If I could start all over: things I’d do differently to avoid wedding day trainwrecks

Comments on If I could start all over: things I’d do differently to avoid wedding day trainwrecks

1. “Invite whomever you want.”

   No kidding! When I was planning my first wedding I felt obligated to invite certain family members because they’d invited me to their weddings (or kids’ weddings) and… they’re family. In my heart I knew many of them wouldn’t bother to come but again… I felt obligated.

   Most of them didn’t come, and a few even said yes and then didn’t show. And I regret so much inviting them over people that really would have loved to come, people I would have loved to have there.

   I’m planning a wedding again now and I told my fiance that I refuse to feel obligated. I want people there that we both love and who love us. That’s what weddings should be about!

   • I have twin uncles who are like the Muppet theater hecklers. I can hear them picking my wedding apart in my head. They aren’t invited. Maybe half of the aunts and uncles “made the cut,” the ones who are positive and loving and actually part of our lives beyond obligatory family functions.

     • Dude, so THIS.

       I have an uncle whose greeting usually involves some form of “funny” insult about my clothes. So that totally wasn’t someone I wanted seeing me in my wedding dress.

       “Doesn’t she look beautiful?”
       “Eh, she looks okay. White would have been more appropriate, don’t you think? Unless she’s trying to make a statement.” *wink wink*
       And then my husband would have hit him.

       Not the best plan, nope nope nope!

       • 

         • LOL. Like really. Good thing I’m working from home this afternoon…

         • NOPE OCTOPUS!!!! 😀

         • This has made my day. I’m hypnotised

         • I do a mean impression of this gif, you guys.

           Here, let me show you:

           

         • Damn it, Ariel. The octopus didn’t break through my stoic getting-shit-done-at-work demeanor, but your octopus impression now has me giggling like a weirdo at my desk.

2. My wedding is in 30 days – so thinks! I appreciate the advice. My only caution to other brides is be careful if you get close to “firing a bridesmaid.” My friends did this to two of her bridesmaid for her wedding 2 years ago and they haven’t spoken since. Be careful, losing friends over your wedding is not worth it.

   • Yeah, we’ve got LOTS of advice on whether and how to fire a bridesmaid over here: http://offbeatwed.com/2013/05/how-to-fire-a-bridesmaid

   • Losing friends over a wedding isn’t worth it, but I would question how stable the friendship was if it couldn’t survive a botched bridesmaid gig.

     I think a lot of times women form close bonds at a point in their life and promise to include the other woman in their wedding. Wedding day rolls around, and that friend really isn’t bridesmaid material anymore. But she promised, so she has to offer the gig. The other woman promised, so she has to accept (even if she feels like she shouldn’t). So that’s a recipe for disaster.

     • TOTALLY related post: Bitch, ditch, or fix

   • I wish I HAD fired a bridesmaid! She was fine until after the bachlorette party a month before the wedding, where after the fact she bitched and complained about the money she spent (she made the most money out of anyone in the bridal party) and then started causing drama between me and my then fiance and decided she did not like the hairstyle I wanted everyone to have. I kept her in because she is my cousin, but we have barely spoken since and not for my lack of trying. Now when I see my wedding pictures and see her, all I see is her shit disturbing! Should have known better because she did the same thing at her brothers wedding!

3. Can you describe this color coded section for seating?

   • Seconded – this sounds like a brilliant idea, and might work well for us, too.

     • We did something similar… I don’t know if this is the same, but I color coded guests by groups of people that would know each other (orange – groom’s friends from high school, purple – my friends from college, blue – my family from PR, etc) so that it was really easy to move around the cells and group by color to a table. I could also visually spread any odd amounts so that a table would be a good mix of people from different groups (half purple, half orange for example) that would get along together.

4. Don’t assume people will fight you on your offbeat decisions.

   I was so sure my family would flip out that they weren’t invited my wedding that I went into conversations about it with my gun drawn and safety off. Not the best way to have a dialogue. The only feedback I got was “Okay, you should do what you want. It’s your wedding.” A couple of people were SAD I didn’t invite them, but they didn’t attack me and didn’t deserve to be attacked before they could respond (which I probably did).

   • Agreed!

     We recently reviewed the final guest list with my parents. I was expecting a battle over the family we chose not to invite because they live across the country/we haven’t seen them in years/etc. Funny thing…it was FINE. My parents totally supported our choices. I had invented and feared drama where no drama actually existed. My mom even commented, “You’re inviting Aunt So-And-So? She’s kind of a pain, I might have left her out.”

