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No one else has any "wish i had" that they want to share? make me feel better about my mistakes! 
What an awesome thread! Your lists are great. Can't wait to see more lessons from the Hive!
I love your advice - especially the part about not leaving so much until the end. Sometimes I feel silly because I'm starting on planning and projects so early, but you reminded me that once I get closer I will be so glad for all of the stuff I already have done!
thanks for being so honest. it sounds like it was a wonderful day and a lovely wedding. could you tell us more about the details you mentioned that your guests appreciated that made the wedding different and special?
i'd love to hear from other newlyweds!
Glad I:
Stayed with my parents and brother the night before the wedding. After the rehearsal dinner, my parents had some friends back at the house they were renting, and my brother & I went out to the local bar with the "young crowd." My brother & I arrived home about midnight, and my parents were up. The four of us sat around the kitchen and dunked oreos in milk and JUST TALKED. It was so wonderful & one of my favorite memories of the weekend.
Glad I:
Listened to my mom when she told me before my big day that I probably wouldn't love my hair. I'm picky with my hair, and although I had a trial run, my mom knows me best. The day of the wedding, I DIDN'T love my hair. I took one look in the mirror, and instead of freaking out about it, I actually laughed and said "Wow, my mom was right!" Other people loved my hair, I didn't, but it was ok.
Wish I:
Had gotten ready earlier. My hair stylist was super slow (seriously 1 hr + for my bridesmaids, over an hour and a half for me) and my make up artist was very fast. So I tried to balance them out, and ended up delaying my process a bit. I wish I had gotten ready earlier- my hair would have withstood the style for another hour or so & I would have had more time for pictures with my bridesmaids.
Wish I:
Had realized that my vendors' personalities were just as important as their talent. My two favorite vendors were my videographer & my makeup artist. My videographer just had this happy, relaxed feeling about him. He recorded everything, but was never interfering. It's like he was on the sidelines, but managed to capture all of the inside details. And my makeup artist was as sweet as could be. I had confirmed everything the week before, but was supposed to touch base with her the day before the wedding. I got busy and forgot. Instead of leaving me a feisty or awkward message, she called and just said "Hi, I just wanted to give you the peace of mind that I will be there first thing tomorrow morning! Can't wait!" It was sweet.
My hairstylist, on the other hand, was so jumpy and nervous. She was sort of like a lose cannon. I noticed it a bit during my trial, but i just thought she would calm down. Instead, she showed up late on my wedding day, making excuses as to how she got lost (saying she didn't believe the sign when it said to veer left... ummmm...), and just being very nervous and uptight. I was extremely calm on my wedding day, but I didn't like her nervous energy.
And my DJ came across a little pompous/cheesy during our meetings, and I didn't trust my gut. Instead, I hired him, and that cheesiness and pompousness came out during my wedding!
This is a geat post, but I'm not married for 2 months.
As an almost married bride-to-be ... I wish I would have:
Had the R.S.V.P. cards sent to mine and fiances place instead of being talked into doing it the proper way ... send to parents house, I have no control over it. It's driving me crazy.
Wow our lists are almost identical... seriously- minus a few things that we did differently- all of your glad I did's are identical to mine... interesting :)
Thanks for your insight! It's great to get this sort of feedback. I'm 2 months away so some decisions can't be changed but I can certainly heed some of your good advice -- especially spending lots of time with the playlist and creating as many socializing opportunities as we can.
Glad some of it can help! I read so many of these kind of things before the wedding, and I tried to heed the advice, but...it is so hard to do sometimes. I kept saying things like, "it'll be fine! of course I can make all the flowers, set up the tables and chairs and seating chart etc the day before" or "what do you mean don't stress? this is important!"
BUT, I hope I can help other girls see the light :) in terms of some things, and that it might help make someone else's wedding day better!
@beachbride - I can definitely see all your things!
My wedding is still two months out, but I am definitely bookmarking your list. Thanks for the tips!
Thought of another:
Glad I did spend kind of a lot of time on our STDs and invites--I kind of thought they didn't matter at the time, but some of the details on the wedding day kind of seemed to get lost in the big picture and in the TONS of other things going on that day, and these (invites, STDs) were things that stuck in people's minds because they were solo.
@amanda.lynn - DO IT EARLY! I didn't want to on some things because I'm indecisive and thought I'd change my mind, or want to do it differently later...but serisouly, just do it. You'll be so much happier.
