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What went wrong during your wedding? I feel like ours was so perfect, but there are a couple things that are nagging at me now after the fact..
1) Our 2 year old niece screamed through our ENTIRE ceremony. Most of our guests couldn't even hear our vows because of it and her parents didnt' even try to quiet her down (they don't ever discipline her).
2) Our idea of making a teen table fell through b/c my cousin is painfully shy. He had to do a juggling act all night to sit with his parents
3) Our head table was way too big. I mean, the people sitting across from me I had to scream to talk to. I wish I had known how big it was going to be ahead of time, we would have done a sweetheart table!
4) We didn't get to see most of our cocktail hour. Guests swarmed us at the entrance and woudln't let us step in. My sister had to grab my arm and force me through the crowd so I could see the pasta bar, but I never got to see our raw bar or ice sculpture.
5) It was hot. Like 90 degrees and very humid. Luckily this only affected me, my husband and our photographer since we were going around the city all day taking pix, but it still slowed us down a little.
What about everyone else?
Congrats on your wedding!
Wow, I can't believe the parents of your 2 yo niece. I keep hearing these stories on WB, but I just can't believe parents don't take their children out, I guess I would think twice too about inviting children if I didn't trust the parents to be polite.
@troubled:Thanks! Unforutnately for us, there was nothing we could do. We actually asked the parents ahead of time (DH's brother and wife) to take her out if she was fussy, but they didn't listen. I think THEY wanted to stay for the ceremony, so they didn't even consider walking her out. And of course they are used to the screaming since they hear it all the time.
I feel really lucky how well our wedding went, especially the weather that day. We had an outdoor ceremony as well as a semi-outdoor cocktail hour and dancing and the weather was perfect - not too hot, not too cold, and not a cloud in the sky. However, there are a couple of things at the back of my mind.
- Someone thought it would be a good idea to have shots waiting for the bridal party right after the ceremony. I never do shots, but I did this one and it was huge - in a highball glass, like three shots in one. Needless to say, I have a difficult time remembering much about the cocktail hour...because that shot combined with the champagne toast before the ceremony with my bridesmaids really did me in. Thank god I felt better after I ate dinner.
- I felt like the lighting in the dining room was too bright. I can't fault my venue, because I never directly discussed this with them, but seeing as I had many votive candles on each table, wouldn't it have made sense to dim the lights a bit??
- The dinner lasted a little longer than I would have liked. We didn't get out to the dancing/cake cutting until about 10pm, which only left two hours for that.
- Family photos took longer than expected during the cocktail hour. I was hoping I would be able to enjoy the cocktail hour, but in between professional family shots and all the guests wanting pictures, it felt more like a photo hour than a cocktail hour.
@Tulip61110:I got married the day after you!! I remember thinking I wish my wedding was on the 11th because the weather was beautiful. Also, i'm really glad no one pressured me to drink on my wedding day b/c I was determined to stay sober through the whole thing. I don't know why they would have given you such a big shot right after the ceremony! We liked our lighting, but I agree that's one of the things you can't really 'preview' and discuss before teh big day.
Oh no! I would have trouble getting over #1 especially since you asked them ahead of time not to let that happen. How rude! The vows are so important--and in completely a different way that the food, decor, music etc. is important. They are you and your husband commiting yourselves to one another! Augh, hopefully I'm not reopening a wound for you with this comment but I would be so upset!
Do you think they felt bad after the fact (maybe they didn't notice at the time because they have learned how to tune out her screaming?)
@moderndaisy: Oh I remember how hot it was the day after our wedding...that must have been kind of rough - at least it didn't rain though :)
And yeah, I'm annoyed with myself for letting myself be pressured to drink. I remember just sipping the shot, and one of the groomsmen kept teasing me and calling me a baby, so then I just pounded it. Bad idea!!! Now I remember why I never do shots. :-/
Our day went pretty well and I felt like we rolled with punches as they came.
The punches included:
-My hair/make-up appt ran over by almost an HOUR so I was scrambling to get dressed in time for pre-wedding pictures.
-A huge down pour started as soon as we said "I do". Thank goodness our ceremony and reception were indoors but we had to skip our send off because of the rain.
-We didn't get to take as many outdoor pictures as I would have liked due to the rain.
-People were really pushy about getting professional pictures taken with us. As much as I love our families there are just way too many to take pictures with every aunt, uncle, cousin, etc.
-I didn't get to take any photos in the photobooth! :(
-Someone stepped on my dress and ripped the crinoline from the waist. It was a easy fix to reattach with safety pins and not noticeable at all but it still took a while to do which took away from time with everyone else.
