Wedding Question: What Would You Do Differently?

I would do a trial run of hair and make-up. Wear it outside for a few hours and see what happens. No matter where you get married, a reception = sweat. Also, I would have picked a lighter weight dress. I got married in the summer in Charleston, and my beaded goddess dress was so heavy that it actually sagged toward the end of the day.

We were married by a judge, with only six family members present and then a lovely dinner at a French restaurant. My then husband had proposed not long before a planned move, and I rolled with the last minute nature of the ceremony.
I wish I hadn’t. I think he might have had more respect for me and the marriage if it had been a bigger deal, with our larger circle of amily and friends.

Sad to say, but I would change almost everything except my husband. From the venue, flowers, my dress, the color theme and the photographer! After only a week of getting engaged, my then-to-be husband found out he’s been offered a job in the States. Obviously wanting me to go along, we sped up the wedding date and everything that has to go with it. I felt so rushed and because of the timing, most of my family members and childhood girlfriends (most are from out of the country) weren’t able to attend, leaving me only with my elder sister as the M.O.H. Our florist didn’t listen to what I wanted and delivered pale boring flowers that didn’t compliment my dress and decor. My dress, well, I went searching for my gown alone. The females in my life are all overseas, so I didn’t get guidance, advises and/or compliments to the dresses I tried. My husband knew I went looking alone, went to my dress fitting alone and collected my dress alone. But when he said I looked stunning on the day, that made me very happy. Our photographer wasn’t professional, taking photos of us and our guests whilst having a cigarette in hand. He wasn’t very helpful in giving us ideas of lovely locations for our wedding portraits (he was from the area so would have known more compared to us). It seemed that he didn’t really care about the outcome of the photos so long as he “snapped” and delivered our good some 3 months later. Sadly, my husband and I are stuck with these photos and because of that, I’m unable to gift some wedding photos to my family and in-laws. And there isn’t one photo of my husband and I throughout the wedding ceremony and celebration that is worth printing and framing. It is that bad

Don’t get me wrong.. I love that I married my gorgeous husband but I would seriously change so many things for my wedding that it’s not even funny!

Because I had to bring the wedding date forward by 3 months (yes! you read correctly, 3 months), most of my family, cousins etc. and closest friends who live overseas couldn’t make it. I know it was difficult for my cousins as most of them have kids, but I’m simply devasted that ALL of my closest girl friends didn’t even put effort into it. Also, because of the change of date, I had to “cutoff” my bridesmaids (I originally had 3 including my sister but obvioulsy had her alone at the end, which was very sad).
So if I could do my wedding differently, I’d change: Move the date to a few months after the original, the venue, colour theme (should have stuck with the original colour!), flowers, hairstyle, car hire, and without hesitation, the ‘so not creative’ photographer! It was so bad I have tears in my eyes every time I think about my wedding. =(

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If someone is still reading this post for ideas I have a couple. I never did the wedding thing but had nice parties after- less formal and still fun. For my daughter’s wedding I learned a couple of things- the coordinator for the day is a great idea…I had to run around at the last minute and some things did not get done right….we had a Chef to put things together I had made but he didn’t listen- I made 100 loaves of cruty french bread to go with the antipasto and he didn’t warm it and serve…it was really needed, people had to wait too long for the main food.

Also at the end of the evening no one was planned to ahead take everything down, clean, etc. The groom’s family did and were mad and got mad at my Ex who got madder – it was not pretty. There are so many things to learn when you have a Wedding, get help if you can.

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– no attendants, less stress, loved it
– my dress was amazing, even though it was more formal than i originally planned and was probably too formal for the wedding I ended up having
– did my own makeup after many sessions and study at various department store counters. I did great but spent a lot of time on the prep.
– got my hair done by a wonderful lady, we did a trial run which was perfect, and I should have shown her the picture of the trial because I was less of a fan of the day-of version!
– guest list: fewer coworkers, more friend-friends. our wedding was right before we moved out of state and we were thinking of it as a going away bash and wedding, but guest-wise it was more wedding (and a little gift-seeking, now that I think about it) and less bash.
– on the bash note, more dancing! I shoulda got a real DJ instead of getting a friend-who-has-DJ’d to play from a set of pre-selected songs off our own collections. We’re a little eccentric with our music, so I might have had more dancers if there was more recognizable music
– we had hearty appetizers, not proper dinner. I still would go this route, but had more food & more variety, and had more of it myself.
– set an expectation for husband and I to spend some more time together at the reception, we only danced together at the first dance (which was last-minute, he insisted on no first dance because he’s shy and not much of a dancer, then I panicked and made him dance with me so that other people would be comfortable getting up and dancing) and we hardly saw each other the rest of the time because I was trying to get people on the dance floor and he was having a heart-to-heart with a friend in a back room.
– maybe put a little flourish into the ceremony, it was all talking and about 6 minutes long. we did have unique vows, which DH messed up on a little bit (and I don’t regret at all, it got a great laugh and one of our best pics is the moment afterward)
– would probably go for videographer, because you get all caught up and end up missing a lot

