10 Things I Wish I Knew Before My Wedding Day

We have been invited to about a gazillion weddings this spring/summer/fall. (I promise we are going to try and attend most of them for those of you reading). I always knew I wanted a big wedding. Nowadays more and more elope or have something small or just go to the courthouse to save them the stress. I had always envisioned myself walking down the aisle of a big white church on my dad’s arm. Cliché as it sounds; I did not want to leave this earth without having that experience. I watched my older sister and my older brother plan their weddings and at times I witnessed glimpses of the stress that manifested itself…but when all was said and done and their wedding days rolled around, with all the excitement, love and happiness, I knew it was all worth the stress.

Steve and I chose to get married after Brady was born for 2 reasons. 1) I felt like crap the entire time I was pregnant. 2) We had enough on our plate with the baby that was coming and didn’t want to stress ourselves out even more. We set the date almost a year and a half before it actually took place to give ourselves plenty of planning time…and on August 25, 2012 we became man and wife. Although the day was absolutely perfect and one of the happiest days of my entire life (aside from Brady’s birth) there are always lessons to take from any situation-good or bad. So here is my good deed for anyone who is planning a wedding or planning on getting engaged soon. And for those of you who are already married and had a big wedding as well, you will probably find yourself agreeing...

10. Not everything will go according to plan.

As much time as you give yourself to plan every miniscule detail of this day, there WILL be things that do not go according to plan. One particular instance I can think of was everyone walking down the aisle too fast and the musicians having to cut out an entire song. The one song I really wanted played in the wedding (“Only Hope” by Switchfoot in case you were wondering). The musicians just went to the next song as if nothing had happened and could not have been more professional. (They sounded INCREDIBLE by the way) Another thing that happened was that our photographers took picture after picture after picture between the wedding and the reception. Although our pictures turned out gorgeous, this began to cut into the reception a little too much. We were getting off schedule and the guests wanted to eat. I finally ended up telling the photographers (who were super nice and professional the entire time) that they had taken enough photos of the bridal party and I wanted to enjoy my reception. And that is just what I did. Enjoyed every minute of this perfect day regardless of what went off without a hitch and what didn’t.  You can spend this once in a lifetime event upset because something didn’t go right or you can roll with it and have a blast! But its best to go into it not thinking everything will go according to plan.

9. It is YOUR day

Everyone is going to have opinions, suggestions, comments, ect…While they are sometimes helpful (and sometimes annoying) just remember, ultimately that this is YOUR wedding. What you say and what you want should be the priority. Now on the contrary, please also have the consideration for those who are helping with/paying for the wedding. There is no law saying anyone HAS to help you plan your wedding and anyone one HAS to pay for your wedding. We allowed our parents to have more say than anyone else in what they would like, since they were the financial contributors. But there were things I would not budge on. For instance I was told that certain people (the extremely conservative religious ones who still lived in the 18^th century) probably would not come to the wedding because there was *gasp* alcohol being served. I busted out laughing. If THAT is what gets someone all bent out of shape, then they probably shouldn't come.

8. You don’t HAVE to talk to everyone

I don’t care how many wedding websites say that proper etiquette is to have a receiving line or to make sure you talk to every single person who comes to the wedding. Unless the wedding website is going to pay for the extra hours you would have to add on to your reception to do that, they can shove it. Depending on the size of your guest list, you may not be able to do this. It’s ok. Talk to as many people as you can but remember to have fun and enjoy yourself as well. The whole day will be one big blur that goes by extremely fast (My husband finally just had to grab me a drink and pull me onto the dance floor). You did not do all this preparation for only GUESTS to enjoy. You need to enjoy as well.

7. This is one day where it is OK to over-do the makeup.

As someone who enjoys wearing make up almost all the time, I sometimes wonder if people think I wear to much or think I do it because I am *gasp* naturally really ugly!!!! (I just like make up….suck it) But on this day you will be photographed a lot and usually under bright lights (which tend to make you look pale...although I definitely overdid the tanning a bit). You will also be going non-stop all day and probably will not have time to do any real touch ups so make sure you are wearing enough so it doesn’t melt off before the wedding even starts. (You will sweat, summer wedding or not)

6. In most cases….you get what you pay for

This does not apply to everyone in every instance. I know a lot of people who really do their research and really find some unheard-of deals and people have connections.. For my wedding, truth be told, most of the time when we thought we were getting a great deal, we weren’t. I am going to use our florist for instance. Her prices were remarkably low and since I really did not care about the flowers since they would die anyway, we went with her. I really wish we hadn’t. The flowers for my bridesmaids looked like they were picked out of a field by a 4 year old. She kept changing the delivery time for the flowers and made it so I had to get to the church earlier than I wanted to, to meet her there. Then she ends up sending her son who shows up LATE and then she shorted us flowers for the reception tables and we had to go to Kroger and buy more. Then she proceeded to tell us it was our fault.  Brady was even supposed to have a clip on flower for his suit and she forgot to include that as well. She allowed us to borrow a couple nice pots to keep the flowers wet as long as we returned them….out of spite, we kept them.