-Some very important people in our lives couldn't be there due to health, the military, etc.
We seriously had the time of our lives regardless of what went wrong, what went right, and what just went.
Everything was perfect on the surface, and I am probably the only one who really knows how bad a lot of things went. But there are still a lot of things that bother me when I look back.
-The timing was off throughout the day. We booked hair and makeup for super early but she still managed to take a little longer than we thought it would. Plus we should have just broken down and rented the venue for an additional hour earlier in the day so we would have had more time to decorate. Even though our decorations for ceremony were really simple it still made me stressed out to get everything done.
-We didn't really have a first look. FI had helped pick the dress, accessories, shoes, everything so I was really looking forward to having a first look so it would be the first time he saw everything together. But then we got to the venue and realized there was still so much to do and so I gave up on the idea and jumped in to pitch in. Even with everyone helping we still had family showing up for group pictures and I wasn't even dressed yet. This is the only problem during the day that I know other people noticed.
-Because we were late we don't have pics of me getting ready (which is okay, because I don't really like them). But we were feeling so rushed my MOH and I just ran back to the room, threw on the dress and veil and ran back out so we could get pictures started. I was stressed so I got red and nervous before pics.
-The flowers were all wrong. When we came out to grab bouquets for pics I realized that they were not at all what we discussed other than the type of flower. I was pissed but had to pretend to be happy for photos.
-Photographer was FI's sister who did not do a great job. The portraits were the only thing that turned out right. All pictures of the ceremony and reception are dark and/or blurry. Still REALLY pissed about this, but I am making photosharing cards for the thank yous so hopefully we can add to our collection. It might take me a really long time to get over this one.
-Our coordinator friendor got drunk. FI's friend from work had me fooled that she had everything under control. We were the last ones to leave the venue (no send off) and I physically had to wrestle the keys out of her hand because she had been sneaking drinks when she had told us that she wouldn't be drinking at all. Worst part of the whole evening and I am glad that no one else was there to see it.
So yeah, a lot of things went wrong, some major. But in the end I keep telling myself that it was just one day and really as long as no one else noticed these things then they don't really matter.
Oh yeah, and my brother decided two days before the wedding that he wouldn't be able to make it after all. This one still stings.
This are all so helpful to hear. Mainly because it reiterates the fact that THINGS WILL GO WRONG and as much as we plan and envision things, nothing can be prefect.
And, @rachel_leigh, I fear my brother won't show up last minute because of an ongoing feud with my father. I don't know if expecting it makes it makes it easier...
@Miss_Riley:My hair/makeup ran late too!! That is the only thing that stressed me out before the ceremony b/c the vendors all showed up and I hadn't even started yet! Luckily, they did a GREAT job so it was worth the stress. Gosh that sucks about your dress! People stepped on mine all night but luckily no damage. I just had to push them a little so they noticed they were ON my dress and I couldn't move. We also had very important people who couldn't make it so I feel your pain.
@rachel_leigh:That totally stinks about your photos and coordinator! I hope you at least saved a lot of $ by having friends donig these jobs. I agree with you that besides the 2 year old screaming, I don't think anyone else noticed the things thatI did that went wrong. I'm married now so I win!
Our big things where 1) My husbands brother made it but his wife and kids got lots getting to the site (long complicated messy story) 2) The rental car my parents had got a flat on the way to the hair appointment and wanted my parents to spend 2 hours taking it to a shop to get it fixed. Nope, 20 minutes on the phone and they were towing a new car to our location and exchanging them.
Otherwise, everything went beautifully and we had a great time. Pictures to follow soon!
Ours was pretty good, but I did start a thread a few weeks ago detailing my husband's family's poor behavior. Highlights include:
Both the MOH and Best Man speeches were really weird and awkward. My sister's was all about how our relationship affected her and how she didn't like Mike at first, with a few personal digs at me thrown in. Mike's bro just rambled incoherently for 10 minutes. I needed "play-off" music like at the Oscars.
This is a great post to read! It'll help be keep my confidence and cool on my wedding day even if (when!) things will go wrong or different then planned. Not everything will go perfect but it'll still make for a perfect day, hopefully!
I absolutely loved my wedding day, but there were some very minor bumps on the day-of.
-- We had a "no kids" rule but a couple of family friends decided to bring their children anyway (one stayed for only the ceremony, and the other stayed through the reception). Thankfully there were no screaming outburts, but I DID get comments from other guests like "well THEIR kid is here, why wasn't MY kid allowed to come". Grrrrr....
