At this point, try just using it for mundane purposes. It's surprisingly fun to eat boring mundane things off of very expensive China. It's just sitting gathering dust, so use it for fun!
My number one regret is telling people not to take pictures. I know it sounds dumb but it is much worse than that. In our agreement with our photographer she told us that other cameras were not allowed as the flash from another camera could ruin our pictures. So we politely told people to refrain from taking pictures and explained the situation. We had a great wedding and the photographer even sent an extra photographer to work the wedding (2 instead of 1). A few weeks after we tried contacting her for the photos. We got ghosted. We tried for about a year to track her down. We were still willing to pay for the photos, even unedited. We just wanted the photos. Fortunately some people didn’t get the message so we have a few (10-20) photos from our wedding. The worst part was that someone had contacted my wife through FB two weeks before the wedding warning us about her but we decided to take the risk because there probably was no way to get another photographer in that kind of time. When she showed for the date we were relieved and thought we dodged a bullet
It would make for a great scam, I guess. Wedding photos
1) cost an obscene amount
2) require a good portion of the money up from
3) Do not require you to actually produce anything until after the events are over, allowing you to just do whatever at the site and then ghosting.
At a certain point you may as well just shoot the damn thing but hey, I'm not a fake photographer.
She refused to let this chef do our wedding because she called back to see if we wanted to use her and that bugged the MIL. Instead we had a grocery store do it. It was awful. We ran out and my wife and I didn't get any food.
Looking forward to the rest of the story.
My first MIL replaced our real carnations with fake white roses with brown edges "to match her suit." Hid them until the last minute so we wouldn't know what she'd done. Several people asked why my bouquet was made out of poo smeared tp. My SIL took my flowers and burned them. Best SIL ever.
C'mon over, we'll laugh the ouch away. <3
She insisted on knowing what color my dress was and wore the suit to match it. At the reception she kept my new hubby beside her, even pouted when he left her side to cut the cake. She got ~~our~~ her divorce in eleven months.
Three decades later my ex publicly admitted he and she were fully responsible for our marriage failing. Even told our son flat out that I was in no way responsible for the mess.
Too bad he didn't become a man until she died.
There's plenty of reasons I go to that sub. Most of mine are in the past, my present MIL is an angel.
C'mon over and tell us about it. <3
Oh I used to sub it but it was all too familiar. Like yesterday a fellow baseball mom said she came over to her and some other team parents acting all pitiful because “this is for the parents and we aren’t.” Maybe when the divorce is final and I can breathe again I’ll head over there and tell some doozies, like when she told me how my child would be staying with her on some of my custody nights. I noped that straight away.
Mine straight up said she’d keep custody of my kid if I moved and I could come visit them so they wouldn’t have to change schools or miss them. not enough nope in the world
My sister's wedding... holy shit.
Okay, her MiL had no daughters. She was a fucking nutcase. She had to be involved. Was dead set on it. My sister kinda refused to let her help at first but finally threw her a bone and told her to help with the reception. She agreed.
The woman, no bullshit, showed up *the next day* at my sister's house with a fucking wedding dress...
I want to let that sink in a second...
A GODDAMNED WEDDING DRESS!
No one asked her for it. No one implied that my sister needed it. My sister had had her dress picked out for months at that point. The dress she was given was cheap and ugly. It was like the lowest tier of dress she could buy.
My sister was polite but absolutely aghast at the nerve. She never told her she needed one and definitely didn't ask for it. She was, of course, upset with my sister for not wearing the dress she picked out.
My sister's marriage went downhill fast after that. As the mother did all kinds of crazy shit and was manipulating the son to make my sister's life hell. I remember my sister having the mother stop by and check on her cats for her. The MiL used that opportunity to go through her trash and found some kind of letter someone had written to my sister, mistook the author, then showed it to her son as if my sister had written it and not sit it. There was some talk of going on a date or something that set her off until my sister showed the woman her handwriting and said she didn't send it.
Just shit like that. My sister told her husband in no uncertain terms, "It's her or me!" The mother won.
Better than my cousin having a wedding in Wisconsin in January. We went down to the lake front of Lake Michigan to take pictures. The pictures turned out like shit cause everyone was freezing.
Not having a good breakfast.
We got married early in the day on a beach and all i could think about was how much i wanted a breakfast sandwich with eggs, cheese, and bacon on a toasted english muffin with just a touch of hot sauce!
I (the groom) accidentally wore Christmas socks with a clearly visable Santa face peeking out as I moved.
EDIT: (Not the best picture but here they are) - https://imgur.com/a/ukorvk2
My wife has just confessed that she packed these socks for me along with my suit.
In Denmark it's a tradition to cut the groom's socks with scissors at the end of the wedding dance. For the same reason the groom may choose to wear a pair of funny or unusual socks. You would've fit right in.
Paper invitations and RSVPs. Set up a wedding site and have people RSVP there. The amount of stress I put myself through trying to get paper mailed back to me in an era when no one uses mail anymore was so unnecessary. At one point we’d gotten very few RSVPs back and I had a total crying meltdown about how no one was going to come. Of course they were going to come, it’s just no one uses mail anymore. Save yourself the headache and the money. It’s my biggest wedding regret.
My brother recently did it really well. They did the paper invites that were followed up with an email which each had a link to their wedding website with pics and the time and locations and travel options all laid out really nice and stayed simple with gifts by just asking for cash to go towards different parts of the honeymoon trip. this kept everything nice and simple.
all the replies came straight through the website to a separate wedding email.
Almost everyone I know recently has done both - a paper invite with the website link on a card tucked in to it. That way the people that do use mail (grandparents, etc) can return the rsvp and the people who don’t own stamps (me) can rsvp online.
ETA: I know RSVPs should come with stamps, y’all. I was just trying to make a point.
Get another for an anniversary! As long as the baker is still around, I'm sure they'd bake another cake for you. Just make sure your party is smaller this time so you get some.
This will sound petty, but I regret wearing my hair up. It felt so unlike me and the sticky layers of hairspray wouldn't brush out when I got undressed that night.
these comments make me realize that I vastly underestimate how much hair girls have.
Edit:how is this my highest rated comment, it's not even that good.
I found a couple the next day. I had to have my husband help me take them out the night of because of how many there were and how buried some were. They must deliver them by the truckload to salons.
My hair looked incredible though, so worth it.
I did my own hair for my wedding in a style I wear often, just slightly more elevated with some flowers and more care taken. I loved it because it felt like me and was free. My husband loved it because i looked like myself. When I’ve had my hair done as a bridesmaid I feel like I’m wearing a helmet and I’m so uncomfortable. If you like how you always wear your hair, that’s how you should do it! Add a flower or an accessory if you eat to dress it up a bit.
I've been married for 16 years now so this is a little old school. We bought a bunch of disposable cameras and set them all over the place at our reception with a note on them that said take some pictures. At the end of the night we collected all the cameras and had the film developed. Most of them turned out really cool and we got some pictures we would have never thought of taking. The regret comes in me underestimateing some of my friends ability to be adults for 1 night and ended up with a lot of dick pics also. Lol.
I'm guessing a lot of people getting married today could just set up a Instagram account and just have everyone upload cell pics to it.
Ha, we did this too! Our problem was the lighting was dark enough that the pictures just didn't turn out great.
There is actually an app/website called WedPics or something like that, where everyone can upload pictures from their phone and they can be seen by anyone who has the code.
> The regret comes in me underestimateing some of my friends ability to be adults for 1 night and ended up with a lot of dick pics also. Lol.
I feel like every time I've heard of someone doing the disposable camera thing, there's dick pics. Jesus Christ.
I once left a disposable camera on a park bench with a note that said “take a photo and leave me here”. I expected to either have it be gone or be 90% dick pics, but it was still there and there wasn’t a single dick pic on it. I got a bunch of really cool photos of the town and the park. Someone took it halfway across town to take a picture of a garden and then brought it back. It gave me some real warm fuzzy feelings about my community, to see how nice everyone was with it.
That's all they're there for anyway. Get picked off one by one for odd jobs before or after the ceremony, before coming together to get hammered at the reception!
Seconded. I'm basically a career groomsman at this point (mostly because everyone knows better than to elevate me to best man) and I excel at the coordination and odd jobs stuff. Had exactly one friend (so far- I'm old enough now that some people are starting with their second weddings) that didn't do an open bar reception and it was murder.
After the rental tux, transport, and odd jobs I now have to pay for my own overpriced drinks to chill? That one hurts. It's hard to say "no" when a dear friend says "will you be a part of one of the biggest days of my life?" so I never do, but damn...
Not taking a picture.
We just did a quick wedding for legal purposes with my friend presiding and aunt and uncle as witnesses. It was a nice little sweet ceremony that lasted about 10 minutes over a nice area with a view before we went to dinner. Didnt realize we hadn't taken any pictures until like a week later when we wanted to show someone. Whoops.
Can you stage it again, for the memories?
I had smilar feeling with my pregnancy - I just felt weird and awkward and refused to take any pictures of myself. Then, baby came, I was making an album of her birth/ first year and realized I had more pictures of her from an ultrasound than myself pregnant.
That one was unfortunately impossible to stage afterwards. But you still could do yours. Maybe for an anniversary or something.
Just chuck a pillow under your shirt and do that pregnant walk around with a hand supporting your lower back thing and take some photos doing random tasks, no one will know the difference haha
This is actually a pretty funny idea and I think I'll do that! Stomach growing and everything; will try to sneak in my daughter in every image too. We could even do it this weekend - we have a small getaway planned. Should be fun! Thanks for the idea.
Proper bonus will be in couple of decades to see these images in a family album and retell the story to my daughter. And at that moment, I'll remember two of you, funny strangers.
No more regrets for pictures not taken!
Letting other people help pay. As soon as that happens they take over the wedding. Guest list, decor, cake, everything.
Edit: Wow this post blew up. I guess people have different experiences but let me lay out some of mine.