     • Whereas my family is normally really laid back and flexible, and my partner’s family is the one who gets really uptight about Family with a capital “F” most of the time. Even so, I gave my mum several months’ heads-up before sending out the invites about who I was inviting (close friends, immediate family only) but then AFTER the invites went out she lost her sh*t and telephoned me repeatedly until I agreed to invite a bunch of relatives I almost never see because otherwise “it could cause a family rift”.

       If mum disagrees with you, she just repeats her argument over and over again on different occasions, until you slowly lose your will to fight (I do love her, but it’s true). So after a week or two of daily badgering I gave in.

       My wedding is in 4 weeks and unfortunately all the relatives I barely even know have RSVP’d yes, so I get to spend an extra $500 on food just because of that. I had no idea my mum would flip out about this, so, unfortunately the opposite is true: you can expect your family to be as chill as they normally are and they’ll surprise you.

       Meanwhile the groom’s family has been totally silent on our guest choices. Probably helps that a lot of his extended family don’t live in the state, but still. Totally turned around my expectations as to who would have a fit about what.

       • Yeah, that’s the other side of people surprising you.

         We expected my parents to be the problem children, and they were absolutely perfect wedding guests. We expected his parents to be fine, and they stepped on our toes more than once. I actually wanted to apologize to my parents for how hard we were on them when I saw how his parents behaved.

   • This is so true. I was so worried that prospective vendors would think I was crazy, or friends would be uncomfortable at our offbeat wedding. Nope, everyone was just happy for us and excited!

5. My best tip is to do mockups of all your décor, photograph them, and include the pictures in the set up instructions.
   I had a ton of DYI stuff and had to decorate a completely empty venue. It would have never gotten set up the way I wanted without my mockups. My friends that set up and my day of coordinator thanked me for the mockups. It took all the guess work out of the décor.

   • I drew diagrams for how I wanted our papel picado banners to be hung and explained the plan to three different people. It still didn’t happen the way I wanted, because there was no ladder at the venue. Nobody thinks to put a ladder in their Oh Sh*t Kit.

     • As an event coordinator, and married lady, all I have to say to this is ladders don’t belong on the oh sh*t kit list, they belong on the ACTUAL LIST. I’m sorry to hear about your banners, and exactly why the painters ladder just goes right in the car, no matter what the event is. =D Lesson learned!!

6. I learned how to accept help and love from other people. I’m pretty fiercely independent, so this was hard for me. I felt terribly guilty about all that our families had to do to set up. But they insisted on it. It made them feel involved. I planned it so that there were enough people that no one had too much to do. And it was fabulous to look at our wedding and know that so much love went into it.

   I also learned to plan, plan, plan, and then let it go. My fiancé and I were adamant that come noon on our wedding day, we were done. It was in others’ hands. And it worked! I was specific enough in my planning, and flexible enough, that our families were able to set everything up perfectly without us.

7. I really love the “invite who you want” part. Not everyone is going to be able to show up and the list should extend to everyone you really want there. Thank you for reminding me of that!!

8. My husband and I just attended a lecture by Dr. Erika Engstrom last night called “The Disneyfication of Brideland” which was about Disney weddings and how they’ve commercialized the narrative of princess-weddings (and get you hooked on princess and bridal narratives from cradle to… er… veil?), and as we were walking back to our car, we started musing on what we’d have done differently in our own wedding, knowing what we know now about weddings, and having experienced one ourselves. It’s like you guys are reading my mind or something! 😉 (I haven’t read her book so I won’t plug it, but I think it would be up the alley of most Offbeat-Bride-readers; the material she covered was certainly familiar to both my husband and I.)

   ANYWAY.

   Things that my husband and I discussed that we would have done differently –

   Invited the people we wanted. Seriously – I know so many people are mentioning this one, and it’s SO TRUE. We left off friends for family that were no-shows, and painful no-shows at that. By the time we got all the invites back, with the RSVPs that surprised and hurt us (saying one thing to our face, another via the RSVP), we tried to invite our friends but it was too late; too many other commitments on their part, plus maybe a little hurt feelings.

   Paid a bit more for the photographer to stay past 10:30 – we got FANTASTIC images from our photographer, but he did miss about another 90 minutes of the reception, and there were a lot of crazy shenanigans and awesome memories that we would have loved to have pictoral evidence of. It would have been some more moolah, but… We feel it would have been worth it.