@lavenderpug - Things the guests appreciated a lot: 1. Ceremony in the round. No one had ever seen it, and they thought it was super cool. 2. Square reception dinner tables around the dance floor in the middle. Kind of the same thing--everyone seemed to feel really included instead of being like, the naughty table in the back. :) 3. You know how some people do like baby pics of themselves? We did those, but also tried to get pictures of every one of our guests to hang up as well. Lots of them were really funny, and they were a hit--everyone wanted to see them! 4. It's not that original if you look at online blogs, but chandeliers in the trees. It was original for people we know! They thought it was really cool and different. 5. Our venue--this was maybe the biggest. We picked a vacation rental home along a river and brought in everything--a pain, but also really cool because we got to decide all of what we wanted, and the place itself was really awesome. Everyone liked this a lot!
Things that people seemed not to notice, or at least didn't comment on - Cute seating cards, cute menus, table runners we spent lots of time on (maybe people liked them, but probably not enough for the amt of time we spent!), cute looking gift table and bar... again, maybe people liked these things, but it was not what people really noticed!
Glad I:
Said traditional vows. I am quite creative and into writing, and part of me wanted the personalization of writing my own vows. But once I identified with the rich history of the traditional vows....it was so right. I will have them memorized forever, and will be seeing them in movies, TV, other weddings. I love being connected to history in that way.
Trusted my vendors. I hired vendors with great reputations, portfolios, and personalities. I told them a bit of what I wanted and then trusted them to make it look good. My advice is to expect that whatever you see in the vendor's portfolio and whatever you have heard about them is just the experience you will get. Don't expect them to change (or change well) for you. So if a photographer doesn't have the kind shots you want, don't hire them (versus asking them to do something that's out of their repertoire---you will only be disappointed).
Delegated like whoa. I did not micromanage my vendors. My florists created the flower arrangements on their own (I suggested a color scheme and some general flower types, they took it from there). Also, whenever anyone volunteered to help out with a project, I said yes. Do not fall prey to the "I must do it myself" mentality! You will go crazy!
Wish I had:
Tried on more dresses. I bought my dress quite early on from a salon thats came recommended to me. On the plus side, I had a good experience with the salon, but I should have tried on more dresses. I wish I had had something funkier.
Mingled more with my guests at the reception. I barely saw my friends at my reception because I was so entranced by my wonderful groom. Don't neglect the guests!
Left for the honeymoon a day later instead of immediately. We took a cruise for our honeymoon so there was little we could do (cruises depart on Sundays), but ideally I wish I had been able to stay in town one more day and see more of my guests before they departed. It also would have been nice to sleep in the day after the wedding!
I thought of another one:
I WISH I HAD:
Known that I might not feel that my wedding was perfect right afterwards. We had a few things go wrong-- some of our flowers ended up different than what the florist promised, and we sort of disliked our DJ as he was too talkative. We felt like a lot of people weren't dancing...
I wish I had known that it was OK to feel that way. I kept it all inside and didn't even tell my husband about my disappointment. I had spent so much time planning, and all of that work didn't really pay off because it didn't go the way I had planned. I kept it inside for about 3 weeks, and then I just broke down to my husband. I told him that I had put so much work into our wedding, and it didn't go as expected, and I felt like a lot of those hours that I spent planning weren't worth it, etc etc etc. I was just so sad and disappointed. Once I got it all off my chest, I felt soooooooo much better. And then I started to look back on the positive things. And I mentioned to my mom that we didn't love our DJ, and she replied by telling me that three or four of our family friends had already commented on how good he was and how much fun they had. Then I looked at our pro pics, and realized how many people packed the dance floor. And I began to feel better about things.
Things WILL go wrong on your day. And they might be big things. And you can't help but feel disappointed. I just wish I had known that that "disappointed" feeling would eventually go away, and be replaced by happy, awesome memories!!!
Two things I am sooo glad I did:
1) left for our honeymoon on tuesday (wedding on saturday)....it gave us a few days to unwind and get our house in some sort of order. Plus, we had all day monday to get ready for the honeymoon, one less thing to stress about before the wedding
2) instead of a guest book, we did advice cards. My whole wedding had a vintage theme so we made some vintage-y postcards up on linen paper and had "my advice for the couple is..." with some blank lines. I LOVED reading what people wrote. Some were serious, some funny and EVERY SINGLE ONE made me feel super loved. Highly recommend!
I didn't really like my bouquet. I opened it up when it arrived and I couldn't decide if I liked it or not, and I figured that in my emotional state I was probably just over-analyzing it. I figured it was probably very pretty and I was being crazy. But in retrospect that bouquet was kind of hideous. It had pink feathers sticking out and they got rained on and then they just kind of got sad and deflated. I should have switched and used one of my bridesmaid's (MUCH prettier) bouquets for formal photos. Oh well! It's not the end of the world. The day was still awesome.
Almost 3 months later (guess I am a weddingbee addict!) here are a few of mine:
Glad I:
Wish I:
Best of luck, brides to be!
@GretaB, I am going to order flowers online for my wedding too, how far in advance did you place your order, and did they arrive in good condition? Any other tips or details would be helpful to me.