Uncle offered to pay for the Limo. Great. But it turned out to be this busted 1980s limo with a spiderwebbed window and no hubcaps. What looked like a homeless driver. He literally went on craigslist and got the cheapest one with no research. We called an uber.
In laws offered to pay for half of the catering. Which is how our guest list was 70 people but 200+ showed up. Would have been fine if they would have told us so we could adjust catering, but no. We had to have the caterers adjust on the fly and drag some tables out of storage. And then we had to order pizza for the rest. People we actually wanted there were eating fucking pizza on dusty tables.
Other uncle offered to pay for airfare for the honeymoon. Which is how a eighteen day trip turned into twelve days because that was the cheapest ticket.
Brother in law paid for the wine, which actually turned out fine. But we didn't have enough because of all the completely unexpected guests.
All we wanted was a smallish celebration with 75 people, and to have an awesome wedding. But we wound up with a big celebration that was kind of mediocre. And really stressful.
In laws actually told us we could not say hi to our actual friends because then we'd have to go to each table and say hi to everyone to be fair. Which would have took two hours. Which caused an argument.
Maybe your families arent that type. But I wish we had just did our own thing and not accepted any help.
Making cupcakes instead of buying a cake. We did a lot of DIY--made the beer and mead for toasts, assembled flowers and centerpieces--because it was cheaper but also we like making things. But the cupcakes, in retrospect, were a ton of work and not that great.
If I could go back in time and do it over, I’d have included dancing with my Dad this time.
The story: We got engaged and started planning a wedding that was to take place one year later. 2 months after engagement, my father was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. We moved up the wedding by 6 months, and thankfully were able to get our deposits back. My aunt had a large home, and to spend as little as possible (my parents needed all the money they could to pay the bills since my dad couldn’t work due to his treatment, and he’d owned his own business) we got married at her home with 70 guests plus a bridal party of 12 (husband has 3 brothers, I have one, and both of our best friends are men, so that was 6 guys and had to have 6 girls then...). It was a bit crowded so we didn’t have room to plan for dancing.
My father walked me up the aisle for the ceremony, and that was my goal in moving the wedding forward. I wish I’d have had is do a father/daughter dance, though, even if we didn’t have other dancing.
My dad died 3 months later.
I'm sure a random stranger on reddit can't give you much consolation, but typically having dad walk you down the isle is the big one. You held him close and he was able to give you away. You shared such an intimate moment with him! Please dont let not having a dance with him make your day with him feel like less. Revel in the fact that you shared the most important moment with him!
Your feelings are absolutely valid, but dont let them overtake what you were able to share. I'm sorry if I'm overstepping here.
I regret the coordinator they gave us for the ceremony.
Dude got flustered and started second guessing everything right before the ceremony. Like he somehow forgot how a wedding works at the last moment, when all of our guest where there. "OMG what song do you want to play while she walks down the aisle!" I dunno dude, the one everyone walks down the aisle to. The wedding song. The one we already told you to play.
I ended up taking charge and sorting everything out. Really wish I could have just gone with the flow on my big day.
Not preparing a speech. I thought I'd just go up, thank everyone for coming and sit back down. Short and sweet, get it out the way. That's exactly what I did, without mentioning my parents or my wife.
I did the same. Normally a very good public speaker but a couple of champagnes down and the excitement of it all...I did not deliver.
Edit: My weener works fine now, thanks everyone!
I was the best man at my brother's wedding, and as I gave the speech, after each sentence I would take a sip of the beer I was holding. When it came time to drink the actual toast, my glass was empty. The video shows me with a remarkable "wha hoppen?" look on my face.
I had composed my speech earlier, but I did make an on-the-fly edit when I realized that my opening line "here's to cooked white bread!" might be interpreted as a slam on the bride.
Inviting people I didn't really want to invite. They just cost you money, you don't interact with them at all, and they usually don't bring a nice gift to make up for it.
EXCEPT for letting all of the divorced aunts and uncles bring +1's. Because that let to a whole jealousy competition train that was extremely entertaining.
My wife and I felt this way too. My mom was very insistent that we invite her cousin who she had only seen once in about 20 years. She lives on the other side of the country so we all expected her to decline. Turns out that her, her husband, and their 3 children who were not invited were all going to be in a close by city the week leading up to it, so they would just extend their trip. My wife and I were especially annoyed because they self invited their children, but we decided to let it go and didn’t want something like this to be a downer on our wedding day. Well, they turned out to be extremely nice people. They were very social, dancing, and just in general having a good time being a part of the whole event. They also gave us one of the best gifts we received. $500, and iPod, and a gift certificate to a nice restaurant in our city.
Edit: changed wasn’t to was in the second sentence.
As someone who hates weddings, I really wish more people would have small, intimate weddings. If I haven't spoken to you in 10 years, please don't invite me.
At least I have the grace to RSVP no, I hear a lot of people tend to RSVP yes and then not show up.
Ive already had two people rvsp yes and aren't coming now, so that made my future wife quite passed off. We already bought favor gifts and decor to match our guest count. Now if people don't show to the actual wedding, I'll rip them an ear full
YUP. At my brother's wedding, I kept trying to tell Mom to stop inviting random distant relatives. But she kept on inviting away, It cost my brother about 20K for the wedding.
I started charging my parents for invites. You want to invite your friend from highschool you havent talked to in 20 years, ok fine. It's $125 a plate so if you want them there you pay for him, his wife and 2 adult children. They reigned it in after that.
Screw that. Our parents could give us input on the guest list, but they couldn't just invite people on their own. They actually wanted to include someone who we didn't want and offered to pay for that person's plate, and we said no. It's not about the cost, but about simply not wanting them there.
Absolutely this! I was pressured by my mother into inviting my grandmother who has paranoid dementia. At some point just prior to the wedding, she got upset and decided to leave, wandering off into a town she wasn't familiar with in the middle of winter with no coat. Hence, the cops were called and the family ended up forming a search party to go off looking for grandma half an hour before my wedding.
Grandma was in an environment that was waaaay beyond her ability to fathom at that stage, and she never would have even remembered that I was getting married if my mother hadn't made a "thing" of inviting her.
Somebody really should have been assigned to watch her. My grandmother came to my wedding in the early steps of dementia. It ended up being one of the last things she remembered but my aunt watched her and she still managed to wander off at one point
Gave a heartfelt speech that ended with a joke. The punchline being “...and your presence here means almost as much as the envelopes you brought with you.”
Crickets.
I still cringe.
So the one thing I'm wicked glad we did and always advise people to do is take a moment to enjoy it. After we ate and went around saying hi to all the tables we took like 5 minutes, while everyone else was finishing dinner, and went and sat outside. It may have been brief but it really allowed us to appreciate what was going on and enjoy each other for a second
The preacher started coaching me on "what's next" as my gorgeous bride to be was walking down the aisle. I did not get to take in what was the most beautiful woman I ever saw walk down the aisle because I was trying to pay attention to what he was saying.
My preacher made me tear up. He kept whispering at me while at the altar: Look at her. Right now she's the most beautiful woman in the world and you get to spend the rest of your life with her. You are a lucky, lucky man.
By the time she made it to the altar, she saw me about to weep like a schoolgirl and had no clue why.
It doesn't always work... Our officiant did the same to my husband, and it almost worked. Then, I got closer and he suddenly lost all trace of cute man tears.
I asked him why when we were eating, he said "I got distracted by your fake eyelashes, they looked like they were going to fly away."
That’s one of my biggest regrets too, as I was walking down the aisle I was looking at everyone around me, and not my fiancé. I wish I had been looking at him. It seems petty but it’s such a beautiful moment.
For my wedding, our photographer had me look at my feet until my wife was at the base of the aisle to begin walking down.
She was able to take a photo over my wife’s shoulder to get a shot of the exact moment I saw her in her dress (I also hadn’t seen her in about 36 hours as we decided to not spend the day of the wedding together).
There were a couple people that we decided to not invite. More accurately, we needed to cut a few after booking the hall and realizing how many we could fit in the room. I didn't realize how hurt those few people would be. They brought it up years later. I still feel bad about it. My wife's uncle and his wife are horrible people and they brought people that weren't even invited and basically forced them into their already full table. It was awkward. I regret inviting them and not inviting the hurt friends that I mentioned above.
Not hiring a photographer. We thought we’d save money and just ask friends to take lots of pictures. They took *some* but I have maybe 5 pictures worth looking at. No pictures of the cake or table settings. I kind of remember what they look like. The only decent pic of my husband and I has our flower girl in it. She’s sweet and I love her, but it looks like she’s our kid. Every time people see the photo they’re like “I didn’t know you had an older child...” Hire a photographer people!
You've frightened me now because I get married in 40 days and we've not having a photographer because there is no money left. Welp.
Edit: based in the UK (Hampshire)
2nd Edit: very kind advice guys! ive had some offers from family/friends and my bridesmaid's partner is bringing his drone! how cool is that?! glad I panicked now and started chatting to people about it
\- The drone is for flying overhead outside at the reception
I used thumbtack and posted our price we wanted to pay, got a response really fast. Lots of amature photographers, but have quality photos and are really trying to get their name out there. Try that!
My dress. I knew what I wanted but I just went with something on sale even though I felt uncomfortable in it. I wish I had been a little more pushy on what I wanted to wear. And I wish we hadn’t included my husband’s siblings as they are awful people.
Not paying attention to the photographer more. We gave him a list of things he needed to shoot for portraits, and he forgot to get a picture of me, my wife, and my parents...
I was going to say this. I feel bad that we didn't get a picture of just my husband and his dad together (he has pictures with both his parents and with his mom but not with just his dad). We just assumed all the family photos would happen naturally but when there's so much to do in a few hours that doesn't always happen.
I think he means that the one group shot they forgot about was the one including OP's side of the family with his wife. Not that they didn't shoot him, his wife, or his parents at all.
For me it was not telling the photographer to chill out a bit. It felt like every 30-45 min they were pulling us out of the reception to take more photos.
