:
“a nice coat, smart tie, hat, and shiny shoes” (from one of the boys – he’ll make someone a lovely husband – this was a very thoughtful answer!)
“what’s a groom” (from a girl who’d given a very detailed answer about her own outfit)
“Daddy’s black suit”
Where would you get married?
Clearly our nation’s children tuned in to the royal wedding in April. The most popular location by far is Westminster Abbey. Fair enough, it’s not too shabby! 31% of respondents chose Westminster Abbey for their future wedding venue, with one opting to be a little different, leaving her options open with “a massive abbey”.
A third of children asked wanted to get married in church, with one quickly adding “and an aquarium after”. Which shows a nice balance to the wedding day!
Two respondents chose hotels for their weddings, one “posh” and one “in California” – can’t argue with that! A surprise option was boats: two children plan to get married on boats: a cruise boat, and a lovely boat.
Who would you invite?
Children are lovely: all but one of the respondents chose their family and friends, with top answers along these lines:
“everyone I know”
“mummy and all my family and friends”
“Gaby, Holly, Issey, Bethan and my family”
One of the boys was the exception to the rule, his answer to the question being simply, “footballers”.
What would you eat?
This question had some of the most carefully thought-out and detailed responses from our survey panel. Clearly food is important to the younger generation. There was a very strong chocolate theme, and Jenny McAvoy spotted a clear emerging trend for weddings in the 2030s: the return of the chocolate fountain!
Half of the children we surveyed are dead set on a chocolate fountain at their weddings. Dipping materials of choice in the 2030s will be strawberries, bananas and marshmallows – yum! I like their style.
For those of us who aren’t fans of silkily flowing chocolate and oil, our young friends will be providing a great choice of wedding food with other priorities being chocolate cake (38%), and party food including fajitas (from one sophisticated little boy), jam butties, cheese baguettes, pizza, cookies, a barbeque and the old party favourite jelly & ice cream!
Just so you know, only one of our children even mentioned “wedding cake”.
What would the flowers be like?
I was delighted to see the most imaginative answer to this question was from one of the boys surveyed. No messing about, this guy knows what he wants: flowers like “red volcanoes”. Brilliant – I’d go for that!
The girls opted for prettier flowers, with glitter on, bright and colourful, “on the floor and everything“.
Roses will still be a wedding favourite in years to come: 5 of the girls chose them for their wedding flowers. The boys didn’t name particular flowers, other than a preference for beautiful ones and “blue and red flowers”. (and those volcano ones)
Tulips were a surprise choice – equally as popular as roses! I suspect there were some in the classroom – must have been! Interestingly, despite the insistence on Westminster Abbey as a venue, the oak trees don’t seem to have made an impression.
How would you decorate the table?
This question made me chuckle, as our children are nothing if not practical: 7 went for table cloths.
There was a definite sparkly theme for this question, with “sparkly things”, glitter and confetti being top answers from the girls! One of the girls had really thought her theme through: to go with her red dress she’d like “Red cloth on a really long table and lots of red roses” which sounds pretty lovely to me!
My favourite answer to the question of decorating tables was, “Big & sparkly & they should all have a chocolate fountain on all of them”.
And saving the very best for last…
What entertainment would you have? What fun things would you do?
We can learn from our seven-year-olds’ responses to this question. Enthusiasm poured out in the answers to this one: with a variety of activities from sport to magic and some more surreal – so here’s the full list. Which would you choose to keep your wedding guests entertained?
- swimming pool in the day and Strictly Come Dancing (with costumes) in the evening
- a funny show
- singer
- we’d play games all together and have a band (“can I get back on my bike now?”)
- disco and a play area for kids
- disco and a pub
- a disco and a magic show
- we would have a disco (the only child to consider this a joint decision!)
- pantomime
- funny mice
- a strongman that does funny things
- a clown and JLS (together on stage I hope!)
- dancing with disco balls, a magic show, louby loo and a sea lion show
Surveys were completed by 13 children altogether, with 3 boys and 10 girls telling us about the ‘best wedding ever’. Take the percentages with a pinch of salt of course… you need 100 respondents to make that a valid quantity… but hey, I’m taking a leaf out of the seven-year-olds’ books – and not paying too much attention to the maths!
