The good and the bad about wedding planning

We had little to no drama surrounding our wedding. I am confident that is because I did 99% of the planning (including rehearsal dinner & entire wedding). I didn't involve other people, besides my husband & mom, in planning because it really isn't their wedding to plan so I didn't want to deal with different opinions or any of that. Plus, if we ever got snide or weird comments, we shut it down immediately and told those friends/family to either knock it off or they wouldn't be included in the wedding. We didn't mess around with that.

I was also super organized & planned in advance, it made everything way less stressful.

View Quoted Comment Literally this! Same exact boat I don’t involve anyone else besides my mom and fiancé and peoples suggestions go in one ear and out the other.

I planned my entire wedding in 10 weeks by myself and wouldn’t change that at all. Not involving lots of other people was great. I would have done more homework on my photographer because I wasn’t happy with him. I would also not stress so much about centerpieces, signs, etc because nobody really cares about those things. And I would try to relax and enjoy the day of the wedding more. Good luck!

I would have kept it really simple. I feel like I already did keep it simple, but even MORESO. For instance I had a game table... It was a table with various games on it. I know the kids 100% used it but it still went largely unused. I had a whole candy buffet table and honestly we still had a ton of the candy left over. So I would have bought less or scrapped it overall. Another thing is I didn't have a clean up crew. I was so tired by end of the night I left a lot of things. Didn't really matter though since it was all inexpensive aha but still. Could have grabbed some things.

I had no clue how much stuff actually cost, my fiancé has been zero help even though this wedding is for him, and I’ve had a little drama that I could never have predicted. I don’t really think I would have done anything differently, I’m just sad that some things went the way they did.

We had a host of problems that made me want to elope, but I am so glad I didn't because it turned out amazing. We were even told by several guests that our wedding was the best one they had ever been to.

Problem 1. Bridesmaids - I had two drop out and one I kicked out. One bridesmaid dropped out because she was my supervisor at my previous job and I was fired by the owner of the company and she didn't feel comfortable being in my wedding after I lost my job. My original maid of honor was my best friend growing up, but we are no longer friends. She dropped out because she thought I wanted her to plan and pay for my entire bridal shower and bachelorette party even though the other bridesmaids, my mom and my mother-in-law offered to help plan and pay for them. She was terrible at communicating, but so they could never talk to her about it. My mom, sister-in-law (bridesmaid), and husband all tried reaching out to her for months without any kind of respond so they started planning stuff without her. She finally called me one day telling me she was overwhelmed and couldn't be in the wedding. She was also supposed to be a maid of honor in her other friend's wedding the week after mine. We aren't friends anymore because she was making up horrific lies about my husband. The third bridesmaid I kicked out because she wasn't reliable. I had been concerned about having her as a bridesmaid, but my other friends assured me she would be. She ended up forgetting about dress shopping and having to work even though I planned the entire shopping trip about two months in advance and around her schedule because she was the only one that works every weekend. I messaged her the week we were supposed to go shopping and she asked me what I was talking about. I was dumbfounded. She apologized and said she forgot and had to work. On top of that, she also didn't know if she would have money for a dress. Prior to planning the shopping trip, I asked each girl for their budget. The final straw was that she refused to provide me her address. She had moved so I didn't have her new address to send her a save the date or invitation so I was fed up and asked her not to be in the wedding anymore.

Problem 2. My sister - My sister ended up being the maid of honor in the wedding. She barely did anything to help. She actually caused more problems than anything. A week prior to the wedding, her alternations were finally done and she hated her dress. To be honest, it looked terrible. David's Bridal had her order two sizes larger because of the way she is built so the dress was way too tight in the hip, legs, butt, and thighs and nearly falling down in the top. It was strapless so there wasn't really much to keep it up. The seamstress tried to fix it, but couldn't. She recommended adding a modesty pannel, but my sister wanted a completely different dress. She lives in PA and the closest David's Bridal to her is 1.5 hours one way and I live in MD and there is a David's Bridal twenty minutes from my house so I went there and found a dress in her size by the same designer and in the same color as my other bridesmaids/groomswoman and I shipped it overnight to her house. She took it and the same seamstress had it altered within a day. The night of rehearsal my sister went to throw a cigarette out the car window and it threw into the back seat and burnt the bought of the new dress I had bought her. She didn't tell me so my sister-in-law used pins the morning of the wedding to pin the bottom of the dress up so that I wouldn't see the burn mark she put in the dress. My sister also couldn't afford to pay for hair and makeup to be professionally done so she sat there and complained to my mom to try to get my mom to pay for her hair and makeup. My mom had paid for the alternations to both the old bridesmaid dress and the new one so she told my sister no. I was going to surprise my sister and pay for her to have her hair and makeup professionally done until she insisted on having a different bridesmaids dress.