-- Towards the end of the night, DH stepped on my dress as I was walking away from him, and it ripped! Thankfully it was late, and the rip/hole wasn't too noticeable.
-- We missed our cocktail hour completely... but I honestly didn't plan on making it. It would have been nice to hear more of our string trio (besides at the ceremony) though. Instead, we took more pictures and hung out with the wedding party-- which was really fun in itself!
Honestly, other than that, it was pretty near perfect in my eyes. DH and I still lay in bed sometimes (just last night actually!) and reminisce about the wedding day. We both had such a wonderful time. 
@ Modern Daisy I'm so sorry about the screaming 2 yr old. This is the reason we had a babysitter for the three toddlers. I've been to weddings where babies scream and scream and I can't for the life of me understand why the parents don't take them outside. SOOOO rude. I'm so sorry!!!!
We only had a few minor glitches:
My mom had to carry in our card box for the grand entrance. The hotel catering staff told her too! So during her grand entrance, she's carrying our card box. How tacky! Why in the world they told her to carry it, I have NO idea. But now we laugh about it while seeing pics or the wedding video.
We had two vegetarians supposed to get pasta primavera and didn't. (On our buffet, our only vegetarian dish was an Indian dish for our 15 Indian guests) The hotel had said they'd give pasta primavera to my hubby's two co-worker..we found out they never got it.
Our bartender wasn't very friendly. We found out at the end of the night when some of our close friends told us they didn't like him. When watching the wedding video, I saw him make a face...that irks me!
That's it...everything else went perfect. Ceremony was perfect, food was amazing, everybody danced..it was wonderful!
Thankfully I haven't had any wedding disaster's yet, but I was in my cousin's wedding last week, and she was married at this huge golf country club. There were 3 other weddings happening the same day and somehow the resort switched her dinner menu with one of the other weddings, so we got completely different meals then we were supposed to! She took to the situation with such grace though, and the food ended up being delicious anyway, so it could have been a lot worse!
@Chillmer:OMG about the speeches!! That was kind of my nightmare. Luckily, our MOH and BM both kept it short (like under 3 minutes each) and both said nice things. Although I thought the BM spoke about my DH too much and not enough about US except to say we get along well b/c we're both republicans and have a good sense or humor.
@ddubzz:That is so annoying about kids coming even though you said no kids!! I hate it when people just completely disregard your wishes like that. I know you didn't plan on making it to your cocktail hour, but we DID which is why I was annoyed that we couldn't get in. Literally every wedding professional was like "Don't go to your cocktail hour!! Take some time to breath, trust us!!" It was the worst advice ever and I'm really upset they tried to stop us.
@Jenn23:They probably told your Mom to carry the card box b/c most venues won't touch it for liability reasons. Our wedding coordinator (outside party) had to handle our card box, the catering manager specifically told me that he wouldn't handle it. That's annoying about the menu, but I guess not a huge mishap. The rude bartender stinks also, what was his problem?
@MrsMcGyro:Wow, your sis totally handled that well! I probably would have been really upset, but I guess as long as the food itsn't totally weird I would have made the best of it.
Our wedding was great... But three things were kind of a bummer.
1. My brothers (groomsmen) and the best man decided it would be a great idea to leave the reception, go to our hotel room, and put jingle bells and condoms all over the room. The prank was no big deal, even mildly funny, but what made me really mad (furious really) is that they disappeared for almost two hours from the reception! I felt like crying because my brothers weren't even there to dance and celebrate with us. They tried to make me feel guilty for being mad about it... But seriously, it was ridiculous. They apologized when we got back from the honeymoon, but it really hurt my feelings.
2. Our coordinator at the venue was supposed to have everything taken care of... but he was a total slacker! If my MOH hadn't been there to keep him in line, everything would have been late, the chairs wouldn't have been set up... Ooh, it was bad...
3. Pictures... My aunt and uncle are wedding photographers and I like their work... But our best man is also a photographer and I ended up LOVING his pics and only liking the ones my aunt/uncle took. My aunt is a total cheesy romantic cutesy type of person, and I was going more for vibrant and fun pictures. Anyway, we still got awesome pics, I'm just kind of bummed that the ones I LOVED were the free ones :)
Oh! And the best man gave the weirdest speech... At one point he referred to my husband as a professional hobo, which I didnt' really appreciate because my family doesn't know him all that well yet. Granted, my husband is a surfer and lived out of his truck for a little while--not because he had to, but because he was 21 and he figured if he didn't have to pay rent, he could pay off his flight school loan faster. And when you're 21, you don't mind sleeping in a truck my the beach. Thankfully, 5 years later, he's over that phase and the loan is closer to being paid off. Anyway. It was weird.
