What I Wish I Knew Before Our Wedding

Now that our wedding has come and gone many of you have asked me “what are the things I wish I knew before wedding planning” – to be frank, the list would be pretty endless because I had NO idea what it took to plan a wedding. And when I say no idea, I truly didn’t know a damn thing.  So as I sat down to write this post here are the top things that came to mind first:

Shit Will Go Wrong

It will – I always heard other brides say that but internally I would say to myself “not at our wedding. Nothing will go wrong. Nothing.” But it did and it will happen to you. DON’T PANIC. Unless the place goes up in flames, mostly, any other uh-oh can be fixed. Have faith in your planner or the person in charge. Have faith that your bridesmaids will step up to the plate and take care of what needs to be done. And if the thought of all that is still making you break out in hives know this … you will literally be on cloud 9 during your wedding day. You will be in a bubble of happiness and joy that you will not even realize let alone care what vase fell or you were 15 minutes off of the scheduled timeline. I also thought the following advice was a bullshit tied in a pretty bow however, I believe it now: none of your guest will know what went wrong or what was supposed to be. You are quite literally one of the few people at the wedding that will know that something didn’t go according to plan. So in blatant terms, don’t sweat the small stuff. Enjoy your day because it goes by in the blink of an eye.

Stress 101

Wedding planning is stressful. I cried. I lost sleep. I fought with my mom. I stalked other weddings. I stared at flowers for hours. I gave Robby attitude. I refreshed the weather forecast more times than I can count. I rolled my eyes at vendor emails. For better or worse, I did it all.

I’m not going to tell any bride-to-be “not to stress” because that’s like telling a doctor to close his eyes during surgery, both would be a failed cause. BUT I will tell you this … a wedding surely puts things into perspective. So before you pick up the phone to use your mother as your stress ball or before you strain your eyes to stay open so you can edit your vision board for the 100th time – ask yourself, “what would the sane version of  me do?” ;)

The Gift Of Giving

There is a high percentage that you will be shocked by those who shower with you generous gifts and by those that literally show up empty handed. The beauty of marriage is not measured by the amount of items that are checked off your registry so please don’t translate my words into meaning that. My point in touching on this subject is to purely advise you to be prepared. Be prepared to feel humbled and grateful to those that spent their time and energy on preparing a beautiful gift for you. Also be prepared to feel some confusion on why one of your hand-picked guests would show up without even taking the time to simply write a card full of well wishes.

Spoke Too Soon
 

Whether it be out of bad judgement, a sense of entitlement, jealousy or quite frankly not thinking before they speak … friends and or family members will make a comment(s) that will stop you dead in your tracks. To be transparent, I don’t have a life altering piece of advice that will make the sting less or that will stop you from wanting to bang your head against the wall but I will say this … kill them with kindness. When the roles are reversed or when they come to with how uncalled for a comment was – they will remember how you acted gracefully instead of starting World War III

Thank You Cards

If you’re anything like me, you will put your heart and soul into every detail of planning your wedding but the reality is, you aren’t the only one throwing out time and money. For some guest, it can be a full blown ordeal to be there to celebrate your love. Between flights, accommodations, gifts, etc. the least you can do is make sure a thank you card gets in the mail in a timely manner. Robby and I were knocking out Thank You notes left and right shortly after our wedding and it was heart warming to see the power that a simple and sweat hand written note has! What I wish I did before our wedding was pre-order a personalized stationary so it was one less thing we had to do afterwards. Paperless Post offers a variety of beautiful stationaries and cards for just about any occasion! If you’re a bride to be, absolutely browse their site. OH and did I mention that they have a designer collection for invitations as well?!

A few more things …

Don’t change your dress
Your wedding will feel like it’s on fast forward, it goes by so insanely fast. The ceremony, the reception, the after party – POOF, it’s over. Find the one dress you love so much that you don’t want to take it off. Don’t cut your time short from being on the dance floor because you’re too busy changing into a second look. Be present and twirl around in your dream dress until the sun rises.

Don’t do a first look
This has become a part of wedding  prep that brings mass opinions to the surface so before I divulged my two cents onto you know that THIS IS YOUR WEDDING and you should truly do or not do whatever makes you happy. With that being said, Robby and I chose to not do a first look and it was one of the best decisions we have made to date. There are no words to describe the moment when you first see your soon-to-be-husband standing at the altar. It’s a frozen moment in time that I will carry in my heart forever and I hope you are able to experience that feeling too!

Have the fricken time of your life
IT’S FINALLY HERE! All of the prep has lead up to this, your WEDDING DAY. Have the most most most most fun you have ever had! All of your loved ones are in the same place at the same time celebrating YOU – soak up every single moment that you possibly can! 

With love,
Chels

Cover photo taken by Valorie Darling