Problem 3. The groomswoman - She is one of my husband's best friends and I just don't like her. She is extremely difficult to get along with. She went dress shopping with my bridesmaids, mom and I and she was rude to most of us. She talked down to my sister and other bridesmaid because my sister is an LPN and my other friend works in the psychward whereas the groomwoman is an RN in the emergency room and she feels my sister and the other bridesmaid aren't real nurses and she kept saying stuff about them not being real nurses. She also complained because we ended up going to four different bridal boutiques. The first three were small salons that didn't really have anything and the last one was David's Bridal. I had been against going to David's Bridal, but when I didn't have any luck at the first three places I didn't have much choice. The first three places didn't have a lot of dresses for the girls to try on and I wanted to see them in the dress to make sure they looked good before we went with it. They also didn't really have anything in the length, color or price range I wanted despite having called ahead of time to each place to check with them if they had long fire engine red dresses under $200.00 in store for the girls to try on. The groomswoman told two of my bridesmaids I was being too picky and she complained to my husband.

Problem 4. Our florist/decorator - I loved her in the beginning until after my brother's wedding which was 3 months before ours. After his wedding, she acted like she wanted nothing to do with us. She wasn't returning calls or answering messages. My mother-in-law confronted her at my brother's wedding which was very wrong of my mother-in-law to do at my brother's wedding, but our florist was not responding to my sister-in-law about helping decorator for my bridal shower and my mother-in-law asked her about it and she said my sister-in-law never called her. Needless to say, the florist finally got back in touch with us and we asked her if she still wanted to even work fr us anymore after what my mother-in-law did and she said yes. She then proceeded not to show up for a meeting I scheduled with her. When I called her she was three plus hours away setting up for another wedding despite confirming with me that she would be at the meeting I scheduled with her earlier in the week. My husband told me I couldn't fire her because he felt it was too close to our wedding since it was Memorial Day weekend and our wedding was the end of July. I wish I would have because she didn't listen to half the things I wanted for our wedding and my flowers were falling apart. She also charged us more than what we told her our budget was. She also was supposed to put an old pin on my bouquet as my something old, but she forgot it the morning of the wedding. Luckily, my sister-in-law had a pair of years from my husband's grandmother so we attached them to my bouquet instead. She didn't have earrings to wear because of it, but I didn't even realize those were the earrings she planned on wearing until after the fact.

Problem 5. My mom - My mom couldn't decide on a dress. She wanted to wear a purple dress she loved, but my mother-in-law worn purple so she didn't want to wear the same color as my mother-in-law. The week of our wedding she finally decided on a dress.

Problem 6. My mother-in-law. She offered to make our flower girls dresses (we had my husbands two nieces who are sisters as flower girls) since they are her step-grandchildren. She kept delaying making them and they weren't done until about a month before the wedding. She ended up mailing them to the flower girls' parents and the dresses were way too big on the girls. Their mom took them to her friend to be altered, but a week before the wedding we found out she couldn't alter them so after rehearsal which was the night before the wedding my mother-in-law altered the dresses. It was very stressful and my mom ordered back up dresses in case the dresses didn't get done.

