Summary of our small wedding - tips and lessons learned

So hubby and I were supposed to get married in October 10, 2020, but as fate or dumb luck would have it, we bumped up the wedding to 2/2/20, which means we avoided all the COVID drama.


Here’s some things that went well and that I wish would have gone differently. (Background: we ended up with immediate family only, and got married in a state park in Florida, with pictures at the park and on the beach).
The good:-Since our wedding was so small, we didn’t do a rehearsal/rehearsal dinner. Instead, we did a private cruise with dinner at a restaurant at the beach. This was a great decision, and the cruise was on of the highlights of the weekend for everyone.
-going through the wedding service meant we did not have to do decorating, etc. Our beach house was perfect for everyone to get together (we had guests staying between 2 houses and a hotel room, but had the “main” beach house for getting everyone together).
-I bought $20 amazon sandals to wear and they were perfect! Part of our pictures involves climbing up rocks in the beach, and that was really easy, thanks to the right shoes!
Lessons learned: -my made of honor got drunk at our dinner the night before the wedding and then was too hungover the next morning to be any help before the wedding. The best man was AMAZING and ended up playing double duty, helping both the bride and groom the morning of the wedding. In retrospect, I should have made a hard cutoff time for the group to quit drinking, whether they wanted to or not. -my hubby and I had packed a little “emergency kit” for each of us with those small items like a tide pen, toiletries, etc. However, they ended up in a vehicle and we didn’t have access to them. We should have had someone make sure to bring them to the wedding site instead of just the vehicle (if we had assigned someone as a “personal attendant,” this would have worked.-we spent the entire day after the wedding cleaning up the beach house and quickly learned why people go to resorts for destination weddings! This cut into our “honeymoon” portion of the trip, which was short. We both decided we should have either done a separate honeymoon, taken more time off, or down a resort so we wouldn’t have have to clean so much.-Traveling: during our ceremony, we did a sand ceremony, where we poured two colors of sand into a jar. It was gorgeous, but when we flew back, TSA shook the crap out of it and drug tested it. Not sure of a fix for that. Likewise, flying with my dress was a pain in the butt. I had read many airlines let you place it in the same area that they can put suits, etc. We were only able to get first class for one of the legs of our trip, and I got a lot of grumbling on the remaining legs, although they did begrudgingly do it for me. We would have been better off taking more time off and driving instead of flying. -Part of me regrets not having a larger wedding. I missed out on things like the bridal shower, first dance, etc, that part of me regrets. We planned to have a larger reception back home, but cancelled due to COVID, so maybe at some point we’d have one. On the positive note, we took the money allotted for the reception and put a down payment on a truck instead, so that was probably more helpful!
Hope this helps someone else!