@lindseyrose:That would have annoyed me too about the guys leaving the reception for so long! Why do people do that? It's like - you've done so much planning and devoted so much time and money to this 4 hour event and people still find an excuse to slip out. Also, I feel like with speeches if you don't have something nice to say then don't say anything at all!
@moderndaisy: I would be so upset by the neice too! I can't believe her parents didn't take her out of the room
A bunch of things went wrong on our wedding day but the most disturbing was my husband’s brother’s terrible behavior.
- He didn’t want to get ready with the groomsman and have pictures taken because he considers it “cheesy”
- He sang off key at the top of his lungs while we were taking our family pictures.
- He tried to walk down the aisle with a video camera on his shoulder
- A few people came up to me during our reception and told me he was grabbing women’s butts and taking pictures up their skirts while they weren’t looking. He’s 33 years old, not 13, just in case you were wondering. Oh and his fiancé was with him at the wedding.
- I didn’t want any toasts but he grabbed a microphone and made one anyway.
All I can say is thank goodness for my DOC!!! I had warned her about him and after the reception she told me he was all I had described and more haha.
My husband’s entire family followed us up to our hotel suite after the wedding. I have no idea why and it was awkward!! Especially because his mother kept standing in front of the bed and looking at us and then the bed and saying “this is where you’re going to spend your wedding night”
Our photog friendor had come up there with us too and wanted to take a picture of my husband and I falling backwards on the bed in our wedding clothes. So we did and the next I know, my husband’s brother jumped on the bed with a video camera and said “nice cleavage” to me. Holy inappropriateness!! I got up and kicked everyone out of our room.
@Lizr OMG your husband's brother sounds horrible. Is he always like this, or just at your wedding? That's awful! And the part about your mother-in-law commenting about your wedding night bed...OMG...awkward!! Wow! Glad you still enjoyed everything despite the bro-in-law...he sounds like a real treat! What is his fiance like? Is she ok with how he acts?
This will be a blog post for me, but some of the highlights:
Everything else was great and none of this bothered me the day of. Only now I can't sleep because I rehash all of it :)
Nothing major went wrong, but there were definitely some issues with our reception venue that bugged me. Long story short - the owners changed with 3 months to go before our wedding, and the new mgmt. company is not as good as the original folks we signed with. That being said - we had a fabulous time, and everyone kept telling us how great of a time they had!
And the worst issue? Our driver at the end of the night got lost on the way back to the hotel! We missed our after party due to him. Ugh - small thing, but really really annoyed me.
Thank yo ufor posting this. There are many of us on the board who don't want kids at our wedding and others who don't understand why. Thank yo for proving our point. LOL!
@menobride: I think alot of people know very well why people feel so strongly on the "no kids" issue. Its not without cause. They just want to believe their kids (or their immediate families children) are the exception to the rule -- and sorry many times they aren't.
Oh we are having quite a small reception, but there will be children attending. And there will be kids at the reception - We wouldn't have it any other way!!
I'd love to answer this, too. First, though, let me say that none of this affected how wonderful my day was, and at the end of the day, we were still married! All in all, these weren't really all that bad, but I think they're worth mentioning to echo that your day may not be perfect, but it can still be a great day!
1. We had an 11:00 wedding and planned to do pictures at 9. My hair person took FOREVER to do my hair, which made us an hour late for portraits. This meant that we couldn't attend our cocktail hour as we planned. This also meant that we had to take formal portraits in the bright noon-time sun on a hot CA day.
2. It happened to be a windy day. At one point during one of the speeches, I looked over to see a large curtain blow dangerously close to our cake! Luckily, it didn't knock the cake off its table, but it did take off some frosting. SO, one of the venue's curtains was covered in frosting.
3. They ran out of tri-tips at the carving station.
4. Champagne wasn't poured and on the table in time for toasts. They got on that immediately after multiple people notified the staff.
5. And the final kicker was that when we got back to the room after the wedding, my suitcase and all extra clothing were soaking wet because someone had put the suitcase under a leaky sink in the bathroom. Hotel management laundered my clothes and dried out my suitcase, but it wasn't at all the way I wanted to kick off the wedding evening.
It was a fantastic day, despite any of the above.
@Lizr:OMG I am so sorry about your husbands brother!! I mean a 2 year old is one thing, but WOW! That is also very awkward about the family following you up to the suite.. so strange! I would have been elbowing DH like crazy getting him to kick everyone out!
