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Not to be a downer, but what's the one thing you really wish you would have done differently regarding your wedding now that it is all over?
We are both recent college grads, so we obviously don't have a lot of money and planned our wedding accordingly. We had a very down-to-earth, relaxed wedding day and budgeted the whole thing for under $5,000. People kept remarking at how all the DIY details were so wonderful, and I'm proud of us for pulling it off for close to nothing!
While I'm really proud that we pulled it off, I'm sad we didn't just splurge and get a nice photographer. We hired a friend of a friend who did it for three hundred bucks, and while we got a ton of shots, they just aren't that awesome.
What do you wish you would have done differently?
I wish we would have chosen to not have a bridal party. It just added a ton of stress. It wouldhave been much better to have skipped those drama nuts! Plus DH isn't even friends anymore with one of his groomsmen. I hate that he's in our pictures.
@mwitter80: Yeah, one of DH's groomsmen was a childhood friend who turned out to be a total a-hole. He got so drunk the night before our rehearsal dinner that he was still hungover by evening. He sent us an apology letter and was actually pretty cool about it, but it still would have just been much easier to not have him there...
Not let my BM and friend (probably wouldn't call her a "best" friend now) make a speech. It turned into way more of a roast then a toast. I think it just reflected badly on her in the end, but it was awkward and pretty embarassing for me too.
But I guess if that's the worst thing that happens on your day, it was a pretty good one :)
I have very mixed feelings about our invitation to let our pianist (a family friend of DH's) bring a date. Playing at our wedding was his gift to us, and it was totally lovely and we were really grateful, so I thought it'd be a sweet gesture to invite him to bring a guest to our reception (our wedding was quite small).
Turns out his lady friend was married. To someone else. And he thought it was appropriate to tipsily wax poetic about their adulterous love affair to the bride at her reception. And make out in the corner for quite some time.
Fortunately most people didn't notice and my DH was blissfully unaware until after the fact, but it still makes me feel icky.
Other than that, I wouldn't change a thing. And honestly, I wouldn't even have minded that part if he had allowed me to remain ignorant of that situation. Blech.
I would have had our photographer take some of the photos differently and had more photos of some out of town family and friends that were there (including at least one photo of me and my mom). I also wish I would have taken the time to actually try the food and take in the whole display.
The only thing I wish we had done differently is I wish we had taken the time to get fun shots of the bridal party. We have lovely photos othe two of us, but we only took a couple of formal boring shots with our bridesmaids and groomsmen. Basically I just didn't want to deal with rounding everyone up so at the time I was like "screw it!" but now looking back I wish I had stuck to my guns and gathered everyone.
Other than that the whole day was wonderful and, although I would never ever put myself through that kind of stress again, I loved every minute of the whole day.
Hands down the dozen or so mimosas that I consumed throughout the day. It wasn’t the champagne that did me in (actually, I wasn’t even buzzed) but the MEGA dose of Vitamin C from the OJ. My stomach was in knots for most of our reception making it less than enjoyable.
My other regret was our DJ but we really had no way of knowing that he’d drop the ball. To our guests he probably seemed like a great DJ, and he was, but he hardly played any of our “must play list”. DH and I slaved over that list for months and a lot of the songs that were on it were special to us. At our final meeting, we gave him the list and he went through and checked off the songs that he already had. Some of the songs we listed were kind of obscure so we even offered to give him the tracks since we owned them all but he said that he would get them and not to worry. Well, the day of our wedding the only songs that he played from our list were the ones that he already owned (besides the specialty dance songs, he had/got all of those). Neither of us recall hearing any of the more obscure songs (which were also some of our favorite). At one point during our reception I asked him to play a particular song from our list. He came over to me like 10 minutes later and said that he couldn’t get a connection in the ballroom so he couldn’t download the song. Um, shouldn’t that have been done prior to our wedding?! We paid a lot of money for our DJ (roughly double what our friends and family who were recently married paid) and I didn’t think he was any better or worse than them. Looking back, I wish we would have gone with someone more affordable. I wouldn’t have been quite so annoyed about the “must play list” if we didn’t pay so much.