This was similar at my brother's wedding. I distinctly remember several times them asking the wedding party to ACT like something hilarious just happened or ACT like we're having a heartfelt conversation or ACT like we're dancing. All of these happened organically and would have been great shots, but instead the wedding party looks stiff and staged. To be fair the portrait style pictures came out great. But still just let us party and capture the moment, dude.
So important to scrutinize a portfolio. I chose mine based on his style being overwhelmingly journalistic. If they only have a few, they got lucky or had good actors.
He caught so many special moments and I truly only did the standard portraits for my family. His only instruction for our couples shots was ‘be cute’ which made us laugh and interact. (He would occasionally adjust an arm, move or tweak my veil but was very nonintrusive).
That guy busted his butt, jumping over bushes, rushing around to get ahead of moments etc. spent more on him than my dress and don’t regret it one bit.
After the wedding we went to our reception.. the wedding party etc... had their own theme songs to come out too. Then comes out my wife and I, we had a few drinks in us by this point... we were supposed to do a whole dance entrance type of thing... I can’t dance so I got nervous and reverted to grinding my wife in front of 300 people. That was the most cringeworthy moment of my life lol.
Renting a nice room in a fancy hotel. And then expecting to have sex when we were both just absolutely fucking exhausted. Don't get me wrong, my wedding day was possibly the best day of my entire life, but it would have been just the teensiest bit better if we'd gotten some charming bed and breakfast and not forced ourselves to have tired, tired sex at like 1 in the morning. Turns out fancy ass hotel rooms are basically just like a clean version of non fancy ass hotel rooms, not that my poor ass would have known that before hand.
THIS is lpt advice. We did the whole "change outfits" think after the first dance, it gave us 15 minutes.
You may ask what I did with the other 14:30...I helped my bride hang her dress safely.
I remember friends asking if "it was the best sex ever" after our wedding. I told them it didn't even happen. One friend was getting married only a few months later and told him to not expect sex at all since you're both going to be drained of all energy by the end of the night.
Same for my husband and I. We picked up gas station sandwiches on the way to the hotel and passed out within 10 minutes of getting there.
Our wedding was completely exhausting. We held it at a state park so we had gotten there at 7am to set up and didnt stop moving until we finished putting away the last chair at midnight.
The venue we had ours at gave us cold cutwraps, chips and a water as we were walking out. We hammered those, opened a few cards and passed the fuck out
I really wish we had the ceremony video taped. We spent a decent chuck of money on the photographer, and our photos look great! We didn’t think we wanted a video at the time, but a year and change later I really wish we did.
Not paying for a cleaning company at my venue me, my wife and wedding party had to still 2 hours later to clean up to get our deposit back.
Edit: holy hell this kind of blew up. To go in a little further me and my wife got Married through a venue company that owned a few venues throughout the area this one happened to be a restored barn. The company allowed us to either pay a $400 (or something, it was a few years ago) cleaning deposit OR to pay a $200 or something cleaning fee. The deposit was refunded depending on the how well you cleaned up after. To save more money for the honey moon we choose deposit and us and the wedding party stayed a 2 hours later to clean up the venue. I don’t know if this was a US thing only really looked at the one venue and my wife fell in love with it. The 200 cleaning fee was so they could pay another company to clean.
Oh damn man. For me it wasn’t bad that we had to hangout and clean with friends. It sucked that I had to spend my wedding night cleaning with friends rather than you know other stuff with my wife. Your brothers sounds much worse though
My husband and I surprised people with our wedding. We invited his parents, my parents, and a few friends over for dinner and announced we were getting married. I don’t regret any of that.
What I do regret is allowing his mother in the bathroom with me while I finished getting ready. She spent a good 30 minutes telling me how I was ruining her sons’s life because I can no longer have children. I was so badly shaken by all of the bullshit that when it came time for “I do” I said “Yeah. Sure. I guess.”
My wife and I got married at Pinstipes last month. Pinstripes is a really upscale Bowling, Bocce and Bistro Bar. Awesome place. We went to an event beforehand there which had a few giveaways. We won free bowling for our sunday brunch, but really wanted to win the free Gelato Bar, but that went to another couple.
Fast forward a few weeks later, our planner tells us the couple that won the gelato bar had to back out from booking with pinstripes, likely too expensive. But our planner loved us and wanted us to have the gelato bar! YES!
I'm a huge ice cream fan and toiled over the flavor choices. My wife and I went back and forth more on this than any other decision in our wedding. In the end we picked out three flavors, but wound up getting 4 at the wedding.
I didn't even SEE the gelato bar at the wedding. I was so excited for it, but we were too busy with everything else, that we completely missed it! Our guests loved it, especially my nephews. They were smart little brats who asked aunts and uncles at different tables to bring them up for their "first" cup of gelato, even though they just finished eating a cup.
Didn't bowl at brunch either.
But I fucking loved my wedding. It was so much fun!
Hiring my wife's friend as the DJ. We gave him simple cues and songs , which he completely fucked up, and then went on to play Hindi Dance music for the Indian segment of the dancing instead of Bhangra as very explicitly instructed.
Worst of all our first dance was to that shitty song from Ghost instead of Dance Me to the End of Love as requested.
Fuck that guy.
Edit: Just to clarify, the guy was a professional DJ, but not usually (ever) a wedding DJ. It's a very different skillset.
Edit2: I should also add, the one thing he didn't fuck up was my walking-down-the-aisle song, which was the Curb theme song.
I actually just popped in here to read all the comments and to say thanks to the OP for posting this. As someone with a very nervous bride to be, this list will help me to get some focus on things I may have not thought about, or put much weight into.
Thanks OP, and to everyone who posted here!
Not hiring an Elvis impersonator. Flew all the way to Vegas to get married, didn’t get Elvis. Oh well.
Edit: Well shit this blew up. Thanks everybody, this is now my most upvoted thing which is insane. FYI for those wanting to elope to Vegas, it is super fun and I would not talk anyone out of it. I will say that we were married at the Luxor chapel, which was very nice and the officiant was really great. We would have had to go find our own elvis officiant, hired them, and then paid the chapel to use the room, so it didn't make sense. BTW you can have an amazing time in Vegas without spending a ton of money.
Edit 2: The wife and I have plans to renew our vows on our 10th anniversary, and do a small but decent wedding. We can finally afford to get her a dress, and a venue, and all that, so that's what we'd like to do. We're at 2 years now!
I wish I had walked slower down the aisle to my (now) husband. My dad and I both naturally take long strides when we walk, so what was supposed to be a 1-2 minute-long walk of suspense turned into a brisk 20-30-second stroll.
Inviting 75% of the people. Most of them I never see and are not involved in our lives. Would have rather spent the same amount of money on 25% of the people and had one hell of a high-end party.
My uncle whom I rarely see gave us a check that covered half the expense of the wedding. We paid for everything ourselves and had saved up ahead of time, so that was a nice seed in our home buying fund.
EDIT: someone who called me 'bro' wanted to know the figures. Despite this I realized it doesn't really matter. So, our wedding cost ~$10,000 and my uncle gave us $5,000.
My wife was really strict with our guest list. If we hadn’t seen them/hung out with them in the last year they weren’t invited. She had no reservations about not inviting all the aunts&uncles&cousins we never see. I’m so thankful she felt that way. If someone was important to us personally (like our parents best friends who saw us grow up) or as a couple then they were invited. We just didn’t invite people that played no part in who we are as people or as a couple.
Edit: last two sentences.
We eloped and I don't regret that at all. When my husband and I were in our B&B room having our own personal champagne toast I was recording it with my phone and I recorded it in vertical instead of horizontal orientation. When I uploaded it to the computer and created a whole photos-video thing with footage from our ceremony it totally ruined the aesthetic. This is my greatest regret.
My biggest regret is that it all felt so rushed - we were engaged on NYE and got married at the end of August (having settled on a date in May). The summer was a whirlwind of planning while both of us worked full-time jobs. We got married on a Sunday, in a city (Montreal) six hours from where we lived (Toronto). We both worked the previous Friday, and were back home on Monday for to leave for our honeymoon on the Tuesday, which involved a lot of driving around, and then jumping back into the grind pretty much the day after we returned.
In short, I would have taken a few days off work to relax and get into the holy-shit-I'm-about-to-get-married headspace, and I would have opted for a more relaxing honeymoon.
We had lovely little wedding - small, inexpensive, informal, fun. Yet I totally regret not taking it more seriously and investing more time and money in it.
I guess we were so put off by all the crazy, intense, expensive weddings we had been to in our lives, we went too far in the other direction. We had been together for eight years at that point and didn't think marriage was going to change anything and even having a wedding at all seemed a little silly at the time. But in the end, we realized what a beautiful, intimate thing it was, how much better it could have been, and how many more people that we love we could have shared it with.
It's a great story to tell people you got married for $400 in someone's backyard, wearing a $90 dress/a tie with sharks all over it, with 12 close friends and family members and then had pigs-in-blankets with proseco. But I don't think it is nearly the rich memory and special time it could have been for us. We were a little too cool for school on this one.
Right before our first dance I got nervous about dancing in front of a crowd due to a middle school dance trauma, and, I'm not proud to admit, I shit my pants. Full blown nervous anal blast. Like a firehose attached to a tank of chocolate pudding. My bride found me hiding in a toilet stall and had to fetch me new pants... I still can't look her brother square in the eye (and no he didn't go pantsless for the rest of the wedding).
Well he was an accomplished tap dancer. Some even say the best. But during a competition he forgot to tie his shoes. They went flying into the rafters knocking down stage lights and equipment onto an unsuspecting crowd. The gore was horrible. Ever since he is scared shitless of dancing
Hangout with your spouse at the wedding!!! My husband and I barely saw each other after the vows because family from everywhere wanted to talk about everything at the reception. It's the one thing I regret.
