It’s currently Summer 2019 as I’m typing this and it’s been a full wedding season! I’ll be real—“Full” for me meaning that I attended two weddings (lol) but every weekend throughout my newsfeed on facebook, I’ve been flooded with wedding photos from acquaintances celebrating with their loved ones so of course I click on all the albums to look at the dress, venue, hair/makeup and details. I love being an onlooker of weddings without the expense of attending one 🙂
Anyway, I recently saw a photo of a wedding that inspired this post. I don’t want to be rude to this stranger’s wedding, but this post is reflecting on the few things I regret from my wedding. Let’s jump in.
I honestly loved my wedding day—it was so special, beautiful and mostly without any hiccups. I had nearly two years to plan my July 2014 wedding (I got engaged in September 2012) and really had the bulk of my wedding planned months in advance. I had time to envision my dream wedding, figure out how to make it work with my budget, and then my mom and I went to work to make the dream come alive. I’ll share another blog about the great aspects of my wedding later, but for now I’ll share the details I overlooked/the things I would change if I could go back in time. In list format 🙂
NAIL POLISH—omg, like many brides, I had the Friday before my wedding day off from work (actually, I took the whole week off before my wedding) and I had time scheduled during the day before our rehearsal to get my nails done with my mom and bridesmaids. Out of all the decisions I had to make for the wedding, I never expected the pressure of choosing a nail color to unleash a panic attack like I had never experienced up until that point in my life. I remember looking at the wall of colors and just feeling a tightness in my chest and a panic of questioning what is the right choice. I wish I could justify the meltdown I was having in the nail salon, since afterall my nails are a big part of the day—slipping the new wedding band on my polished finger would surely result in many photos—but really, this meltdown was the culmination of all the wedding stress piling up and the realization that the next day would start a brand new chapter in my life. I ended up with a very light pink, something along the lines of OPI Mod about You—I really don’t know what polish I ended up with because I just pointed to my friend’s nails and said I wanted the same color lol. I actually really loved the way my nails look and am happy with the decision, but my regret—I WISH I HAD THE COLOR SELECTED IN ADVANCE. Leaving it up to a last minute decision on the day before my wedding was too stressful for me and it kept getting worse…
DESIGNATE SOMEONE TO RUN YOUR REHEARSAL–after the nail salon fiasco was over with, we all headed to a gorgeous park where we were holding an outdoor BBQ for our rehearsal dinner. We invited all of our out of town guests that were already in town for our wedding so it wasn’t just the bridal party. I had the entire ceremony “choreographed” and ready to go. I was anticipating that the rehearsal itself would take less than 10 minutes and we were rehearsing right at the park instead of at our venue to make it easier. Ugh. Well with 9 bridesmaids, 5 groomsmen and one missing dad to practice walking me down the aisle later—it was so stressful to organize everyone to line up and practice. I was trying to make this a smooth process, my type-A personality along with experience of teaching dance made me feel like I could easily accomplish this task. I had a diagram, a loud voice but ultimately was missing thick skin. All it took was one joke from a groomsman alluding to my bossiness to immediately make me cry. If I could do it over, I would hire someone to run my rehearsal so I could just be in the moment instead of stressing out over where people were standing. It all ended up working out for the ceremony but ugh my rehearsal day is a sad memory for me.
WEDDING DAY LOOK–I was really lucky to have a salon open to only my bridal party. The owner of the salon did my hair, my mom’s hair and as many of my bridesmaids’ hair as time allowed for. I also had two cousins helping with hair and makeup which was a huge blessing. I did a trial run on my hairstyle with the salon owner and loved it. I decided to do a full updo for my summer wedding, but on my wedding day, something about my hair/my look felt off. The front of my hair had a lot of volume but was too helmet like—I hate the way it looked straight on when you couldn’t see the style in the back. I cringe at photos, so I definitely would have done something different with my hair. Ass the stiffness of my hair faded throughout the night, my hair felt more like me but some of the first photos from my wedding day make me laugh.
RECEPTION ENTRANCE–A lot of my wedding details focused on personalization and something that I thought would be fun was to have each bridesmaid/groomsman duo and family member being announced to have their own theme song for their entrance. Being TYPE A, I had everyone choose their song weeks in advance. I found the best part of the song and edited the reception entrance music onto 1 track to make it easy for the DJ. I timed the music out to be about 30 seconds per walk but ughhhh that was too much time. I didn’t take into account that this part is so rushed and can be nerve wrecking and people just want to run in and out. There was so much music that had to be played before the next introduction began (yes, even 20 extra seconds felt long) that I wish I just had everyone walk into the same song…or trusted my DJ to switch up the tracks to match the speed of each person walking in. Learn from my mistake friends.
GARTER TOSS/ BOUQUET TOSS–Ok so I know this is something that doesn’t happen at all weddings, but being that I was the first of my friends to get married, I thought this would be fun. However, I hadn’t been to a wedding since I was a kid and wasn’t really sure how this all worked. My DJ was so good at choosing music but wasn’t much of an Emcee if you will, so after he announced that this was starting, we kind of had no direction on what was to happen next or…I guess the flow was just awkward lol. If you’re doing this, maybe make sure you have a DJ that will make it fun and pump up the crowd.
TABLE TO TABLE– We chose not to do a receiving line but wanted to make sure to see everyone and thank everyone personally for being a part of our day. After the first dance, after the speeches and during dinner, my husband and I went to table to table to visit with everyone. This is great in theory, but it’s hard to manage staying to my strict (hello Type A) timeline/schedule. We only had XX amount of time before the father/daughter dance was to begin and the dance floor open and we hadn’t reached all the tables. I still feel bad that we missed going to two of our friends tables for that one-on-one interaction during dinner (I’m probably the only one who thinks about this though lol). I don’t know what the right answer is to fitting this in, but I always try to tell my bride friends to tell their family and friends that they’ll “see you on the dance floor”. There is not a day you want to dance and party more than on your wedding day so don’t take up too much time delaying the party when you can interact with your loved ones and burn some calories at the same time.
You probably read through my list and are disapointed at how lame some of my regrets are, but I’m truly grateful that this was the worst of it and I can live with these “regrets”; just want to share some ideas on things to not overlook for your wedding.
Xo
Laura