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I always enjoyed reading the posts about what newlyweds wished they had done differently while I was still planning (which was until, eh hem, 2 days ago!) so I wanted to write up a list while it's still fresh, just in case it will help others!
Glad I Did: (Big things, then smaller things)
-Have a semi-destination wedding. I think it actually made it slightly LESS stressful the days leading up to it, because I just had to let some things go while we were actually up there. (Our wedding was about 3 hours from our hometown).
-Have a whole weekend of events rather than just one afternoon. More planning, but wayyy more time to see everyone when we had a BBQ, wedding, and day-after breakfast. It all went by so fast--I can't imagine if the whole thing had been over in a few hours!
-Have a rehearsal BBQ that everyone was invited to--it was really casual and un-stressful, and I got to have long convos with so many more people than I would have just at the wedding.
-Make things "unique." I had so many comments on how ours was the most fun and different wedding they'd ever been to--though I've been to tons of weddings that are very traditional and also very beautiful, I'm glad I followed my heart and did things differently.
-Order flowers online. My friends and fam were freaked out about this because they thought the flowers would suck, or not show up, or whatever. I ordered from fiftyflowers.com, though, and it was great! Though they are beautiful, fancy arrangements were not something that I cared enough about to spend lots of our meager budget on, so I just got bulk flowers and we tossed them in vases. It was literally one fifth of the price quoted by a florist! And not too hard.
-Let the bridesmaids pick their dresses. You could still definitely tell they were a group, and now everyone has something they love.
-Go with cupcakes instead of cake--it did mean that people grabbed them before we got to do any formal cutting, but people loved them and they were so easy!
-Have a ceremony in the round. I was worried it might turn out badly, but I loved the feeling of being literally surrounded by friends and fam during the ceremony, and the guests really loved it a lot.
-Had an iPod wedding. I know it doesn't work out for some people, but it was great for us! And saved us tons of money.
-Spent a lot of time on our playlists--especially for the reception. Our dance floor was packed all night, and a couple friends who are getting married soon were so impressed that they asked for our whole list! Our secret was making sure to not have any "mid-tempo" songs during the dancing portion of the night--only fast dance or slow dance songs, with a mix of current and older music, plus songs we knew meant a lot to our fam and friends.
Wish I Had:
-NOT STRESSED OUT SO MUCH. This is my biggest regret--mostly that I really let myself be stressed the day of the wedding when a few things didn't go right. I relaxed when it started, but I really wish that the few hours before were spent having fun with my girlfriends sipping champagne rather than freaking out about the seating chart being messed up and this and that and having girlfriends pour champagne down my throat to calm me down!
-Not left so much for the end. (See above about stressed out). This came somewhat from having a destination wedding--I had to do a ton of stuff in the last couple days. I wish I had been better prepped for it.
-Taken more into account the emotional roller coaster I'd be on. I am usually pretty go-with-the-flow, and I thought that I'd be able to take in stride anything that went wrong day-of, no problem. What I didn't take into account was the super-emotional-ness of almost being married, of seeing people I hadn't seen in years, of not sleeping well for days, of arguing with my parents over stupid wedding decisions, over being SO happy and SO stressed out all at once...and it all led to me crying practically all wedding day, of (in the morning) frustration, and (at the wedding) super happiness! I wish I'd prepared better for the onslaught of emotions I'd feel and done all I could to not sweat the bad stuff.
-Left WAY more time day-of. The hair appts ran behind, then things happened at the venue, then the photog was early and I wasn't ready...whatever time you think you need to start getting ready, add an hour. Or two, or three!
-Not stressed so much during planning. The whole weekend was super fun, but even just 2 days after, I realize that it was just one freakin day, and I spent 10 months stressing out about tons of details that either 1. We forgot to execute the day of 2. No one noticed or 3. Didn't matter. Of course, some of the details worked out really well, but there was seriously no need for as much stress as I gave myself. (easier said than done, I know!!)
-Left more time for photos. Our photog was awesome and got in as much as he could of our shot list, but we were running late before the ceremony, and after were anxious to get to the cocktail hour, so we maybe didn't get as many as we could have.
-Touched up my makeup throughout the night!! I was having so much fun that I completely forgot about how I looked, and with all the dancing, and the crying, and the wind blowing and a little rain...well, let's say that the second half of the night pics could have been better. :) Make a bridesmaid be in charge of making you stop and touch up a few times so you'll look good in pics!
-On the same note, could have done more makeup trials. I didn't love my makeup, but it was because, since it was a destination wedding, I only had time to meet with my makeup lady the day before the wedding for a few minutes. Wish I'd gotten down better with her how I wanted to look! (Or even done makeup myself).
That's probably enough for now, haha. Anyone else? Not that I can do anything about any of this now, but I hope that my and other past brides' lists wil help future brides!