Chuck and Dan gave their guests the dress code “Out Dress the Grooms.” Around 160 friends and family were invited to Caveau in Boston for five hours of cocktails, food and dancing. The grooms wore burgundy velvet tuxedo jackets from Hive and Colony and everyone else had permission to go all out. “We told everyone to try and out dress us and people absolutely understood the assignment,” Chuck and Dan explained. “Seeing 150-plus people walk into the venue really dressed for a night out immediately created the atmosphere we wanted.”

The couple were already a year into married life. They had tied the knot at Boston City Hall exactly a year earlier, with an intimate ceremony and personal vows. “The bigger inspiration was really the kind of night we would actually want to attend ourselves: a beautiful, atmospheric space, great food constantly circulating, live music, a DJ and enough freedom for everyone to move around, mingle and dance,” they explained. “We wanted the room to feel alive.”

Caveau’s nightclub setting provided the perfect vibe they wanted, without any need for extra décor. They kept this part of the planning simple, so they could focus on the things that really mattered to them – fantastic good and great entertainment,

They dropped the seated dinner and assigned seating in favour of substantial appetisers, food stations and an open bar. Guests could eat throughout the evening, catch up with different people and head to the dance floor whenever they wanted. “We made a real effort to explaining the non-traditional format clearly enough that guests understand what they could expect without making it sound like we were apologising for it,” they said,

Chuck and Dan made their entrance to Sam Smith’s cover of I Feel Love, then toasted each other with a first-anniversary vow. They shared the first dance of the night, both danced with their mums and handed over to a friend for a toast. The whole thing took around 15 minutes.

A DJ soundtracked the first part of the evening before Kristin and the Noise took over live. The band became one of the couple’s favourite parts of the party. Given an unlimited budget, they would have booked even more live music and pushed the whole thing towards a private festival.

Outside, Boston supplied the weekend’s less convenient detail: the first major blizzard of the winter. Everyone still turned up ready to celebrate, and a sizeable group followed the grooms to another bar for an afterparty.

For Chuck and Dan, the best planning decisions came from thinking about what they would enjoy as guests. “Figure out how you want the wedding to feel before you start deciding what it needs to have”, they advise. “Pick the three or four things you care about most and spend your time, energy and money there. You are allowed to be completely indifferent to traditions that other people consider essential. Also, choose a venue that already feels like the party you want to have. It will save you an enormous amount of work. For two people whose goal was essentially, ‘Let’s throw a great party and actually get to enjoy it’, it was pretty perfect.”