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A few things I would have changed:
1. I wouldn’t have procrastinated and left the program (and assembly) until the last minute. So stressful!
2. We didn’t have assigned seating since it was a buffet but we majorly messed up and didn’t have reserved tables for our families. I have awful memories of my grandparents cramped in a corner with a bad view. So sad.
3. I would have gotten my dress fitted. I thought it fit well and wanted to save the expense but it ended up looking too big in the chest area.
4. Finally I would have had a videographer to capture our vows, friends/families, and my Dad’s speech. He passed away almost 2 years ago and I would give anything to listen to that speech again.
Overall everything worked out and we walked away as a married couple as planned!

ps. I should also mention that the friend who made sure we had a car was a single dude!

Also, we’re both HUGE music people but by the time we got to choosing our song and our father-daughter mother-son dance song we were burnt out and just got the DJ to play some songs that really meant nothing to us. Wish we had concentrated on that more.

We had an extremely laid back, chill wedding that turned into a serious dance sesh at the end. Totally bad ass wedding, but the laid back, cool vibe resulted in 90% of our guests smoking pot in the bathroom or out on the porch throughout the reception. We had 200 guests………lol. Thankfully my conservative parents let loose and were to busy being drunk dance machines to notice it!!! HAHA!

1. Wish I would have had alcohol at my wedding (it wouldn’t have gone over well with some family members).

2. I would have not used the tacky streamers I chose for the send-off and used sparklers instead!

3. I would have cut most of the guest list… there were a lot of people I had never seen in my life before!

My husband and I are both photographers who had been recently shooting for a local wedding photographer. He offered to shoot our wedding for free, so we were definitely up for that. I’ve always been in love with photography, it is my career and passion, and all I wanted was to have a quaint, cozy backyard wedding with close friends and family. And most importantly, I just wanted beautiful photos. I made all my table decorations by hand, everything was Pride & Prejudice inspired (like the big white ball from the movie). I SO regret letting my mother in-law send out the invites, because she then told later that instead of about 35 close friends and family, she had invited all of HER friends, which put the list of people to above 100. Then I didn’t have enough money to buy all the lovely white chairs and white lace tablecloths for the outdoor reception, so we had to get rolls of plastic table clothes and cut them to size, duck tape them down, and we ended up with BROWN plastic chairs that they managed to get for free. We couldn’t do the gourmet dishes I wanted, so they got pasta catered. It turned out horrible, of course. Not that it mattered, cause the only thing I ate the whole day was maybe one bite of each thing, and a sip or two of wine. I was so distracted the whole time. What made it worse was our photographer “boss” had been shooting like a mad man, and we thought we had some great moments captured. It turns out that all his gorgeous previous wedding photos he had on his website were all shot by OTHER talented photographers he hired. And our photos were so bad that kids from the audience with iphones took better photos. I was and still am devastated. We haven’t printed, uploaded, or framed even one of our photos from that day. And I pretty much regret most of the day and what happened, except the part where we said “I do”. Because I know that’s all that matters! But being a wedding/fashion photographer, I just wince when I think of the disaster.

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Also, when my husband was the best man at his friend’s wedding and it came time to give his unplanned speech, one of his lines was, in an Al Sharpton sort of way, “Let Jesus rain down upon you!”

That should make anyone with speech regret feel better.

Our wedding as a celebration (the dress, the party, etc.) I would not change at all! But I would make sure that our families would not ruin the day for us — sadly, as it has happened. That means: I would not ask my mo to be the wedding planner, for instance…

I’m getting remarried in two weeks and I love getting the chance to plan another wedding knowing what I know now (plus having Pinterest makes it so much easier!) My first wedding (in 2007) was large, fairly traditional, and expensive. The biggest change this time around is size, and I can’t emphasize that smaller is so much better when it comes to weddings. My biggest regret was how little time I had to talk to my guests and I didn’t want to repeat that.

We’re doing it all in my parents’ back yard and keeping everything casual and homemade. There are things that I would never skimp on and that’s the photography, food and wine:)

One of the nice things about getting married a second time is that you get a chance to do exactly this (well, not exactly, usually it’s not to the same person)! :) My first wedding was super traditional, stressful to plan, and exhausting, and when it came time for me to get married again, I would have rather had my wisdom teeth out again than go through all of that a second time.