Oh yeah what was I talking about again? Getting what you pay for! Yeah that’s right. Sorry I am off my soap box now. It is funny because we can usually tell where people spend their money at weddings. I don’t get why people use cheap DJ’s. (Before your claws come out, I understand not everyone can afford the best of everything. I am no different. I had to do without some things I really wanted so I could have other things yadda yadda yadda. I get it.) But DJS who sit in the corner of a room, have no personality, have a horrible sound system and act like they are at a high school dance don’t impress me. The DJ is the host of the entire evening. I feel the DJ is the one thing that will make or break a reception and set the tone of the evening. If a fun DJ is not your priority, then ignore everything I just said. But seriously, I am in no way meaning to sound superficial. I am only speaking from experience and no DJ that was going to charge a couple hundred dollars was going to be that good.  I just know from my own personal experience, when I go to a wedding I do not remember the flowers or the vows or the hair or dresses or tuxes or even the music. I remember if I had fun at the reception or not.

5. Truthfully, if you can help it, try to get married before reproducing

I am one of those people who couldn’t help it. Actually yes I could have. But the night I conceived my son, I was not thinking about how hard it would be to plan a wedding while working full time and taking care of a baby. Even though I did pull it off like a Rock Star, It was HARD!!! When you plan a big wedding, unless you hire a wedding planner which just wasn't in the budget for us,  you will spend a lot of time in meetings with different vendors. We were able to get a sitter for the ones that definitely required our full attention, but I did not want to dump my child off with someone every time we had to meet with a photographer, florist, DJ, pastor, baker, caterer, exorcist, ect…Ok just joking about the exorcist…kind of…

It cracks me up when people who don’t have kids complain about how stressed out they are when planning a wedding. I want to tell them to take a baby with them who needs to be fed in the middle of EVERY MEETING and then gets fussy and craps themselves while you are trying to listen to the sales associate and sign paperwork. Then on your wedding day, even if you have a sitter, you still worry about your child being taken care of and if you go on a honeymoon, you have to prepare your child for a week without you, which was probably harder for us than it was for Brady. In all honestly though, I envy anyone who does not have that added stress. Although I love my son more than I have ever loved anything in the world, it was a challenge to do all this wedding crap and make sure all his needs were met. No matter what….your child will always come first. Even if it IS your wedding day.

4. Make sure you have something lined up to eat AFTER the reception…

…because you will be famished. The food at our reception was delicious! I really hope our guests enjoyed it because we had a few bites of everything and then we were done. And that decadent cheesecake…That bit of cake that we smushed in each other’s faces was all we ate of it. (Luckily we do get a free cake on our 1 year anniversary so we can truly enjoy it). But what I am getting at is between the adrenaline from the entire day and the “getting pulled in a hundred different directions at once” thing doesn’t really end until the night is over. I had no idea I would be starving the way I was. Luckily, one of my most amazing and wonderful friends has a husband who at the time was a manager at the world’s GREATEST restaurant…drum roll….Bonefish Grill! Between the wedding and the reception they stopped at Bonefish to have drinks and they picked us up some Bang Bang Shrimp to go! We ate it in the hotel after the reception. This was seriously the coolest thing anyone did for us that night! (Thank You Alicia and Leighton!!) I seriously want to pay that forward and do it for someone else at their wedding just because of how baller it was!!!!

Who wants to invite me to their wedding???

3. People will show up who didn’t RSVP…and people who RSVP’d won’t show up…

This is frustrating because in most cases, the majority of everything at a reception is based on head-count. So you basically just flushed the money you paid for someone’s food and alcohol down the toilet. I understand some things do come up. People get sick, people have emergencies, AA, rehab, cult-obligations ect.….but mostly people are rude and don’t realize what they are doing when they "just aren't feeling like being social" that day. Send them a bill for the money you wasted on them……..Joking. But in all seriousness, let it go. The people who DO show up and did not RSVP will probably balance it out anyway.

2. Say Thank You!!!

Steve and I have gone to 2 weddings where we either bought a really nice gift off the registry or gave money and we did not receive any sort of Thank You. That is tacky. Even if they are thank you cards from the dollar store. Take the time and do it. They got all dressed up and bought you a gift or gave you money out of their own pocket. You are not too busy to say thank you. If you don't have their address, look it up.

And last but most importantly…..

1. As you are planning for your wedding, make sure you are also planning for the marriage…

People tend to focus so much on the details of their upcoming nuptials, that they completely neglect the preparation for marriage. In order for our pastor to marry us, he required us to attend 8 pre-marital counseling sessions with him. I was not too thrilled at first. And usually no one really is. Something ELSE to take up our time and money….but honestly it was the best investment we could have made. We learned how to communicate and understand each other so much better. We learned what we needed from each other and we learned that if ever there was a time when our marriage wasn’t doing so hot, we could look back on these 8 sessions and remember what we learned in the beginning.  If I can offer you any piece of advice, do this! Your wedding will be over after one day but your marriage is forever. Now enjoy a few photos from our wedding day:

Meghan