I would've:
ordered invitations through vistaprint rather than make them myself
Maybe not had so many photos at the venue to allow time to chat to guests
Not had so much food in the evening (original plan but Mum took over)
Having got married on a Sunday guests who had travelled long distance especially, left quite early so perhapd would do it on a Saturday, but I just didn't like the sound of the date.
I was so relieved that we didn't plan more or let things get more complicated. It was perfect, and I would have been pissed in retrospect if I had spent any more time worrying about the wedding!
We were all so glad that we didn't do more!
Not too many regrets, thankfully!
a couple small things...
1) The fit of my dress - I switched dresses 3 weeks before my wedding, which I DON'T regret. I loved the dress I ended up wearing... it just felt like ME. However, I wasn't that happy with the fit of the dress. I had it let out a tiny bit and it was super comfortable (which was important to me), but it wasn't as fitted as it should have been. I also had the straps raised because my mom thought I was showing too much (read: any) cleavage, but I liked it better before, lol. I also had padded cups which I hated - I don't feel like I look like myself in photos!
2) Only one makeup & hair trial a couple days before - I had to travel to the wedding and didn't meet the makeup lady until a couple days before. I wasn't crazy about either my makeup or hair, but they were ok. I'd probably do my makeup myself if I had to do it over.
3) Photos felt rushed - I wish we'd allowed more time
4) Maaaybe wish I'd gotten a more talented photographer - however, mine was fine and inexpensive.
5) I wish I'd made a thank you toast and visited every table - I forgot to give a thank you speech and I enjoyed my entire dinner seated with out of town guests and part of my wedding party... I love that I actually got to eat, but I wish I could have visited all the tables as well. I think I talked to most everyone at some point in the evening and I did write each person a personal message on their escort card.
ETA:
6) I wish I had turned my ringer off before I went to bed the night before the wedding! The next morning, a good friend who was unable to travel to the wedding started texting/calling at 8am her time... she forgot about the time difference and it was 5am where I was. I hadn't fallen asleep until 1 or 1:30, so I was hoping to sleep in until 7 or later... but once the calls and texts woke me up at 5am, I was too excited to go back to sleep.
All very minor things... I had no big regrets and LOVED my wedding!
I would have done some type of online RSVP option and even invitations...waste of money and sanity. People don't return pre stamped envelopes ;)
Two quick things:
1. Put the photo booth next to the dance floor. It was far away and it took people away from dancing as they were waiting in line!
2. Not make my dress quite so tight. Just because the waist can be tighter doesn't mean it should be.
@brideatbeach: I'm going to agree with you on the photographer standpoint. I used my uncle (who is a longtime professional photog) and another friend wanted to be there to take pics to gain experience... But I just felt like we rushed through a lot and didn't get the awesome shots I would have loved.
Also my uncle lost the list I gave him and we just winged it. Of course I couldn't remember all the pics I had listed, so.....
Don't get me wrong, the pictures are good, but I wished for a little more... Of course a "little more" would have cost me a whole LOT more than free.
lol
@.twist.: this is mine too. I just asumed my photographer would get certain shots, especially of my mum and I and just can't understand why not.
I would have been more organised and not procrastinated also, so little things that went wrong (wrong decorations, photo props missing, photos I wanted not taken, wrong songs played at wrong time) would have been organised better
Hmm...I'm happy to say I have to think about this one because most went perfect. But I would of explained some details of the night more carefully to our band - they didn't start playing the recessional music I had perfectly timed until we were finished walking back down the aisle, and they completed effed up the anniversary dance - they had couples sit down after every song instead of throughout the one song! It lasted like five songs, it was awful and they couldn't hear my coordinator who was frantically trying to correct them!
