Wedding Question: What Would You Do Differently?

Marry somebody else.

Not a thing. We had a simple ceremony at a friend’s house on the beach, followed by a low country boil with my husband’ home brews. I wore a jcrew dress I’d bought off of eBay. I bought flowers from Walmart the day before, and our mothers made a few different cakes. The only big expense was the photographer. Our friends still talk about it!

I’d hire a professional photographer instead of a family member whose photos I hadn’t seen. I know this really goes against tradition but I hated not being able to talk to my fiancé. It would’ve made the day much less stressful if we had some time together.

My lip color is the only thing I’d change. It makes me angry just talking about it! I didn’t think about it ahead of time so I just asked my mom for lipstick when we got to the venue! Ugh! All the pictures I hate my lip color! Too pink I wanted red!

I had an AWESOME wedding, but it’s fun to think about what I should have changed.

I wish I’d asked both my parents to walk me down the aisle, instead of just my Dad.

I wish I’d cut out some off the excess tulle off from around my beautiful lace dress, and added a little leather belt.

I wish I’d told the groomsmen to wear their own grey pants and white shirts and shoes, and gifted them matching vests and ties, instead of making them rent tuxes, and I wish I’d let my husband wear suspenders like he’d wanted! :(

I wish I’d spent a little more time making the rounds and visiting with the guests, many of whom my parents had invited – people who’ve supported me all my life and had traveled far to be there.

I wish we’d stuck around afterwards when a bunch of our friends jumped in the lake – it was so hot, I might have joined them.

But for every thing I would change, there are ten things we did right. The venue was dreamy, the DJ and dancing were killer, the food was amazing, our photographers were perfect, and multiple people told us afterwards it was the most fun (funnest) wedding they’d ever attended. Dancing with my new husband is still one of my most cherished memories to this day.

I started photographing weddings a couple years after we got married, and I’ve often thought about this!

The only thing I would change was that I’d have had my hair done professionally. And that’s it. The rest was exactly what we wanted! :)

25 years ago, my husband and I got married in the middle of a 6 month backpacking trip through Europe. We decided on England, just so that we would understand what was being said. We ended up getting married in one of the most sought after registry offices in London, “Kensington and Chelsea”, because the youth hostel that we were staying at happened to be in that district when we registered.
I wore a dark green lace dress and a large green hat, with a distressed brown leather coat that I bought at a second hand store in London because it was December and I was worried it would be cold. My husband had a white puffy sleeved shirt ( he kind of looked a bit piratey) and a brown leather moroccan vest that I bought him for Valentine’s day shortly after we met.
We invited two “new” friends (strangers really) to be our witnesses and sign for us and we took all our own wedding photos with a tripod and a long cord with an air squeezing thing at the end.
After a month of staying at our new friends’ flat in London (while they went back to Canada for Christmas, we ran out of money and so we decided to spend the remaining months of our trip working as volunteers on a kibbutz in Israel.
I would not change a thing.
(I have drawn live cartoon portraits at weddings for the past 30 years and have never been to a wedding that I loved more than ours.)

I loved my wedding so much. I actually didn’t have a dance floor – I knew it would make me feel so awkward and icky, and I am 1000% happy with that decision. Instead of dancing, we released sky lanterns, toasted s’mores, and had a giant impromptu singalong around 2 campfires. There are a few things I would change, though:
1. My dress. I wish I had gone with J.Crew’s Vivienne, a simpler satin number with sleeves.
2. The desserts. We got married on a lake in the North Woods, so we were scrambling to find vendors that lived up to our Chicago-sensibilities. Our food was fantastic, our desserts were embarrassing (cherry cobbler with too much baking powder in it, blech) and our caterer actually forgot to thaw the pies we had driven 400 miles for the wedding. If I could do it over, I would do all pies from Chicago, in a lot of different flavors (at the appropriate temp).
3. The photographer. We were trying to save pennies, so we had a friend of a friend do it. He worked a really long day and gave us a super reasonable price, but the photos don’t really do the day justice.
4. The drink tubs. We put out non-alcoholic beverages in tubs of ice near the bar, so our bartender didn’t have to hand those out. My mom assured me she had something that would work, so I didn’t source the tubs myself. Facepalm. My wedding had gorgeous flowers, mismatched china I collected myself, white paper lanterns hung all over a forest . . . and the drinks sat in clear rubbermaid tubs, the kind that go under the bed, minus the lids.

But all in all, it was still pretty perfect.

Am I the only one who wouldn’t change a thing? I know a lot of these are minor things one would have done differently, but a lot of these are down right depressing!

TO ANY FUTURE BRIDES READING THIS COMMENT: None of it will matter as long as you love him/her. xx

We eloped and then had a full on wedding. The eloping part felt very intimate and lovely. If I had to do it over again. I wouldn’t have let my husband call his folks until after we got back home. My MIL pitched a fit! Also, I was coerced into inviting EVERY last human our parents knew. Ridiculous. I would have kept the wedding in a chapel instead of the main sanctuary also. But everything else was awesome. Married happily for 29 years.