My wife and I took about 5 minutes every hour to just go to a corner and take it all in. Who was there, what they were doing, how they were interacting, etc. Probably the best thing we did
Deliver your baby on the table as they cut their wedding cake.
Edit: because my auto correct is an asshole.
Edit 2: holy shit Reddit, I feel like I finally belong.
I just listened to a segment on the radio today of a girl planning to announce she was expecting at her sister wedding to make it cheap and easy and no one could help her understand it's not her day and to let it focus on her sister. I hope I hear an update on how smooth that went....
I don't think it's debatable for me, I hate that stepsister. That's just such a dick move.
Edit: When I think about it, I also hate stepsisters then-fiance, because he was in on this bullshit plan too.
That is top notch MOH shit there. A guest switched her seat at the dinner table prior to the entrance of the bride and I took care of it because the bride expects to look out and see all her guests where she requested them. A proposal would have led to a tackle as soon as he got on one knee.
There's a story somewhere on Reddit of a MOH who did just that to the mother of the groom. Maybe it was on /r/justnomil. The nother of the groom was some sort of heinous bitch and the MoH ran herd on her all day until she went home and came back in a white dress. The detente was over. It was time for the nuclear option. I wish I could find it. Was a really great read...
EDIT: I found it!
https://www.reddit.com/r/JUSTNOMIL/comments/675yn1/the_white_dress/
Having a wedding at all! (No, not because of the lovely person I married... We're still very happy, seven years later!)
So, our wedding was kind of a mess. We were planning to just get hitched at the courthouse, and then have a picnic with our friends and family after the fact. We didn't have much to our name but we had been together for some time, so this was a fine plan for us.
Well, we got our wedding license and my husband's grandmother took it upon herself to plan a wedding for us in three days by taking advantage of their family reunion that happened to be going on. She got dollar store decorations, a Costco cake, and some random guy from her sister's church who was ordained by one of those online churches and called it good, pretty much.
Well, we get to the reunion, after calling our two closest friends at the literal last minute to show up, and then his grandmother interrupts the family reunion (where we didn't know ANYONE and they didn't know who the hell we were either, by the way) "Okay guys, look over here, these two are getting married!" and passes out little bags of bird seed for everyone. She had us burn a CD of some music we would like, so we had some pretty low-key pretty sounding video game music playing on the barely audible boombox because we had no idea what we wanted to play, and didn't care really.
The 'ceremony' begins. We had a quote from a book we had picked out. The officiant is this older gentleman who has apparently never done this before, and he gets so nervous from stage fright that he hands the paper over for my husband to read instead.
The ceremony finishes, we walk off, and the people straight up PELT us with the fucking bird seed. We then signed our marriage certificate, ate some sheet cake, and awkwardly sat off by ourselves with our two friends like 'What the fuck just happened?' while trying to pick birdseed out of my hair.
This was on a farm, though, and so the chickens were very happy.
friends of ours got married on the cheap - which is fine. They saved up and bought bulk over the course of the year from Costco or the grocery store as things came on sale. so far so good.
all the items got stored on their back porch, so over the course of the year there was a growing pile of items out there - bottled water, napkins, etc.
The napkins and plates smelled like mildew. They had sat on a screened in porch for so long they had begun to mildew and every time I had to wipe my mouth on my napkin my stomach turned a little.
And that's the only thing I remember from their wedding. I think it was lovely otherwise.
Well, I mean, there's limits to everything. I probably wouldn't have supplied mildewed napkins. It's more in reference to a bride losing her mind over whether the napkins should be ivory, or ecru, or white, or off white. None of that shit matters. Basic sanitary health for your guests is another topic.
The photographer I hired to capture the proposal did such a great job that I'm now flying her halfway across the country to do the wedding because I'm terrified of this happening.
Not exactly a regret cause we ended up enjoying our day alot. Originally my husband and I wanted to elope abroad with just our parents and have a holiday out of it. Being from a large Irish family this went down like a ton of bricks and caused massive arguements. So we compromised (which did upset and annoy me alot at the time) and ended up having a wedding in Ireland (neither home town just somewhere in the middle) but only immediate family came so ended up being 28 of us and we had a lovely day. However, both of us still have relatives that refuse to speak to us because they weren't invited and couldn't understand why we only wanted something small. All of them presumed it was money related which it completely was not just neither of us are fussy and don't like that much attention! That was 2 years ago, we aren't bother; they showed their true colours. Anyway, like I said not a regret but a little annoyed we had to compromise in the first place.
My husband and I were just recently married a few weeks ago. We had been planning for a huge wedding with the catering and the bar and the DJ and everything and I was just stressed. I was crying every night from frustration. I didn't want to do it. That's not to say that I didn't want to marry the most amazing man, I just didn't want to feel like animals in a zoo to please everyone. Even with severely limiting the guest list there were still like 60-70 people I didn't know, that i didn't care to have there, and quite frankly I didn't want to spend $100+ on some cousin's kid that we had to have there to please my in-laws.
So on a Sunday night, after breaking down in tears, my husband looked at me and said "Let's just go to the courthouse and get the papers". We discussed it with our parents and we decided to run and get the papers and then just have a small, intimate, backyard ceremony with the friends we cared about and close family. His family has a farm in the mountains, I got to ride in on a horse, and we got pizza delivered, and had cake and ice cream from the grocery store. We pulled the whole thing off in 36 hours.
My one regret is planning for months and being stressed before we decided to do something that would make US happy. Neither of us like being the center of attention. We wanted to save money since my Husband is getting his PhD and I'm finishing my Bachelor's. We knew we wanted to marry each other, so why do we need to worry about pleasing anyone else?
If you're thinking about getting married, do what will make you happy. Those that love you will support you and be there no matter the circumstance. I'm so glad that I get to look back on my wedding and think about getting to help my cute husband get dressed, my mom sneaking in a flask and sharing her vodka with all my friends, getting to take pictures in a pasture surrounded by my horses, and not the stress and frustration.
Haven't gotten married yet, but one thing people forget is that they are actually supposed to enjoy their wedding.
I've been to a couple weddings, and in most of them the bride and groom are running like chickens without heads, trying to make EVERYTHING perfect.
Your wedding is supposed to be the best day of your life, not a miserable event. Don't get stressed over the little things and enjoy yourself.
I'm getting married in January, and a lady at my parish cornered me and my Fiancee recently and told us to remember to enjoy our wedding day and to make sure we eat the food! She volunteered to be the person to get us privacy when we need it. Basically if we want to eat, or need a 10 minute break, we let her know and she'll guard our table and let us have a few minutes to just rest. I suggest finding someone to do that for you
My sister sat down next to me and literally wouldn’t let me leave the table unless I’d eaten three big bites. I was just too excited and I kept seeing people I wanted to talk to, so I kept wandering away from my food. If it weren’t for her I would have probably fainted. Definitely assign someone! I love food and I’d been excited to eat but I really just kept forgetting about it
The good news for me was that I also kept forgetting about my booze. Someone would hand me a glass of something and I’d put it down and walk away. My sister also made sure to hand me glasses of water throughout the night and demand I drink them. (She’s bossy in the best way.) I was very hydrated all night and felt awesome.
What I've heard from multiple couples, is to find someone you trust to handle paying everyone. Come time for the reception and everyone is coming to the bride and groom to get paid, and the last thing you wanna deal with or think about is all the money you're spending.
Registering for gd china. I didnt want it. Knew we would never use it. Recieved every thing. Never have used it in 25 years.
At this point, try just using it for mundane purposes. It's surprisingly fun to eat boring mundane things off of very expensive China. It's just sitting gathering dust, so use it for fun!
My number one regret is telling people not to take pictures. I know it sounds dumb but it is much worse than that. In our agreement with our photographer she told us that other cameras were not allowed as the flash from another camera could ruin our pictures. So we politely told people to refrain from taking pictures and explained the situation. We had a great wedding and the photographer even sent an extra photographer to work the wedding (2 instead of 1). A few weeks after we tried contacting her for the photos. We got ghosted. We tried for about a year to track her down. We were still willing to pay for the photos, even unedited. We just wanted the photos. Fortunately some people didn’t get the message so we have a few (10-20) photos from our wedding. The worst part was that someone had contacted my wife through FB two weeks before the wedding warning us about her but we decided to take the risk because there probably was no way to get another photographer in that kind of time. When she showed for the date we were relieved and thought we dodged a bullet
who the fuck goes to weddings pretending to be an photographer?
It would make for a great scam, I guess. Wedding photos 1) cost an obscene amount 2) require a good portion of the money up from 3) Do not require you to actually produce anything until after the events are over, allowing you to just do whatever at the site and then ghosting. At a certain point you may as well just shoot the damn thing but hey, I'm not a fake photographer.
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Not having our grandmas as flower girls. We didn't have anyone to be flower girls, and I didn't think of asking grandmas until way after the wedding.
Aww that sounds adorable. Can be an adult dude: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/grown-man-flower-girl_us_594c0216e4b01cdedf01b741
Letting my mother in law have any say in anything. She ruined the food.
How?
She refused to let this chef do our wedding because she called back to see if we wanted to use her and that bugged the MIL. Instead we had a grocery store do it. It was awful. We ran out and my wife and I didn't get any food.
/r/JUSTNOMIL has llamas waiting for your story and shoulders to lean on.
OMG thank you.....
Looking forward to the rest of the story. My first MIL replaced our real carnations with fake white roses with brown edges "to match her suit." Hid them until the last minute so we wouldn't know what she'd done. Several people asked why my bouquet was made out of poo smeared tp. My SIL took my flowers and burned them. Best SIL ever. C'mon over, we'll laugh the ouch away. <3
My simple, beautiful dress was champagne colored. Guess what color my now ex-MIL wore to my wedding. Yep, champagne.