My only regret: I didn't eat enough. We had a TON of food. I missed all of cocktail hour for pictures so I didn't eat any appetizers and during dinner I barely ate anything since I was so busy talking to people. I also didn't eat much before the wedding because I didn't want to look fat in my dress. (I am 8 months pregnant now so the thought of me at 120 lbs at 5'7" worrying about looking fat just makes me laugh... I digress). I wasn't drinking much in the weeks prior to the wedding so after a few glasses of wine, I was drunk. I didn't do anything embarassing or anything like that, but when I wanted just a light happy buzz and remember everything perfectly, I was somewhat drunk. You never remember everything about your wedding because it is such a blur, but I really regret not eating enough. Had I ate enough, I would have been fine with the amount of wine I had.
My other regret that I couldn't control: DH got wasted the night before the wedding with his brothers and friends and was really hungover on our wedding day. I wanted to kill him. He doesn't even drink much normally.
In the end though, none of it matters. Looking back, a wedding is just a day. It starts the official beginning of your life together. Now that we are having our first baby, this makes our wedding day seem so unimportant and trivial. It puts things into perspective. I'm still pissed he was hungover on our wedding day though!
It's not really a regret because there's not much I could do about it, but I looked so great in my dress at all my fittings then one my wedding day it was INSANELY humid. Everyone's hair styles fell out and I was so bloated :( My dress didn't fit quiet right and in some pictures I look so thick in the middle and I'm really not. So that's the one thing I really think about.
While post-wedding I had a longer list of things I wish would have gone differently (really small, nitpicky things) right after the wedding, there are only a couple of things that still pop into my mind from time to time:
Despite these small things, it was the best day ever! I wish I could do it again!
Changing my hair for reception...i barely got to eat. I had my hair down for ceremony then put it up for reception and it took forever
I have four regrets:
1) I did a thank you speech, but really should have added two other people to my list of thank yous. I felt awful afterwards.
2) my dress. I have serious dress regret. I settled for my dress and really don't love a lot of the photos of me in it. I also wish that I had forgone comfort and wore more support garments. I really wish that I had a more defined waist.
3) I wish that I had been more on top of my in laws with regards to what was expected. We told them...and gave them a time line, maps, but it still didn't matter. I really wanted to take photos outside and, as it was a super cold day in December, it wasn't possible because none of them came dressed properly (no coats?!?). None of them brought their maps that we provided, so people got lost and we ended up waiting around for almost an hour for my BIL to show up....and we were waiting with the photographer. Really, I just wish I had not been stressed out about this.
4) I had some issues with my venue and I should have been more proactive about dealing with them.
My regret, not taking a moment before the maddness (we had a lot of down time) to go look at the ceremony and reception with DH alone so we could soak it all up. Neither of us got to see any of the details we worked so hard on. We are just waiting for our pro photos so we can finally see how everything turned out since the whole night went by in a blink of an eye for us and we spent the whole night with our guests and not looking at the details.
I wish everyone had been invited to my rehearsal dinner.
I wish I had stood up to my mandatory church wedding coordinator. She really made my relatives miserable during the wedding. (There were 3 empty pews right in the front that she didn't allow anyone to sit at, she forced the girls handing out programs to sit in the last pew and not with their parents and they're little, she forced my readers to sit in a side seat and they couldn't see the altar).
My regret was that I wish I had hired a more talented photographer. Alot of our pictures were blurry and she cut off my DH's head in a lot of them b/c she was sitting on the floor trying to get pictures/not be in the way. She got nice shots of me, but this pretty much broke my heart. Was my DH NOT important enough to photograph??!
Also, I kinda wished that I didn't use the hairpieces I used. I didn't see them beforehand, but the way they were described to be my the florist sounded really nice. They ended up being way too big and now I think they looked kinda cheesy :( But I might be being over critical...
From my first wedding? My choice of groom.
From this wedding? Nothing really, other than I really wish we'd just gone with a church wedding, rather than a JOP wedding + convalidation.
@Neva: That's hilarious!! & something we have in common regarding the first wedding!! : )
That I'd started looking for hair/mu more than 5 weeks before the wedding. I didnt really like my trial, but there was little else in my budget that was available and I didnt have anymore free weekends to try anyone else. She promised it would be neater/better on the day off, but I still wasnt trilled with it.