My first wedding:
-traditional wedding dress and white veil
-about 150 people (almost everyone we invited came!)
-fancy invitations (cost us about $1000)
-bridesmaids and groomsmen
-fully catered buffet from an annoyingly superstitious caterer
-full wedding cake
-30 minute ceremony in a church with walking down the aisle, readings, prayer etc. service was conducted by a pastor we didn’t know
-tons of fancy flowers from a local florist
-no drinks
-held in an out of town location
-had to get ready in the sunday school room of the church
-paid a ton of money for a pro photographer who took 2 years to get us our pictures

My second wedding (which was absolutely perfect and I wouldn’t change a thing):

-green dress that I had made for me, cost about 1/5 of my original wedding dress and was way more comfy
-made a lace wedding stole for myself
-held it in a private room in a local restaurant
-5 minute service was conducted by our best friend and was nonreligious (wrote our own very straightforward, modern vows)
-20 guests
-food was a small menu of the restaurant fare that I put together, and was AMAZING. restaurant desserts instead of cake since neither of us really get into cake.
-full bar and some wines I selected
-made the invitations myself online, $15 total and $10 for custom stamps
-got ready at our hotel in comfort and leisure and drove ourselves down the street to the restaurant
-got the flowers from our local farmer’s market from a very charming local grower
-next door neighbor (who is a photographer) did the pictures

I’m glad I had my first wedding in the sense that both sets of grandparents were there (they’re all gone now) and a lot of relatives came that I never see. But I would not change one thing about my second wedding, it was absolutely perfect and when it was over we all agreed that we wanted to go back and do it over again.

I would have spent the money on a professional photographer rather than use my brother. He’d never done a wedding before so the pictures didin’t turn out too well. Fortunately, a few years later we became acquainted with a very talented photographer who did a beautiful session for us in our wedding clothes.
I would also have had the groomsmen get nicer clothes. We just had them get some dress pants, a shirt and a tie. Unfortunately, the style we suggested didn’t fit some of the guys too well and they didn’t say anything because they didn’t want to cause a fuss. The result was kind of “fat-guy-in-a-little coat.” The groomsmen pictures were super awkward.
Otherwise, our wedding was wonderful and I loved every part of it.

I abselutely loved my wedding and would do it all the same again. Off course being such a perfectionest, I would probably have a longer reception and my hair. I didin’t have the best hair day, but I was so relaxed and happy that day that it didn’t matter. Looking at pictures now, wish that I had picked up my hair. Everything else was just majical and perfect.

these comments are so fascinating. interesting to see what people loved and learned during the process. weddings are so intense! it’s kind of a bummer you only do it once, haha:)

haha! I would change A LOT!!

the biggest one would be that I would have either eloped or done a chic courthouse wedding with just us & our immediate family and saved all that flipping money

YES to skipping the formal portraits. I found I skipped right over those when looking at our proofs for the first time. Cocktails with our guests would have been much better (and I would have gotten to taste our delicious appetizers!). We somehow also ended up not really having a piece of our cake beyond the quick taste we had after we cut it, which is a shame, because it was great cake! Otherwise, pitch perfect, and of course any wedding that ends up with you married to your love is a great one.

I am currently planning my wedding and WOW this is really helpful. I think the biggest take-away is that the person you marry is the most important thing. It really makes me happy to read so many people who say that while there are things they would have changed, they wouldn’t change the person they married and that’s the most important thing. It makes me feel SO much better about letting go of all the other stuff. Also, I really don’t want a bridal party and we have gotten so much resistance that I almost caved, but these comments have me determined to hold out.

I would have done my hair differently. I went with a traditional french twist that I think wound up looking a little matronly. I’ve seen so many great hairstyles since, but since I couldn’t make up my mind before I went with basic and it was boring. I also would have taken off my veil at the reception. I got a headache about an hour after it started and thought it was just from being tired. At the end of the night back at the hotel I took off the veil and my headache went away!

Seeing a post from you about weddings reminds me to ask you something that I’ve always wondered about wedding announcements in the NYT, like yours. And, since your husband works for them, you are the perfect person to ask! In your annoucement it says “the bridegroom’s previous marriage ended in divorce”. Obviously, it means that Alex was married to another woman, prior to you. I was married to another man, prior to my current husband. If I were my husband and our announcement was in the NYT and it said that my marriage had previously ended in divorce (a fact), I would not be thrilled. I would remind myself that it should not for one second take away from our commitment and excitment, etc., but, I would not like it! Why, why do they do that??