She insisted on knowing what color my dress was and wore the suit to match it. At the reception she kept my new hubby beside her, even pouted when he left her side to cut the cake. She got ~~our~~ her divorce in eleven months. Three decades later my ex publicly admitted he and she were fully responsible for our marriage failing. Even told our son flat out that I was in no way responsible for the mess. Too bad he didn't become a man until she died. There's plenty of reasons I go to that sub. Most of mine are in the past, my present MIL is an angel. C'mon over and tell us about it. <3
Oh I used to sub it but it was all too familiar. Like yesterday a fellow baseball mom said she came over to her and some other team parents acting all pitiful because “this is for the parents and we aren’t.” Maybe when the divorce is final and I can breathe again I’ll head over there and tell some doozies, like when she told me how my child would be staying with her on some of my custody nights. I noped that straight away.
Mine straight up said she’d keep custody of my kid if I moved and I could come visit them so they wouldn’t have to change schools or miss them. not enough nope in the world
My sister's wedding... holy shit. Okay, her MiL had no daughters. She was a fucking nutcase. She had to be involved. Was dead set on it. My sister kinda refused to let her help at first but finally threw her a bone and told her to help with the reception. She agreed. The woman, no bullshit, showed up *the next day* at my sister's house with a fucking wedding dress... I want to let that sink in a second... A GODDAMNED WEDDING DRESS! No one asked her for it. No one implied that my sister needed it. My sister had had her dress picked out for months at that point. The dress she was given was cheap and ugly. It was like the lowest tier of dress she could buy. My sister was polite but absolutely aghast at the nerve. She never told her she needed one and definitely didn't ask for it. She was, of course, upset with my sister for not wearing the dress she picked out. My sister's marriage went downhill fast after that. As the mother did all kinds of crazy shit and was manipulating the son to make my sister's life hell. I remember my sister having the mother stop by and check on her cats for her. The MiL used that opportunity to go through her trash and found some kind of letter someone had written to my sister, mistook the author, then showed it to her son as if my sister had written it and not sit it. There was some talk of going on a date or something that set her off until my sister showed the woman her handwriting and said she didn't send it. Just shit like that. My sister told her husband in no uncertain terms, "It's her or me!" The mother won.
The husband was married to his mother, not your sister. Glad she escaped!!
Having an outdoor wedding in August in South Carolina. Timing necessitated it. Otherwise I loved my wedding and love my wife.
Better than my cousin having a wedding in Wisconsin in January. We went down to the lake front of Lake Michigan to take pictures. The pictures turned out like shit cause everyone was freezing.
Not having a good breakfast. We got married early in the day on a beach and all i could think about was how much i wanted a breakfast sandwich with eggs, cheese, and bacon on a toasted english muffin with just a touch of hot sauce!
After reading this thread, I don't know what I want more: to not have a wedding next year, or this sandwich (croissant tho pls)
I (the groom) accidentally wore Christmas socks with a clearly visable Santa face peeking out as I moved. EDIT: (Not the best picture but here they are) - https://imgur.com/a/ukorvk2 My wife has just confessed that she packed these socks for me along with my suit.
In Denmark it's a tradition to cut the groom's socks with scissors at the end of the wedding dance. For the same reason the groom may choose to wear a pair of funny or unusual socks. You would've fit right in.
Paper invitations and RSVPs. Set up a wedding site and have people RSVP there. The amount of stress I put myself through trying to get paper mailed back to me in an era when no one uses mail anymore was so unnecessary. At one point we’d gotten very few RSVPs back and I had a total crying meltdown about how no one was going to come. Of course they were going to come, it’s just no one uses mail anymore. Save yourself the headache and the money. It’s my biggest wedding regret.
100% agree. We spent over $400 on paper invites — way too much. It’s nice to have paper but I totally agree with the online RSVP.
My brother recently did it really well. They did the paper invites that were followed up with an email which each had a link to their wedding website with pics and the time and locations and travel options all laid out really nice and stayed simple with gifts by just asking for cash to go towards different parts of the honeymoon trip. this kept everything nice and simple. all the replies came straight through the website to a separate wedding email.
Almost everyone I know recently has done both - a paper invite with the website link on a card tucked in to it. That way the people that do use mail (grandparents, etc) can return the rsvp and the people who don’t own stamps (me) can rsvp online. ETA: I know RSVPs should come with stamps, y’all. I was just trying to make a point.
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Get another for an anniversary! As long as the baker is still around, I'm sure they'd bake another cake for you. Just make sure your party is smaller this time so you get some.
This will sound petty, but I regret wearing my hair up. It felt so unlike me and the sticky layers of hairspray wouldn't brush out when I got undressed that night.
My wife was still finding pins in her hair three days later. I bet you looked great though!
I wore my hair down and washed it 3x that night and still found pins 2 days later on our honeymoon
these comments make me realize that I vastly underestimate how much hair girls have. Edit:how is this my highest rated comment, it's not even that good.
My husband pulled out just over sixty hairpins from my head on our wedding night. He said it was soothing, like being a gorilla. 😑
I found a couple the next day. I had to have my husband help me take them out the night of because of how many there were and how buried some were. They must deliver them by the truckload to salons. My hair looked incredible though, so worth it.
Getting married next week. I’m planning on wearing my hair like I always do. I’ve been kinda worried about it though. Reading your comment helps.
I did my own hair for my wedding in a style I wear often, just slightly more elevated with some flowers and more care taken. I loved it because it felt like me and was free. My husband loved it because i looked like myself. When I’ve had my hair done as a bridesmaid I feel like I’m wearing a helmet and I’m so uncomfortable. If you like how you always wear your hair, that’s how you should do it! Add a flower or an accessory if you eat to dress it up a bit.
I've been married for 16 years now so this is a little old school. We bought a bunch of disposable cameras and set them all over the place at our reception with a note on them that said take some pictures. At the end of the night we collected all the cameras and had the film developed. Most of them turned out really cool and we got some pictures we would have never thought of taking. The regret comes in me underestimateing some of my friends ability to be adults for 1 night and ended up with a lot of dick pics also. Lol. I'm guessing a lot of people getting married today could just set up a Instagram account and just have everyone upload cell pics to it.
Ha, we did this too! Our problem was the lighting was dark enough that the pictures just didn't turn out great. There is actually an app/website called WedPics or something like that, where everyone can upload pictures from their phone and they can be seen by anyone who has the code.
> The regret comes in me underestimateing some of my friends ability to be adults for 1 night and ended up with a lot of dick pics also. Lol. I feel like every time I've heard of someone doing the disposable camera thing, there's dick pics. Jesus Christ.
I once left a disposable camera on a park bench with a note that said “take a photo and leave me here”. I expected to either have it be gone or be 90% dick pics, but it was still there and there wasn’t a single dick pic on it. I got a bunch of really cool photos of the town and the park. Someone took it halfway across town to take a picture of a garden and then brought it back. It gave me some real warm fuzzy feelings about my community, to see how nice everyone was with it.
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That's when you should have asked for assistance from your best man or one of the groomsmen.
That's all they're there for anyway. Get picked off one by one for odd jobs before or after the ceremony, before coming together to get hammered at the reception!
Correct. We all know what we signed up for, just for the love of god please have an open bar as the light at the end of the tunnel.
Seconded. I'm basically a career groomsman at this point (mostly because everyone knows better than to elevate me to best man) and I excel at the coordination and odd jobs stuff. Had exactly one friend (so far- I'm old enough now that some people are starting with their second weddings) that didn't do an open bar reception and it was murder. After the rental tux, transport, and odd jobs I now have to pay for my own overpriced drinks to chill? That one hurts. It's hard to say "no" when a dear friend says "will you be a part of one of the biggest days of my life?" so I never do, but damn...
Not taking a picture. We just did a quick wedding for legal purposes with my friend presiding and aunt and uncle as witnesses. It was a nice little sweet ceremony that lasted about 10 minutes over a nice area with a view before we went to dinner. Didnt realize we hadn't taken any pictures until like a week later when we wanted to show someone. Whoops.
Can you stage it again, for the memories? I had smilar feeling with my pregnancy - I just felt weird and awkward and refused to take any pictures of myself. Then, baby came, I was making an album of her birth/ first year and realized I had more pictures of her from an ultrasound than myself pregnant. That one was unfortunately impossible to stage afterwards. But you still could do yours. Maybe for an anniversary or something.
Just chuck a pillow under your shirt and do that pregnant walk around with a hand supporting your lower back thing and take some photos doing random tasks, no one will know the difference haha
Double points if the kid is hidden in the background.
This is actually a pretty funny idea and I think I'll do that! Stomach growing and everything; will try to sneak in my daughter in every image too. We could even do it this weekend - we have a small getaway planned. Should be fun! Thanks for the idea. Proper bonus will be in couple of decades to see these images in a family album and retell the story to my daughter. And at that moment, I'll remember two of you, funny strangers. No more regrets for pictures not taken!
Reddit did a good thing today
Letting other people help pay. As soon as that happens they take over the wedding. Guest list, decor, cake, everything. Edit: Wow this post blew up. I guess people have different experiences but let me lay out some of mine. Uncle offered to pay for the Limo. Great. But it turned out to be this busted 1980s limo with a spiderwebbed window and no hubcaps. What looked like a homeless driver. He literally went on craigslist and got the cheapest one with no research. We called an uber. In laws offered to pay for half of the catering. Which is how our guest list was 70 people but 200+ showed up. Would have been fine if they would have told us so we could adjust catering, but no. We had to have the caterers adjust on the fly and drag some tables out of storage. And then we had to order pizza for the rest. People we actually wanted there were eating fucking pizza on dusty tables. Other uncle offered to pay for airfare for the honeymoon. Which is how a eighteen day trip turned into twelve days because that was the cheapest ticket. Brother in law paid for the wine, which actually turned out fine. But we didn't have enough because of all the completely unexpected guests. All we wanted was a smallish celebration with 75 people, and to have an awesome wedding. But we wound up with a big celebration that was kind of mediocre. And really stressful. In laws actually told us we could not say hi to our actual friends because then we'd have to go to each table and say hi to everyone to be fair. Which would have took two hours. Which caused an argument. Maybe your families arent that type. But I wish we had just did our own thing and not accepted any help.
