For the married ladies: what do you wish you had done differently?

Honestly I wish I had had a little more time to just be alone right before I walked out. We had a small wedding (about 19 guests), our wedding party was our kids. When we arrived at the venue it was a rush to get everything I wanted set up. And then I had to help my daughter get dressed and I had to get dressed. It was very stressful and rushed and my mom, sister and aunt were all in there with my daughter and I.
As soon as they got my dress zipped up they had to go take their seats and I had to get ready to walk. I’d have liked just a few extra minutes to breath and take it all in at that moment.
I also wish we had gotten more pictures than we did. We missed a lot of important pictures that I didn’t think of before hand. That was frustrating too though because I asked a couple of times here for people to give me an idea of their shot list so I could make sure I didn’t forget any important ones and all I ever got was “just make a list of everyone you want pictures of”. Yeah that was helpful, thanks.

Overall, the important things went well (great weather, no one got covid, the vision came to life) but I do wish the venue had remembered to light the candles. Of ALL the details I thought of - it never occurred to me this would’ve been forgotten 😂 Again, this is such a first world problem and overall we were blessed it went so well, but gosh paid for extra candles and brought our own as well to not get lit! 😆


It didn’t occur at my wedding because I got a heads up, but two different weddings I know of where the florist arrived and the venue didn’t have the linens on the tables yet. For all brides and grooms out there, confirm the time all the linens are expected to be complete and ensure your florist arrives after that 👍

I'm yet to be married but one of the best pieces of advice I have received (which I am hoping to be able to actually stick to myself!) is to not care about a single thing on the day and just to enjoy it! All the women who have told me this did so because they remembered how much time they lost or how stressed they were over trivial things which in hindsight they realised they should have not let bother them.

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I did this, and I cannot stress how much more enjoyable it made the day.

My BP called me the calmest bride they'd ever seen. The only thing I got antsy about was how SLOW the lead up to the ceremony was going - I just wanted it to be 5pm, so I could marry DH!

Seriously, I didn't even wake up until 1030am or so, meandered over to my parents' hotel at noonish, snacked, got together our last minute things, got into the limo at 1pm, got to the venue at 2pm, and got ready with my BP. We even had a pizza party. (And I forgot my toothbrush. Doesn't matter, I married a man who loves garlic. And he didn't notice. So, uh, don't forget your toothbrush?)

I suppose the ONE thing I would have changed... if I had realized my family was going to decide I didn't exist, we would have invited more friends who didn't make the cut because we were saving space for my cousins. There are some people we wanted to invite, but because we hoped my cousins wouldn't behave like a bunch of middle schoolers... but, they did.

Ah, well, their loss!

My biggest regret is not getting enough photos. Sure, we had tons of my husband and I but missed some with other people and that has bothered me ever since. Also, I agree that you should just invite who you want. A lot of our family ended up not coming, so we could have invited more friends in the long run. Legally married last June (covid minimony) and having our “celebration” wedding of about 30 guests this June. Can’t even wait! Whatever you do, just enjoy the day- it goes by SO fast!

I honestly don't think I would change a thing. Our day turned out exactly like I dreamed it would. So that being said, my biggest piece of advice is to do your research! Interview your vendors and make sure they can give you exactly what you want! Also, plan the wedding YOU (and your fiancé) want, not what someone else wants.

My biggest regret is not getting video.

If I could go back, this is the one thing I would change.

There were other hiccups, but they really didn't matter at the end of the day.

The only thing that still makes me sad fifteen years later is not having a video, to look back on our sweet young faces and remember what it was really like. Not the frozen-in-time photos that don't convey any emotion or meaning, but real, true representation of what the day was like.

It's not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but one thing that comes to mind is that I would not have saved and frozen the top tier of my cake. We took it out and ate it after 3 months because we ran out of freezer space and it was not good! We then had our baker do an anniversary cake when our anniversary came around, but if I could do things over, we wouldn't have saved the top tier to begin with.

Three main things for me:
1. I would not have let my venue talk me out of hiring a DOC.

2. I would have hired a different florist and insisted on samples, regardless of cost.
3. Knowing people would drop out last minute, I would have invited more extended family and friends.
There were a few other things that went “wrong”, and maybe with a longer engagement I would have considered things longer and made different decisions, but our wedding really was just wonderful and all the things that were super important to us were perfect—namely, getting married!!

I agree with others that the greatest gift you can give yourself is making the conscious decision at a certain point to let go and stay in the moment so you can just enjoy yourselves. Daughter did a wonderful job planning their wedding down to the last possible detail. They'd chosen a gorgeous venue with a plan for the ceremony & cocktail hour to be outside. The week of the wedding there were record-setting, flood-causing rains Sunday through Thursday night. Despite really having their hearts set on things being outside, part of the reason she chose the venue was because it had an excellent Plan B option. She easily could have given in to being anxious and worried, but she just didn't let herself go there. The rain finally stopped in the middle of the rehearsal on Thursday night and they had an absolutely gorgeous day for the wedding on Saturday. On Sunday afternoon when the B&G stopped by to pick stuff up before they headed home, the two of them and the FOB and I were all in agreement that it was the most fun and perfect wedding we'd ever seen, and I think that was mostly because the B&G just focused on enjoying every second.

