They got on a plane for you. Now host them.

By Nicole Fauls, Urban Allure Events

Here's the thing we want you to sit with for a second: your people are traveling for you.

They're taking days off. Booking flights and hotel rooms. Finding someone to watch the dog. Your college roommate is flying in from Denver with a toddler. Your aunt hasn't been on a plane in six years and she's getting on one.

You are bringing every person you love into one city, at one time, on purpose. That will probably never happen again in your life. You only get to do this once.

So don't just invite them to a wedding. Host them for a weekend.

Give them somewhere to be on Friday

The welcome party is not a warm-up. It's the first night your two worlds are in the same room, and nobody's nervous yet, nobody's crying yet — it's pure anticipation, and that's the best fuel a party ever runs on.

Plan for the mingling. That's the actual job of the night. Keep everyone standing and moving — passed food, stations, a room people can flow through instead of a table that locks them in place. Make introductions yourself. Point your friend from work at your cousin from Michigan and tell them why they'd like each other.

Do it right and by Saturday your guests already found their people. The floor fills faster. The room feels like a room full of friends, because it is one.

Give them something to do

This is the part couples skip, and it's the part your guests talk about for years.

Get them out into the city. A boat tour. A morning at the market. And nothing — nothing — beats the Cubs bleachers the Sunday after a wedding. Half your guest list, still glowing, sunburned by the third inning, and if the wedding party's lucky enough to get on the big screen, that's the photo that ends up framed.

It doesn't have to be big or expensive. It has to be something. Pick one thing that feels like you and like this city, put it on the schedule, and let people opt in.

Start your wedding day with your partner

This is the one we'll push you on every time.

The day goes fast. Faster than anyone warns you. It is a blur, and you're going to spend most of it being pulled in nine directions by nine different people who all love you.

So do the first look. Start the day together. Take the quiet twenty minutes before the whirlwind takes over, because if you wait until the aisle, you've just spent half of the most important day of your life apart from the person you're marrying — and that's the regret we hear about most.

You're not giving up your aisle moment. You're getting two. Drop the veil for the ceremony. Add the jacket. Change the look. It still lands. It always lands.

Make sure they know where they're going

Nobody should have to text you to find out where to be. Not on your wedding weekend.

Every detail your guest needs, before they need it: the schedule, the addresses, what to wear, how they're getting from the hotel to the venue and back. Put it on the website. Put it in the room. Put transportation on the schedule so nobody's standing on a corner in heels trying to explain a Chicago intersection to a rideshare driver.

Think through their entire experience — arrival to departure — the same way you're thinking through your own. That's what taking care of people actually looks like.

Give them your city, not a Google search

Your guests have hours to fill and no idea where to go. So tell them.

Where you get coffee. The place you go for your anniversary. The bar you ended up at after your engagement party. Where to take the kids on a Saturday morning. Not the tourist list — your list, the one only you could write.

It costs you nothing and it's the most generous thing on this page. It turns a hotel weekend into a real visit, and it lets your people spend a few days inside the version of the city you actually live in.

You get one weekend where everyone you love is in the same place. Every part of it should feel like it was thought through — because they came all this way, and the whole point was being together.

If you're planning a weekend — or you just realized you already are — reach out, we would love to help.

Xo, Nicole

The Weekend Is the Wedding