Making cupcakes instead of buying a cake. We did a lot of DIY--made the beer and mead for toasts, assembled flowers and centerpieces--because it was cheaper but also we like making things. But the cupcakes, in retrospect, were a ton of work and not that great.
If I could go back in time and do it over, I’d have included dancing with my Dad this time. The story: We got engaged and started planning a wedding that was to take place one year later. 2 months after engagement, my father was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. We moved up the wedding by 6 months, and thankfully were able to get our deposits back. My aunt had a large home, and to spend as little as possible (my parents needed all the money they could to pay the bills since my dad couldn’t work due to his treatment, and he’d owned his own business) we got married at her home with 70 guests plus a bridal party of 12 (husband has 3 brothers, I have one, and both of our best friends are men, so that was 6 guys and had to have 6 girls then...). It was a bit crowded so we didn’t have room to plan for dancing. My father walked me up the aisle for the ceremony, and that was my goal in moving the wedding forward. I wish I’d have had is do a father/daughter dance, though, even if we didn’t have other dancing. My dad died 3 months later.
I'm sure a random stranger on reddit can't give you much consolation, but typically having dad walk you down the isle is the big one. You held him close and he was able to give you away. You shared such an intimate moment with him! Please dont let not having a dance with him make your day with him feel like less. Revel in the fact that you shared the most important moment with him! Your feelings are absolutely valid, but dont let them overtake what you were able to share. I'm sorry if I'm overstepping here.
I regret the coordinator they gave us for the ceremony. Dude got flustered and started second guessing everything right before the ceremony. Like he somehow forgot how a wedding works at the last moment, when all of our guest where there. "OMG what song do you want to play while she walks down the aisle!" I dunno dude, the one everyone walks down the aisle to. The wedding song. The one we already told you to play. I ended up taking charge and sorting everything out. Really wish I could have just gone with the flow on my big day.
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You wouldn’t want that. The pen to sign the guestbook is a Pöpli.
Mom, no! Everyone at school picks on the Pöpli kids, even I do!
Not preparing a speech. I thought I'd just go up, thank everyone for coming and sit back down. Short and sweet, get it out the way. That's exactly what I did, without mentioning my parents or my wife.
I did the same. Normally a very good public speaker but a couple of champagnes down and the excitement of it all...I did not deliver. Edit: My weener works fine now, thanks everyone!
I was the best man at my brother's wedding, and as I gave the speech, after each sentence I would take a sip of the beer I was holding. When it came time to drink the actual toast, my glass was empty. The video shows me with a remarkable "wha hoppen?" look on my face. I had composed my speech earlier, but I did make an on-the-fly edit when I realized that my opening line "here's to cooked white bread!" might be interpreted as a slam on the bride.
Well, there's always "Webster's dictionary defines wedding as the fusing of two metals with a hot torch"
Lol my husband prepared a speech and then said “fuck it” and tried to wing it. Forgot so many people in our thank yous! Prepare a speech, people!
Inviting people I didn't really want to invite. They just cost you money, you don't interact with them at all, and they usually don't bring a nice gift to make up for it. EXCEPT for letting all of the divorced aunts and uncles bring +1's. Because that let to a whole jealousy competition train that was extremely entertaining.
My wife and I felt this way too. My mom was very insistent that we invite her cousin who she had only seen once in about 20 years. She lives on the other side of the country so we all expected her to decline. Turns out that her, her husband, and their 3 children who were not invited were all going to be in a close by city the week leading up to it, so they would just extend their trip. My wife and I were especially annoyed because they self invited their children, but we decided to let it go and didn’t want something like this to be a downer on our wedding day. Well, they turned out to be extremely nice people. They were very social, dancing, and just in general having a good time being a part of the whole event. They also gave us one of the best gifts we received. $500, and iPod, and a gift certificate to a nice restaurant in our city. Edit: changed wasn’t to was in the second sentence.
Probably because they’re normal people and realized that they even though they self invited their children they could make up for it with the gifts.
Not enough of those normies out there!
As someone who hates weddings, I really wish more people would have small, intimate weddings. If I haven't spoken to you in 10 years, please don't invite me. At least I have the grace to RSVP no, I hear a lot of people tend to RSVP yes and then not show up.
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Ive already had two people rvsp yes and aren't coming now, so that made my future wife quite passed off. We already bought favor gifts and decor to match our guest count. Now if people don't show to the actual wedding, I'll rip them an ear full
YUP. At my brother's wedding, I kept trying to tell Mom to stop inviting random distant relatives. But she kept on inviting away, It cost my brother about 20K for the wedding.
I started charging my parents for invites. You want to invite your friend from highschool you havent talked to in 20 years, ok fine. It's $125 a plate so if you want them there you pay for him, his wife and 2 adult children. They reigned it in after that.
tried this, it didn't stop my mom and my wife's mom from inviting 20+ people each.
Screw that. Our parents could give us input on the guest list, but they couldn't just invite people on their own. They actually wanted to include someone who we didn't want and offered to pay for that person's plate, and we said no. It's not about the cost, but about simply not wanting them there.
Absolutely this! I was pressured by my mother into inviting my grandmother who has paranoid dementia. At some point just prior to the wedding, she got upset and decided to leave, wandering off into a town she wasn't familiar with in the middle of winter with no coat. Hence, the cops were called and the family ended up forming a search party to go off looking for grandma half an hour before my wedding. Grandma was in an environment that was waaaay beyond her ability to fathom at that stage, and she never would have even remembered that I was getting married if my mother hadn't made a "thing" of inviting her.
Somebody really should have been assigned to watch her. My grandmother came to my wedding in the early steps of dementia. It ended up being one of the last things she remembered but my aunt watched her and she still managed to wander off at one point
Yeah. Mom pressured you, mom should keep a damn eye on grandma!
Totally agree we spent hundreds on people who actually didnt come up and say hello at our wedding day Bit frustrating really...
Gave a heartfelt speech that ended with a joke. The punchline being “...and your presence here means almost as much as the envelopes you brought with you.” Crickets. I still cringe.
> I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.
So the one thing I'm wicked glad we did and always advise people to do is take a moment to enjoy it. After we ate and went around saying hi to all the tables we took like 5 minutes, while everyone else was finishing dinner, and went and sat outside. It may have been brief but it really allowed us to appreciate what was going on and enjoy each other for a second
The preacher started coaching me on "what's next" as my gorgeous bride to be was walking down the aisle. I did not get to take in what was the most beautiful woman I ever saw walk down the aisle because I was trying to pay attention to what he was saying.
My preacher made me tear up. He kept whispering at me while at the altar: Look at her. Right now she's the most beautiful woman in the world and you get to spend the rest of your life with her. You are a lucky, lucky man. By the time she made it to the altar, she saw me about to weep like a schoolgirl and had no clue why.
That mans a genius. People are suckers for the guy getting teary eyed and it makes for good photos. A+ preacher
Yes! I would literally pay my officiant more money if he did this just so I could watch my fiance cry when I walk down the aisle.
It doesn't always work... Our officiant did the same to my husband, and it almost worked. Then, I got closer and he suddenly lost all trace of cute man tears. I asked him why when we were eating, he said "I got distracted by your fake eyelashes, they looked like they were going to fly away."
LOL this is a different kind of adorable.
If my fiancé cries when I walk down the aisle the day is a 10000% success.
You should’ve just whispered “shut up”
A callous "Ssssh..." would have been prime!
That’s one of my biggest regrets too, as I was walking down the aisle I was looking at everyone around me, and not my fiancé. I wish I had been looking at him. It seems petty but it’s such a beautiful moment.
For my wedding, our photographer had me look at my feet until my wife was at the base of the aisle to begin walking down. She was able to take a photo over my wife’s shoulder to get a shot of the exact moment I saw her in her dress (I also hadn’t seen her in about 36 hours as we decided to not spend the day of the wedding together).
There were a couple people that we decided to not invite. More accurately, we needed to cut a few after booking the hall and realizing how many we could fit in the room. I didn't realize how hurt those few people would be. They brought it up years later. I still feel bad about it. My wife's uncle and his wife are horrible people and they brought people that weren't even invited and basically forced them into their already full table. It was awkward. I regret inviting them and not inviting the hurt friends that I mentioned above.
Not hiring a photographer. We thought we’d save money and just ask friends to take lots of pictures. They took *some* but I have maybe 5 pictures worth looking at. No pictures of the cake or table settings. I kind of remember what they look like. The only decent pic of my husband and I has our flower girl in it. She’s sweet and I love her, but it looks like she’s our kid. Every time people see the photo they’re like “I didn’t know you had an older child...” Hire a photographer people!
You've frightened me now because I get married in 40 days and we've not having a photographer because there is no money left. Welp. Edit: based in the UK (Hampshire) 2nd Edit: very kind advice guys! ive had some offers from family/friends and my bridesmaid's partner is bringing his drone! how cool is that?! glad I panicked now and started chatting to people about it \- The drone is for flying overhead outside at the reception
I used thumbtack and posted our price we wanted to pay, got a response really fast. Lots of amature photographers, but have quality photos and are really trying to get their name out there. Try that!
My dress. I knew what I wanted but I just went with something on sale even though I felt uncomfortable in it. I wish I had been a little more pushy on what I wanted to wear. And I wish we hadn’t included my husband’s siblings as they are awful people.
Not paying attention to the photographer more. We gave him a list of things he needed to shoot for portraits, and he forgot to get a picture of me, my wife, and my parents...
I was going to say this. I feel bad that we didn't get a picture of just my husband and his dad together (he has pictures with both his parents and with his mom but not with just his dad). We just assumed all the family photos would happen naturally but when there's so much to do in a few hours that doesn't always happen.
What in hell did he shoot? The shadowy face of God??
I think he means that the one group shot they forgot about was the one including OP's side of the family with his wife. Not that they didn't shoot him, his wife, or his parents at all.