As her mom, watching things unfold that week there are two extremely minor things I noticed. First, they had chosen to do wedding favors that required daughter and I to put together individual packages of bakery cookies on Thursday afternoon so we could leave them with the venue coordinator that night at the rehearsal. Creating 120 packages of cookies took awhile, even though we were well prepared and had all the supplies prepped and ready. It was more stressful than we expected. If we'd known that in advance, I think daughter might have done something else or skipped them entirely. Second, we thought daughter's bustle was pretty straight forward and definitely something her two MOHs could handle easily enough. However, seconds before the bridal party was to be announced, one of the MOHs came and got me because they couldn't figure it out. We were quickly trying to get her bustled as the first couple BM/GM were being announced. I didn't realize until we got the photos back that we didn't do the best job of getting the underlayers all smoothed out, and it's noticeable through the lace & tulle overlayers. We probably should have done a dry run earlier in the day. Not the worst thing, and daughter still looked gorgeous but that could have been better planned.

Good luck!

I’m not married yet but the best advise that I’ve gotten from a married couple that I hope to carry on with my day is this: stick by each other’s side throughout the day. When you’re going around tables and greeting each of your guests, go with your honey. Don’t divide and conquer, get hugs from family and friends with each other. Because the day goes by so fast, it might seem like you barely get it to see each other. I don’t want to regret not spending time with each other while being pulled in different directions, and ONLY having our first dance and dinner together. I want to hold his hand and have small moments with him throughout the night.

The only thing I can think of is that I would've made sure my mom was ready with her hair and makeup and dressed to take photos with me before I went to go do my first look photos. There just wasn't enough time- I hired just one artist to do my hair and makeup, my MOH's hair, and my mom's hair and makeup. I just completely forgot about getting those photos with mom. Had I thought about it sooner, I would've made a plan to have my MOH do my mom's makeup for her. My dad (divorced parents) took photos with me when he came to pick me up to take me to our ceremony venue for first look photos, and I later found out my mom was crushed that she didn't get them. All ended well though, because I got her to join me for a bridal shoot later after the wedding.


I would've remembered to eat a snack/lunch at mid-day, because even though I had a decent breakfast, I was starving by the time our reception began. On the plus side, I didn't have a food baby in our first look photos 😂

That's honestly the only things I can think of, and to me they're pretty minor. I planned the crap out of our wedding down to the last detail and everything ran perfectly. For the minor details that weren't smoothed out, I had adopted a "zero fs given" attitude a few days prior to the wedding.

1. i wish i gave more time for photography session - i thought 1.5-2 hours would be decent enough but things happened where we had less time than that but still adequate enough for photos. but also just the idea that the time goes by so fast!!!! i totally forgot to do some poses that i wanted.

2. keep things simpler. i had all of these little things included that in the end a lot of people didn't really use or do anyway! like i had a table just for games e.g. board games, cards, etc people could take to their table and play with. i mean i know people used it but i don't think that many people used it. so in the end i could have just scrapped it.

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Good to know. Because quite a few posts say ‘have games, etc or your guests will be bored’.

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Hmm that is frustrating that you’re expected to come up with your own advice. At least the shots you got were great right?

Good idea to take it all in

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Yes that does seem random.

Great advice re: vendors. Hopefully the day of coordinator can keep track of that.

I genuinely wouldn't change anything. But I very deliberately planned a small, simple wedding, so there wasn't really much that could go wrong. I worked for years with a wedding caterer and worked hundreds of weddings before I started planning mine. For me, this was key in knowing everything I didn't want and what to include. I also (again, deliberately) made sure that only my future spouse and myself were involved in planning, so we didn't get stuck with pressure to include/not include things that didn't suit us.

I've been thinking a LOT about this lately as we are a couple weeks out from the wedding and I'm kinda ruminating on stuff I could have done differently.

I think the biggest thing was that we started to get behind schedule around 12pm, and by 1 I was a mess. I might have tried to have more things set up and ready to go ahead of time, knowing where certain shots would be, etc. I think I would have picked a more hands-on photog, that might have helped too.

Other stuff...

We had almost 50% of people not come (no one from my family was there, and I had invited a bunch of former coworkers who I guess I thought I was closer with than I was), so I would have invited more people. We had about 90, and it felt small.

I was planning to make all the bouquets, but chickened out on mine a couple months before the wedding and ordered one from a local farm. It was nice, but I actually liked the BM bouquets more - and they were so much cheaper. I'd have trusted myself that this was something I could do.

I mentioned this in another thread, but I don't feel like my hair and makeup came out the way I wanted. My SIL is very into makeup and we were talking about me having her do it, but again, I chickened out. In hindsight I'd have gotten hair done, but had her do the makeup. EDIT: this might have been fixed by a makeup trial, but it was a long distance wedding for us, and with covid, I just couldn't get down there despite as hard as I tried. I hired a well rated team for this reason, but they assigned me a stylist whose work had never been featured on their social media so I had no idea how it would turn out.

I also felt like I was so worried about whether people were having fun, it was hard to lay back and just enjoy things. I was soooo anxious people were having a terrible time, I think because we did so much ourselves and I didn't want people to think poorly of me/us.

My piece of advice for all the ladies out there is to make sure you and your fiancé are the ones making the decisions, not other people. We let my mother-in-law help us out with our wedding and it was a disaster. She would say things like “Why did you choose this venue and not that?” or “You should be choosing this song for your first dance and not this other one.” She even tried to pick my dress for me! Like, I invited her to help me pick my dress so she would feel included. Even though I loved my wedding and thought it went great, that caused a lot of unnecessary stress.

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I'm debating the day of coordinator now. My venue is pretty turnkey. I mean it's a hotel so they're doing the setup, teardown, catering, accommodations, pretty much all of it. Do you really think I need one? Can't I just ask a friend? Would love your insight based on your experience.