Weddingbee boards

Ahhh, I'm married! It feels oddly no different from our life together before, but there's a small part of me that's still giddy that my HUSBAND is now my husband, and I can call him as such. Yay!

I always found "what I would have done differently" posts really helpful during our planning, so I thought I would do one as well for all your future brides out there!

First up, what we're happy with did:

1. MacBook wedding music. We were advocates of this from the beginning and never had any desire to hire a DJ. Of course, I always had small doubts about it here and there, but everything went perfectly and smoothly, and we saved upwards of $500.

2. Hiring a DOC. I cannot stress how important this is, brides! Our DOC did so many things for us the day of the wedding and what we paid her simply was not enough. She also acted as our DJ and coordinated the two music cues we had.

3. Renting chivari chairs. I wasn't too big on spending a ton of money for decor. We did DIY centerpieces and barely had any flowers. However, our venue chairs were UGLY and did not fit our style whatsoever. We rented fruitwood chivari chairs, and even my fiance, who fought me on this purchase tooth and nail, said it was more than worth it. They truly transformed the room and made it elegant and amazing.

4. Flowers. We spent $300 total on bouquets and bouts for everything. They were small and simple, but we got a million compliments on them. Less was more with our flowers, and they made a huge statement.

5. Our candy bar. There were times were I, as well as certain family members, didn't think the candy bar was worth it. I wanted it to be big and spectacular, but it was frustrating because we also wanted to keep it to our wedding colors only (purple and orange), and we were finding we were spending more on it than we planned. I almost threw in the towel on the project, but I'm glad I didn't. People LOVED it and it was completely gone by the end of the night. We almost didn't get any candy ourselves. ALMOST :)

6. Keeping it small. We had a total guest count of 73 people, and we invited 100. It was the perfect size. People even told us that it was the best wedding they've ever been to because they didn't feel like just another guest. We were able to do a lot of personal touches because of the small guest list, and people said they truly felt welcomed and appreciated because of it. Had we had more than 100 people, I'm not sure we could have done all the little things we did.

7. Photography. We spent $5K on our dream photographer and have never looked back.

Now, onto the things we wish we had done differently:

1. I wish I had gotten my nerves under control. I was MORE than prepared organizationally, and had the mind-set, "if something goes wrong, oh well!" the whole weekend. But something kicked in during our rehearsal, and I just couldn't stop being jittery/nervous/anxious/emotional. I felt sick to my stomach the entire day before, and the morning of, while much better after a good night's sleep, I couldn't eat, and felt funny because of it until the ceremony was over. I knew it was because of all the attention (I hate attention), combined with the fact that I was over-whelmed by all the love surrounding me (I've always been emotional about family gatherings), but I couldn't get it under control, and I think it prevented me from fully enjoying the "leading up to" parts.

2. I wish we had someone video tape the wedding. We didn't hire a videographer, and I'm still glad we didn't. But we own a small digital hand-held recorder, and had every intention of passing it on to someone to catch the big moments, and we completely forgot!

3. I wish I forced myself to eat at the reception. I barely touched my entree and had one piece of cake during the cake cutting. I remember it all to be amazing, and I'm sad I didn't enjoy it more.

4. I wish we had stayed in our "bridal suite" for one more night. We had a destination wedding in NY (we live in Illinois), and the day after our wedding, we packed up and left for our honeymoon. While we were excited to get away, all our goodbyes felt rushed, and I kind of wish we had the chance to sleep in that morning and just lounge around that day and spend some more time with family.

Thanks so much for this! Among other things, I feel really justified in not getting a DJ :-) By the way, do you have any tips about that? We're also having a small wedding (it will probably be about the size of yours....we're inviting 110).

Thank you so much for this post!! These really help. We are also doing an iPod for music (might get a string duet for ceremony) and also DIYing the flowers. I am also going to find a way to d o the chivari chairs and it's nice to hear that it's worth it. You hubby even agrees:) I will keep up my search for a DOC! I'm also very happy we are keeping it small (inviting 49; expecting about 35 or so).

Congratualtions! So glad it all went well. Enjoy your newlywed days!!!

You're welcome, everyone! I'm glad other's find these types of posts helpful, too :)

@misshelen: Hmm, as far as tips, I would just really keep your playlists as organized as possible. We had separate playlists for each big song (i.e. the first dance was it's own playlist), and we numbered them all so that they were all in order. It kind of looked like this:

1 - Cocktail hour
2 - Dinner music
*interuption 15 mins in for first dance
3 - First dance
*back to dinner music, where we left off
4 - Family dance song
5 - Reception/dance music
6 - Last dance song

Also, we ran out of reception music! Our dinner ended earlier than expected, but it was no big deal. I would just caution brides to always add buffer songs at the end of each playlist in case you run out. We had about four extra "buffer" songs at the end of our reception music (songs that we liked, but didn't love), but that apparently wasn't enough. It was no biggy. Our DOC coordinator ran over and asked for our favorite songs to repeat, and she picked the ones people didn't really dance to as much. It worked out so well despite the little hiccup, and no one even knew when we told them about it.