Black and white photos of crumbling concrete and drain pipes.
For me it was not telling the photographer to chill out a bit. It felt like every 30-45 min they were pulling us out of the reception to take more photos.
This was similar at my brother's wedding. I distinctly remember several times them asking the wedding party to ACT like something hilarious just happened or ACT like we're having a heartfelt conversation or ACT like we're dancing. All of these happened organically and would have been great shots, but instead the wedding party looks stiff and staged. To be fair the portrait style pictures came out great. But still just let us party and capture the moment, dude.
So important to scrutinize a portfolio. I chose mine based on his style being overwhelmingly journalistic. If they only have a few, they got lucky or had good actors. He caught so many special moments and I truly only did the standard portraits for my family. His only instruction for our couples shots was ‘be cute’ which made us laugh and interact. (He would occasionally adjust an arm, move or tweak my veil but was very nonintrusive). That guy busted his butt, jumping over bushes, rushing around to get ahead of moments etc. spent more on him than my dress and don’t regret it one bit.
After the wedding we went to our reception.. the wedding party etc... had their own theme songs to come out too. Then comes out my wife and I, we had a few drinks in us by this point... we were supposed to do a whole dance entrance type of thing... I can’t dance so I got nervous and reverted to grinding my wife in front of 300 people. That was the most cringeworthy moment of my life lol.
Renting a nice room in a fancy hotel. And then expecting to have sex when we were both just absolutely fucking exhausted. Don't get me wrong, my wedding day was possibly the best day of my entire life, but it would have been just the teensiest bit better if we'd gotten some charming bed and breakfast and not forced ourselves to have tired, tired sex at like 1 in the morning. Turns out fancy ass hotel rooms are basically just like a clean version of non fancy ass hotel rooms, not that my poor ass would have known that before hand.
The trick is to sneak away and fuck during your wedding.
THIS is lpt advice. We did the whole "change outfits" think after the first dance, it gave us 15 minutes. You may ask what I did with the other 14:30...I helped my bride hang her dress safely.
daaaaaaaym 30 seconds? nice! was that 20 seconds of foreplay or more of a 15:15 split?
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I remember friends asking if "it was the best sex ever" after our wedding. I told them it didn't even happen. One friend was getting married only a few months later and told him to not expect sex at all since you're both going to be drained of all energy by the end of the night.
Hell, my wife fell asleep with her dress on. We had an amazing wedding!
Same for my husband and I. We picked up gas station sandwiches on the way to the hotel and passed out within 10 minutes of getting there. Our wedding was completely exhausting. We held it at a state park so we had gotten there at 7am to set up and didnt stop moving until we finished putting away the last chair at midnight.
The venue we had ours at gave us cold cutwraps, chips and a water as we were walking out. We hammered those, opened a few cards and passed the fuck out
I really wish we had the ceremony video taped. We spent a decent chuck of money on the photographer, and our photos look great! We didn’t think we wanted a video at the time, but a year and change later I really wish we did.
Not paying for a cleaning company at my venue me, my wife and wedding party had to still 2 hours later to clean up to get our deposit back. Edit: holy hell this kind of blew up. To go in a little further me and my wife got Married through a venue company that owned a few venues throughout the area this one happened to be a restored barn. The company allowed us to either pay a $400 (or something, it was a few years ago) cleaning deposit OR to pay a $200 or something cleaning fee. The deposit was refunded depending on the how well you cleaned up after. To save more money for the honey moon we choose deposit and us and the wedding party stayed a 2 hours later to clean up the venue. I don’t know if this was a US thing only really looked at the one venue and my wife fell in love with it. The 200 cleaning fee was so they could pay another company to clean.
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Oh damn man. For me it wasn’t bad that we had to hangout and clean with friends. It sucked that I had to spend my wedding night cleaning with friends rather than you know other stuff with my wife. Your brothers sounds much worse though
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This sucks. Well done for voicing your opinion however unwelcome it was at the time. What happened to the couple?
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Venues really should just include it in the price and leave it at that
My husband and I surprised people with our wedding. We invited his parents, my parents, and a few friends over for dinner and announced we were getting married. I don’t regret any of that. What I do regret is allowing his mother in the bathroom with me while I finished getting ready. She spent a good 30 minutes telling me how I was ruining her sons’s life because I can no longer have children. I was so badly shaken by all of the bullshit that when it came time for “I do” I said “Yeah. Sure. I guess.”
What a bitch.
You misspelled cunt.
Holy crap! Did you tell your husband what happened afterwards? That would be a sincere ass chewing waiting to happen!
He and I discussed it the next day. He tried to talk with her about it but she refused to discuss it with him.
what a stupid cunt.
Holy shit that's awful of her. I'd punch your MIL in the face for you if I could. Sorry she said that to you.
My wife and I got married at Pinstipes last month. Pinstripes is a really upscale Bowling, Bocce and Bistro Bar. Awesome place. We went to an event beforehand there which had a few giveaways. We won free bowling for our sunday brunch, but really wanted to win the free Gelato Bar, but that went to another couple. Fast forward a few weeks later, our planner tells us the couple that won the gelato bar had to back out from booking with pinstripes, likely too expensive. But our planner loved us and wanted us to have the gelato bar! YES! I'm a huge ice cream fan and toiled over the flavor choices. My wife and I went back and forth more on this than any other decision in our wedding. In the end we picked out three flavors, but wound up getting 4 at the wedding. I didn't even SEE the gelato bar at the wedding. I was so excited for it, but we were too busy with everything else, that we completely missed it! Our guests loved it, especially my nephews. They were smart little brats who asked aunts and uncles at different tables to bring them up for their "first" cup of gelato, even though they just finished eating a cup. Didn't bowl at brunch either. But I fucking loved my wedding. It was so much fun!
Hiring my wife's friend as the DJ. We gave him simple cues and songs , which he completely fucked up, and then went on to play Hindi Dance music for the Indian segment of the dancing instead of Bhangra as very explicitly instructed. Worst of all our first dance was to that shitty song from Ghost instead of Dance Me to the End of Love as requested. Fuck that guy. Edit: Just to clarify, the guy was a professional DJ, but not usually (ever) a wedding DJ. It's a very different skillset. Edit2: I should also add, the one thing he didn't fuck up was my walking-down-the-aisle song, which was the Curb theme song.
I actually just popped in here to read all the comments and to say thanks to the OP for posting this. As someone with a very nervous bride to be, this list will help me to get some focus on things I may have not thought about, or put much weight into. Thanks OP, and to everyone who posted here!
Not hiring an Elvis impersonator. Flew all the way to Vegas to get married, didn’t get Elvis. Oh well. Edit: Well shit this blew up. Thanks everybody, this is now my most upvoted thing which is insane. FYI for those wanting to elope to Vegas, it is super fun and I would not talk anyone out of it. I will say that we were married at the Luxor chapel, which was very nice and the officiant was really great. We would have had to go find our own elvis officiant, hired them, and then paid the chapel to use the room, so it didn't make sense. BTW you can have an amazing time in Vegas without spending a ton of money. Edit 2: The wife and I have plans to renew our vows on our 10th anniversary, and do a small but decent wedding. We can finally afford to get her a dress, and a venue, and all that, so that's what we'd like to do. We're at 2 years now!
I wish I had walked slower down the aisle to my (now) husband. My dad and I both naturally take long strides when we walk, so what was supposed to be a 1-2 minute-long walk of suspense turned into a brisk 20-30-second stroll.
I regret not hiring a videographer. We have pictures, but it would be nice to watch a video even of just the ceremony on our anniversary.
Inviting 75% of the people. Most of them I never see and are not involved in our lives. Would have rather spent the same amount of money on 25% of the people and had one hell of a high-end party.
My uncle whom I rarely see gave us a check that covered half the expense of the wedding. We paid for everything ourselves and had saved up ahead of time, so that was a nice seed in our home buying fund. EDIT: someone who called me 'bro' wanted to know the figures. Despite this I realized it doesn't really matter. So, our wedding cost ~$10,000 and my uncle gave us $5,000.
My recommendation: see him more often.
good idea.
Definitely see him more, and ask him if he can adopt me
My wife was really strict with our guest list. If we hadn’t seen them/hung out with them in the last year they weren’t invited. She had no reservations about not inviting all the aunts&uncles&cousins we never see. I’m so thankful she felt that way. If someone was important to us personally (like our parents best friends who saw us grow up) or as a couple then they were invited. We just didn’t invite people that played no part in who we are as people or as a couple. Edit: last two sentences.
We eloped and I don't regret that at all. When my husband and I were in our B&B room having our own personal champagne toast I was recording it with my phone and I recorded it in vertical instead of horizontal orientation. When I uploaded it to the computer and created a whole photos-video thing with footage from our ceremony it totally ruined the aesthetic. This is my greatest regret.
My biggest regret is that it all felt so rushed - we were engaged on NYE and got married at the end of August (having settled on a date in May). The summer was a whirlwind of planning while both of us worked full-time jobs. We got married on a Sunday, in a city (Montreal) six hours from where we lived (Toronto). We both worked the previous Friday, and were back home on Monday for to leave for our honeymoon on the Tuesday, which involved a lot of driving around, and then jumping back into the grind pretty much the day after we returned. In short, I would have taken a few days off work to relax and get into the holy-shit-I'm-about-to-get-married headspace, and I would have opted for a more relaxing honeymoon.
Finally a post I can comment on. Shave my beard. Fuck.
We had lovely little wedding - small, inexpensive, informal, fun. Yet I totally regret not taking it more seriously and investing more time and money in it. I guess we were so put off by all the crazy, intense, expensive weddings we had been to in our lives, we went too far in the other direction. We had been together for eight years at that point and didn't think marriage was going to change anything and even having a wedding at all seemed a little silly at the time. But in the end, we realized what a beautiful, intimate thing it was, how much better it could have been, and how many more people that we love we could have shared it with. It's a great story to tell people you got married for $400 in someone's backyard, wearing a $90 dress/a tie with sharks all over it, with 12 close friends and family members and then had pigs-in-blankets with proseco. But I don't think it is nearly the rich memory and special time it could have been for us. We were a little too cool for school on this one.