Problem 7. Alcohol - My dad is a recovering alcoholic and since he has found religion is very against alcohol. My brother, his wife, and my mom are also very against alcohol. I don't drink, but my husband insisted on having alcohol at the wedding. My dad chose to leave early with my brother which was fine, but the problem was that my venue forgot to make note that we didn't want to have a champagne toast and my dad accidentally drank it thinking it was just a sparkling drink because we told everyone in my family we weren't having a champagne toast. We were all very upset especially my dad because he felt he ruined his sobriety. The bar was closed for an hour during dinner so we extended it being closed until after my dad and brother left just so my dad wouldn't be tempted after accidentally drinking the champagne. It wasn't a big deal because it was only closed for an extra 30-45 minutes.

Problem 8. The morning of the wedding I lost my earrings and necklace that I wanted to wear so my bridesmaids and mother spent like 30-45 minutes looking for them so we didn't get as many getting ready photos as I would've liked, but the photos we did get are amazing.

Problem 9. The dress - My mom ended up buying me three different wedding dresses. The first one I settled on because I was tried of shopping. Within hours I realized it and the bridal boutique insisted on ordering it even though we called and tried to tell them not to. We were planning on suing them because we went to pick up the dress and it wasn't the right dress, but they went out of business. They gave us the dress and we are going to try to sell it. The second dress I liked, but didn't love. A month before the wedding, I went to a bridal boutique looking for a short after party dress and found a dress I feel in love with. My mom bought that dress and a layer was sparkle was added and it turned out perfect. The seamstress cut the second dress and made it the perfect after party dress.

My mom has always said a true test of marriage is wedding planning. How do you discuss budgets? Manage families? Prioritize your goals? What are your expectations? My parents have been married over 30 years, and been together 35, so they must have figured something out.

So far we've been okay- some dumb people here and there throwing hissy fits- but nothing that has affected us as a couple.

Mostly no regrets! We had a tiny DW in our same state (15 guests), local reception a few months later (50 guests). We planned both ourselves, no wedding party, no drama or stress for anyone but us. Lol. Two photographers are well worth it.

Wish we... 1) kept track of DIY costs (spent a few THOUSAND more than originally budgeted), 2) wish I got a massage the week of because I was so tense & stressed, 3) wish we had the reception 4-6 months later because we were both very sick for a month after our wedding, 4) wish we toned down the DIY—way too much work (and money).

No matter what you do, it's stressful. You're planning a large party with legal requirements and moving parts and competing ideas.
Focus on what you and FS want to help manage the stress.

Think about what other weddings you've been to - the things you remember are the things that are important to you, the things you don't are not. (I.E. I completely fail to understand why people get so worked up about linens. IF I remember linens, at all, it might be from one couple's space-themed wedding, and so the linens were dark. I think. I dunno. I told our coordinator that I really could not care less. She sent the link to the options, as well as a suggestion, we approved her suggestion, and it was fine.)

We DID care about the DJ. So we remembered which wedding we loved the DJ at, asked our friends for her contact info, and hired her. She rocked. We also cared about the venue and the food. We researched extensively, visited our top 3 (ILs insisted on a fourth, it was a disaster), and picked from there. The reviews on the one we picked had gone from decent to excellent when the coordinator we worked with took over, and there's a reason why. Between the view and the food they catered, the venue was perfect.

My family had drama. Saw it coming, did try to stave it off a little. Probably could have done more, but also had to weigh my own mental health vs. trying to fight family patterns and dysfunction. I chose my own mental health, DH supported me, and we made it clear to my family that they were welcome to come, but we understood if their petty nonsense meant they couldn't. Ended up cutting off my mother.

There was some BP drama - even though everyone was grown and most knew each other - but my BP mostly handled it amongst themselves. There's a little bit of fallout, but we are dealing with it. DH and I honestly told everyone to sort it out, because it wasn't our job and we didn't have time or energy for it.

In other words: BOUNDARIES. Set them. Enforce them. Defend them.

The best part for us was figuring out how to make the wedding day uniquely ours. From the theme of the wedding, to our swordfight skit, to our ceremony, we spent a lot of time on centering our relationship and the things we love. (Vow writing is HARD, though.) By focusing on these things, we found the joy in the wedding, strengthened our relationship, and made the day a lot of fun.