I totally agree with what you said about going simpler! Our wedding was small/medium size with only 80 people, but in retrospect I would love it if it was just our family and super close friends.

The main thing I would change would be my dress.
I went for a very traditional ball gown style dress because my mom kept suggesting them to me and then happy-crying when I tried them on; the one I settled on was a beautiful dress, but I secretly wanted a simple, short A-line sheath. The consolation is that my mom absolutely loved it!
Of course, there are other things that didn’t go as planned during the day, but all of the little hiccups helped to make things unique and memorable!

My fiance and I are eloping in Big Sur, CA in 5 weeks. We’ve been together for 10 years. He proposed in June while on a hiking trip in Acadia, Maine and we started planning a pretty traditional wedding in the mountains of VA set for early October 2017. While home in upstate NY over the holidays we were hearing nothing but nightmare stories, it was sad to us that in conversation it seemed like couples were prone to reflect on many of the negative aspects surrounding their day and already torn with how much everything was adding up to – and how challenging it was to plan with our hectic DC lifestyles…gifted with a trip to Napa for my 30th that same week, en route back to DC from NY we talked about how nice it would be do to something private while in California and just decided to go for it! I took a solo trip down highway 1 three years ago and I recall approaching Big Sur and thinking to myself “Man, I wish Sam could see this.” Our families are a little sad but mostly supportive of our decision. They requested we still hire a photographer so we’ll have someone there for the private ceremony in the redwoods. Still a bit of planning but much less than the traditional route and we look forward to enjoying every moment of the day.

I get married 10 years ago. Everything was perfect and I loved every minute but, if I were about to marry these days, I would chance my dress – which was a very traditional gown – with something more sophisticated, and I would have lots of music and dances! And I would change also the wedding cake, probably the only thing that I didn’t love even at that time!

This is kind of timely as I’m getting married in 8 weeks and wonder if anyone has had the same experience – we talked about eloping but decided on a wedding because our families live far apart and it was the one chance for everyone to come together for a weekend and get to know each other – BUT, I’m so regretting it and so not a DIYer and so OVER spending so much money that 8 weeks before I’ve totally thrown in the towel and decided to just “see how it goes”! I’m so sick of paying for stuff and talking about weddings – I wish we had done it already. I know it will be fun on the day and as my guy keeps saying “All we want out of this is to come out of it married”, I’m trying to keep it all in perspective.

(It probably doesn’t help that I picked a dress for the venue, and not my style, and when it didn’t fit quite perfectly at my 1st fitting, my future MIL helpfully told the seamstress “Well, she has got fatter.” Why did we choose to celebrate with family, again?)

Best honeymoon souvenir ever!! :-) :-)

I would have invited fewer coworkers & more friends! Picked more music that older people would have danced to – we made our own playlist.
I do not regret having no attendants. We have many good friends that helped us out, and we didn’t have to worry about outfits and obligations. (I’ve also never been an attendant at a wedding.)
We had it in the middle of the afternoon & didn’t have a full meal and that’s another reason people didn’t really dance much.

My than boyfriend, now husband, and I both live in anchorage ak. We got engaged and everyone had their own opinion of what our wedding should be. It was exhausting. We told both sets of parents that we were eloping a week before we did. We went to a small “end of the road town,” McCarthy, AK. Had the pastor at the small church perform the ceremony and the witnesses was the pastor and his wife’s friends visiting from Florida. I wore jeans and a cashmere jcrew sweater with frye boots and my husband wore jeans and a button down.

We ended up having the best dinner of our lives that evening at the restaurant in town, copper river red salmon with blueberry sauce and my husband had scallops.
I loved that man so much and still do and all the other people’s expectations… not so much!

I have to say I feel very relieved reading all these comments, because I didn’t get the dress of my dreams (my mom made it as added her own ‘touch’) and I’ve always regretted it. Like, a lot. But hearing how many women also felt the same way about their dress, and remembering all the totally awesome parts of our wedding (we still say our wedding was the funniest wedding we’ve ever been to!) makes me relax about it all.

Funny you say you’d ditch the dance! We didn’t plan a dance, but we did have my iPod out playing music. Instead, we had drinks, games (I LOVE the pictures and seeing groups of friends and family playing Uno, Scrabble, Yahtzee!), and we had a fire and made s’mores. But you know what? My friend switched up the music and people dance anyways! We barely had room for it! It was great to see everyone so relaxed and enjoying themselves how they wanted.

We had our wedding outside under a big tent – and it rained during the day. And even with a tent, by evening the grass and inside were very damp. It was August and people were wearing coats! So – even though I have no control over it, I would change the weather.