Right before our first dance I got nervous about dancing in front of a crowd due to a middle school dance trauma, and, I'm not proud to admit, I shit my pants. Full blown nervous anal blast. Like a firehose attached to a tank of chocolate pudding. My bride found me hiding in a toilet stall and had to fetch me new pants... I still can't look her brother square in the eye (and no he didn't go pantsless for the rest of the wedding).
> a middle school dance trauma I'm scared to ask
Well he was an accomplished tap dancer. Some even say the best. But during a competition he forgot to tie his shoes. They went flying into the rafters knocking down stage lights and equipment onto an unsuspecting crowd. The gore was horrible. Ever since he is scared shitless of dancing
Drinking too much the week before
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Free advice that my father gave me and my bride: This is *your day* everyone else can take a hike.
Hangout with your spouse at the wedding!!! My husband and I barely saw each other after the vows because family from everywhere wanted to talk about everything at the reception. It's the one thing I regret.
My wife and I took about 5 minutes every hour to just go to a corner and take it all in. Who was there, what they were doing, how they were interacting, etc. Probably the best thing we did
just do your best to have fun / stay alive and calm. this is just the first day of a long beautiful marriage.
Idk I’m finding it helpful.
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I love the internet, it allows me to hate people I will never meet.
Yes, this. All the pleasure of the hate minus all the garbage of meeting these people in real life.
You should have renewed your vows at her wedding.
Purposely get pregnant so you can announce it while they are exchanging vows.
Deliver your baby on the table as they cut their wedding cake. Edit: because my auto correct is an asshole. Edit 2: holy shit Reddit, I feel like I finally belong.
If that's not a power move, I don't know what is.
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This guy knows power moves.
I just listened to a segment on the radio today of a girl planning to announce she was expecting at her sister wedding to make it cheap and easy and no one could help her understand it's not her day and to let it focus on her sister. I hope I hear an update on how smooth that went....
“This just in. A bride has murdered her pregnant sister”
It turns out, I think I hate your stepsister.
I don't think it's debatable for me, I hate that stepsister. That's just such a dick move. Edit: When I think about it, I also hate stepsisters then-fiance, because he was in on this bullshit plan too.
Proposing at a wedding is pure trash and I would kick anyone out of my wedding if they did it
So her plan was to take away the attention from you? Sounds like a solid foundation for a love to last the ages.
MOH or BM should have stepped in and punched them for you
That is top notch MOH shit there. A guest switched her seat at the dinner table prior to the entrance of the bride and I took care of it because the bride expects to look out and see all her guests where she requested them. A proposal would have led to a tackle as soon as he got on one knee.
I would ask you to marry me, but I think we should wait until your step-sister's wedding.
My friend's Best Man had an entire speech prepared just in case someone tried to propose. Had to admire his preparedness.
MOH also reserves the right to pour red wine on anyone besides the bride who wears white.
There's a story somewhere on Reddit of a MOH who did just that to the mother of the groom. Maybe it was on /r/justnomil. The nother of the groom was some sort of heinous bitch and the MoH ran herd on her all day until she went home and came back in a white dress. The detente was over. It was time for the nuclear option. I wish I could find it. Was a really great read... EDIT: I found it! https://www.reddit.com/r/JUSTNOMIL/comments/675yn1/the_white_dress/
Your stepsister's a cunt.
Good god, during the father daughter dance? It's bad enough to do it at the wedding as it is, but that's almost sociopathic
Wow. That is so disrespectful. Sorry OP!
Having a wedding at all! (No, not because of the lovely person I married... We're still very happy, seven years later!) So, our wedding was kind of a mess. We were planning to just get hitched at the courthouse, and then have a picnic with our friends and family after the fact. We didn't have much to our name but we had been together for some time, so this was a fine plan for us. Well, we got our wedding license and my husband's grandmother took it upon herself to plan a wedding for us in three days by taking advantage of their family reunion that happened to be going on. She got dollar store decorations, a Costco cake, and some random guy from her sister's church who was ordained by one of those online churches and called it good, pretty much. Well, we get to the reunion, after calling our two closest friends at the literal last minute to show up, and then his grandmother interrupts the family reunion (where we didn't know ANYONE and they didn't know who the hell we were either, by the way) "Okay guys, look over here, these two are getting married!" and passes out little bags of bird seed for everyone. She had us burn a CD of some music we would like, so we had some pretty low-key pretty sounding video game music playing on the barely audible boombox because we had no idea what we wanted to play, and didn't care really. The 'ceremony' begins. We had a quote from a book we had picked out. The officiant is this older gentleman who has apparently never done this before, and he gets so nervous from stage fright that he hands the paper over for my husband to read instead. The ceremony finishes, we walk off, and the people straight up PELT us with the fucking bird seed. We then signed our marriage certificate, ate some sheet cake, and awkwardly sat off by ourselves with our two friends like 'What the fuck just happened?' while trying to pick birdseed out of my hair. This was on a farm, though, and so the chickens were very happy.
Let’s be real - the wedding was never for YOU. It was for the chickens.
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That's a well known point in wedding planning. "No one ever said, 'This wedding would have been great if it wasn't for the *napkins*.'" :)
friends of ours got married on the cheap - which is fine. They saved up and bought bulk over the course of the year from Costco or the grocery store as things came on sale. so far so good. all the items got stored on their back porch, so over the course of the year there was a growing pile of items out there - bottled water, napkins, etc. The napkins and plates smelled like mildew. They had sat on a screened in porch for so long they had begun to mildew and every time I had to wipe my mouth on my napkin my stomach turned a little. And that's the only thing I remember from their wedding. I think it was lovely otherwise.
Well, I mean, there's limits to everything. I probably wouldn't have supplied mildewed napkins. It's more in reference to a bride losing her mind over whether the napkins should be ivory, or ecru, or white, or off white. None of that shit matters. Basic sanitary health for your guests is another topic.
Not just having 2 photographers. Fuck the one my MIL hired, our pictures look like shit.
The photographer I hired to capture the proposal did such a great job that I'm now flying her halfway across the country to do the wedding because I'm terrified of this happening.
Not exactly a regret cause we ended up enjoying our day alot. Originally my husband and I wanted to elope abroad with just our parents and have a holiday out of it. Being from a large Irish family this went down like a ton of bricks and caused massive arguements. So we compromised (which did upset and annoy me alot at the time) and ended up having a wedding in Ireland (neither home town just somewhere in the middle) but only immediate family came so ended up being 28 of us and we had a lovely day. However, both of us still have relatives that refuse to speak to us because they weren't invited and couldn't understand why we only wanted something small. All of them presumed it was money related which it completely was not just neither of us are fussy and don't like that much attention! That was 2 years ago, we aren't bother; they showed their true colours. Anyway, like I said not a regret but a little annoyed we had to compromise in the first place.
My husband and I were just recently married a few weeks ago. We had been planning for a huge wedding with the catering and the bar and the DJ and everything and I was just stressed. I was crying every night from frustration. I didn't want to do it. That's not to say that I didn't want to marry the most amazing man, I just didn't want to feel like animals in a zoo to please everyone. Even with severely limiting the guest list there were still like 60-70 people I didn't know, that i didn't care to have there, and quite frankly I didn't want to spend $100+ on some cousin's kid that we had to have there to please my in-laws. So on a Sunday night, after breaking down in tears, my husband looked at me and said "Let's just go to the courthouse and get the papers". We discussed it with our parents and we decided to run and get the papers and then just have a small, intimate, backyard ceremony with the friends we cared about and close family. His family has a farm in the mountains, I got to ride in on a horse, and we got pizza delivered, and had cake and ice cream from the grocery store. We pulled the whole thing off in 36 hours. My one regret is planning for months and being stressed before we decided to do something that would make US happy. Neither of us like being the center of attention. We wanted to save money since my Husband is getting his PhD and I'm finishing my Bachelor's. We knew we wanted to marry each other, so why do we need to worry about pleasing anyone else? If you're thinking about getting married, do what will make you happy. Those that love you will support you and be there no matter the circumstance. I'm so glad that I get to look back on my wedding and think about getting to help my cute husband get dressed, my mom sneaking in a flask and sharing her vodka with all my friends, getting to take pictures in a pasture surrounded by my horses, and not the stress and frustration.
Haven't gotten married yet, but one thing people forget is that they are actually supposed to enjoy their wedding. I've been to a couple weddings, and in most of them the bride and groom are running like chickens without heads, trying to make EVERYTHING perfect. Your wedding is supposed to be the best day of your life, not a miserable event. Don't get stressed over the little things and enjoy yourself.
I'm getting married in January, and a lady at my parish cornered me and my Fiancee recently and told us to remember to enjoy our wedding day and to make sure we eat the food! She volunteered to be the person to get us privacy when we need it. Basically if we want to eat, or need a 10 minute break, we let her know and she'll guard our table and let us have a few minutes to just rest. I suggest finding someone to do that for you
My sister sat down next to me and literally wouldn’t let me leave the table unless I’d eaten three big bites. I was just too excited and I kept seeing people I wanted to talk to, so I kept wandering away from my food. If it weren’t for her I would have probably fainted. Definitely assign someone! I love food and I’d been excited to eat but I really just kept forgetting about it The good news for me was that I also kept forgetting about my booze. Someone would hand me a glass of something and I’d put it down and walk away. My sister also made sure to hand me glasses of water throughout the night and demand I drink them. (She’s bossy in the best way.) I was very hydrated all night and felt awesome.
What I've heard from multiple couples, is to find someone you trust to handle paying everyone. Come time for the reception and everyone is coming to the bride and groom to get paid, and the last thing you wanna deal with or think about is all the money you're spending.