@Prewitt: lol, funny you didn't like the sound of the date , so you chose the 19th? i had issues in the beginning that my date was on the 19th and wished i booked a different week to get married!
my biggest issue with my wedding was the quality of the beach we got married on. i wish i picked a different resort. we got one in our budget and to accommodate our families budget. but in the end, half of DH;s family didn't come anyway and everyone that did would have and could have paid more for a slightly higher star resort. and it wasn't the resort itself i had an issue with, i am not picky with rooms, food or anything, just the actual beach! And this was the one thing i assumed would be gorgeous no matter what as it was Jamaica. in the end its not such a big deal and no matter how many times i went over it in my head, i know there is no way i would have done anything different unless i actually visited the site in advance which of course was not in our budget to do so. also, i know that if things (date included) hadn't been exactly the way they were, i would not have ended up with the photographer i got, so it was almost all like it was meant to be and i really have no regrets!
I absolutely loved our wedding and everything went off without a single hitch. Immediately after the wedding I didn't have a single regret, it's only been in the past 9 or so months, since certain life events have taken place that I've started to regret anything.
My only regret is not hiring a videographer. At the time I put it low on my priority list and since I was unable to find anyone I liked for less than $3,500-$4,000 I wrote it off as an unnecessary expense. Of course, hindsight is 20/20 and now know that we came in ~$10k under budget and could have had room in the budget for the videographer.
The biggest reason for this regret is that my stepdad passed away six months after our wedding and I really, really, really wish I had video of him from my wedding day to remember him by. *sigh*
Not having a videographer is my biggest regret also. Friends had told me..."Oh we got one but you will never watch it so its a waste of money" but I now disagree. I feel like I'm forgetting details already and that really bothers me.
1. Not researching the limo company we booked with! Biggest mistake, they picked up my bridal party 3 hours late! I missed all the photos I wanted in the city with them because of this. At least I got the photos I wanted with my husband
2. Putting my husbands sister as a bridesmaid. She only came with us to ONE wedding activity which was picking out a dress. Everything else she bailed on last minute. She started drinking heavily before the ceremony, and was drunk before it started, and she left her bouquet everywhere and people had to chase her down to give it to her, or had to find her because she wasn't in the right places!
3. Not putting a do not distrub/bridal part only sign on the door to my bridal suite! Our families kept walking in and out of it befor and after the ceremony! I had to keep kicking them out!
4. Not getting to enjoy the cookie buffet! There was 600 homemade cookies and I didn't get to eat a single one!
My wedding hasn't happened yet, but I already wish that I had only chosen two bridesmaids (my sisters) and that I was had spoken out more about the number of guests - too late now that we've signed contracts for catering, etc! Lots of things to think about on this thread though!
I wish I'd had a traditional wedding with ALL my friends and family instead of running off to Vegas. That's a pretty big regret.
@daybyday: I've been leaning more toward running off to Vegas, but am worried I'll regret it. Thank you for sharing this.
@daybyday: i guess its always greener on the side! sometimes i wished i just eloped to the fancy resort of our dreams in Mexico just the two of us - would have saved a whole of stress (and disappointment when certain people couldn't come - i wouldn't be disappointed if the plan was only for us to go and i didn't have these people telling me for months and months that they were coming no matter what).
My biggest regret is my photographer. She brought a second photographer, and of 3,000 photos...about 5 are worth what I paid her for. There were no unique angles, she took forever to get them back to us, there were some photos i requested that I did not even get (I only requested TWO specific ones), there were none of our guests, none of the hall...she sent the CD of photos and made us transfer them to the photo CD with our picture on the front. Which didn't work. That turned into a rant. Sorry :) but that is one thing I regret, not looking into more photographers and just going with the first one we found.
I LOVED just about everything about our wedding day. However, our biggest regrets were:
I got really drunk because I drank a litte too much champange and didn't have time to eat during the whole day. it was towards the end of the wedding and most guest were gone by then but my closest friends still tease me about it let alone my mom and dad who will never ever ever forget it!!!
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