@ribbons:I will look out for your post! Oh my goodness, so you chose not to wear your sash b/c of the guest? How rude of her! I almost had the same problem with my photographer who didn't mention that is when he'd be leaving but luckily my DOC coordinator caught it in time. We missed about 30 mins of our fun dance time b/c guests quarantined us in the entrance room while we ran out quickly to use the bathroom and i regret it soo much so I hear you on your husband having to leave! And gosh I can't wait to hear about the speech!! How inappropriate!
I think for every "OMG a kid screamed throughout my wedding" there are just as many (if not more in my opinion) people that are happy with the fact they had kids at their wedding, got some really cute photos, and had a blast on the dance floor. I just hope that those planning a wedding don't freak out just beacuse some people have had bad experiences with kids at the wedding. You have to decide for your wedding what is right for you.
@AprilBride10:What is it with drivers getting lost all the time?! Two nights before my wedding a BM flew in from Houston and we had arranged for a car service to pick her up and drop her off at my parents house since she was getting in so late. The driver was supposed to have a GPS and we gave good, simple easy to follow directions several times in advance. Well. The driver did NOT even LOOK at the directions and got completely lost which resulted in me totally screaming at him ont he phone at 1am pissed that we paid all that money for the convenience and I had to be woken up to navigate him - all the while he would not admit to his mistake. He was driving in the wrong direction!!
@bluestuff:My hair person took forever to do my hair too! I was having a panic attack!!
@menobride:Yes well, we campaigned for months for no kids, but eventually gave in. 8 of them were in our processional and 7 were perfect angels. It was the parents fault for never disciplining her and not listening to us/taking us seriously when we said we wanted the kids to be taken out if acting up. There was nothing we could do about it at the end of the day, not including her wasn't an option. Looking back I don't regret including the kids, but would have reminded the parents AGAIN before the ceremony to take out fussy kids.
OH! How could I have forgotten this? It was nearly a month after our wedding, but our venue killed someone this weekend. A piece of decorative concrete fell off and landed on three people walking underneath, and a 15-year old died. Isn't that horrific? I just keep imagining that it could have been me or one of my guests.
You know, i'm the type of person who I thought would go crazy over all the things that went wrong, but in the end, none of it mattered, and none of it had any affect on our day.
First, it was really windy, which apart from making it difficult for all our decorations to be displayed, my cathedral length veil wrapped itself around my head as I was walking down the aisle and then flew out. There are some pretty funny photos of my dad helping me with it though.
Next, despite all my best efforts, there was an uninvited guest, who we suddenly had to scramble to find a place for.
Our cake was a mess. The fondant was melting off the cake, and all these huge cracks started to appear. To fix it, they covered up the cracks with raspberries, which looked completely out of place and were also melting so there was red dripping down the sides. Plus, the cake was not the kind we ordered. It was definitely cake wreck worthy.
Finally, our officiant forgot the ring ceremony. He was so embarassed, but we just snuck off and did it with just us and the bridal party.
1) my mom and sister didn't show up (and they were the only family on my side and my sister was my MOH) and I never heard from them (Was married in November)
2) The DJ was a total JERK, showed up without the music list, and then played the wrong music either way and yelled at me when I told him to refer back to the list I had quickly given him.
There were others, but those were the worst.
Congrats! I'm so happy for you! No matter what happened the entire point of it all is the getting married part. You really shouldn't have any regrets.... That being said...
There were only a couple of things that went wrong...We was expecting a different photographer to come but instead we got the photographer's wife. She was cool but she didn't speak any English and she was being kinda rude and impatient... So I was very worried that the pictures wouldn't turn out nice, but they are perfectly fine :)
Oh yeah and I didn't have the schedule of what goes on at a reception perfectly planned out. I only had a sample schedule and the times were all wrong. So since my older sister got me the DJ and that was the first time I had met or talked to him... I kept having to tell him to announce certain things.. It was annoying. And since he picked the music he was going to play I guess he didn't get the memo of what I wanted my first song to be.. I wanted it to be "When God made you" but we ended up dancing to KC and Joe Joe, "All my life". Which is a very good song.. but not the one I picked. And then the father daughter dance song also a pick from DJ which was "My girl" which my cousin had danced with her father at her 15th birthday quinceanera.....
My word of advice to all the future brides is: Communication is very important! Even if you have sponsors for certain vendors doesn't mean you don't need to speak to them your selfs. Plan your wedding every last detail well and speak to all of your vendors personally to make sure you all are on the same page!
@Jenn23: Unfortunately he is always a pain but even I didn't anticipate how awful his behavior was going to be :(. His fiance is really nice. I don't think she knew about half the stuff that he was doing but the stuff that she did see, she seemed embarrassed.
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