   Stuck with one dress, and have gone for the non-bridal-industry-dress: I will admit this was functional fixedness. I had gotten it in my head early on that I wanted a dress with color, but not an all-red dress. I went with an Alfred Angelo dress that was lovely, beautiful, and I did like it, but there was a lot of love-hate-freakout going on between me, the dress, and body image. Photos of the wedding day have me in two dresses; the (admittedly beautiful) AA touch of color dress, and a burgundy and black corset and skirt outfit from an amazing corset maker on Etsy. If I could do it all again (knowing everything I know now), I’d have just gotten married in the corset outfit and spent the saved moolah on the photographer for those extra 90 minutes. 😉

   Had different people on the bride’s side of the aisle – perhaps more, perhaps some different. Looking back at the choices I made, I left out some people and barely involved them in the wedding at all. Actually, that sorta goes to a bigger point –

   Involve more friends in the wedding – my partner and I regret not involving our friends more in our wedding. They attended and loved it, but our friends are our family in a way, our big family we’ve chosen, and we didn’t honor them as much as we would have liked.

   Silly little thing, but – I would have gotten on my bouquet earlier so that I could have gotten dahlias like I wanted originally. The only flowers in the entire wedding were in my bouquet, but because I waited too long, I ended up with (admittedly beautiful!) roses instead of the dahlias I wanted. Trivial, but I still would change it if I could.

   All in all, it was a successful wedding day, we have tons of amazing memories, and more importantly, three years on our marriage is still going strong. Both of us are curious what a wedding would look like now if we planned it knowing what we know now – which is kind of why we agreed to do 5-year vow renewals. A marriage grows and relationships change (and hopefully deepen), friends and communities change, and we feel that it’s important to recognize that as well as publicly reaffirm our committment to each other. Hopefully we can take the lessons learned from our wedding and apply them to all future vow renewal plannings!

9. Although definitely not a major issue, I would have redone how we did music. I listen to metal, along with a few of my closest friends. We thought we’d figured out the perfect mix of metal and non-metal music (and I do actually think the ratio was done well), but because we played the metal tracks over the course of the night (we just basically put it on random, with a few minor tweaks), it ended up interrupting the dancing vibe; once a metal song came on, everybody cleared off to have a drink except me and about seven other people. If I had my time again, I would have a ‘metal halfa’ (half an hour of straight metal music), which I think would work better – my friends and I would get a solid dance in, most people would drink and chat and because half an hour goes by quickly, they would be back on the dancefloor and dancing up a storm shortly afterwards.

   If anybody is having mixed genres at their wedding and people having a good time dancing is important to them, I’d recommend considering how the flow of songs would affect people on the dancefloor. It’s probably the biggest regret from our wedding (of things I could have changed).

   • Brilliant! Thank you. We’re planning on having klezmer/Jewish folk music and this is a great idea. I’m totally doing this. The hora, then 20 minutes of klezmer and folk music (circle dancing!!!) then back to the music our non-jewish families and his friends know.

10. I agree with inviting who you want- don’t invite your snarky great-aunt or estranged second cousins if you aren’t close. But B-listing guests- adding on additional invites when you get declined RSVP’s from your original list- is so, so, rude, and can seriously backfire on the couple. Please consider how you would feel as a last-minute “placeholder” guest, invited because someone else said no. Even if the bride and groom genuinely want their B-list guests there, it’s still insulting and hurtful to be picked second and have to scramble to rearrange schedules last minute, take time off work, budget for travel, etc. Most people DO realize when they’ve been B-listed too, it’s really not that hard to figure out when you get an invitation a week or two before the event. And what if someone from your original list decides last minute that they can come after all, or worse, just shows up after declining? I certainly wouldn’t fault a couple for not having a meal for me if I didn’t let them know I was coming, but I’ve read far too many stories of relatives who think the world revolves around them and think the bride and groom should magically have a place saved for them just in case they show up. And again, while it’s the couple’s decision to gracefully make room for party crashers or (rightfully) turn them away, now “their” seat is taken by someone else, and because of budget concerns or space restrictions, you couldn’t even accommodate them if you wanted to. I’ve also heard of couples over-inviting what their venue or budget can afford, because “at least [insert random percentage] of guests will decline,” and then panic when they have too high of an acceptance rate, which is just unnecessarily stressful- who wants to HOPE that their guests decline?

    That said, I think the advice about the “uncrossable line” budget is GENIUS and deserves its own post. Reminds me of all the HGTV renovations where they leave room for a “contingency budget” in case they run into unforseen problems and expenses.

    • I really don’t agree at all. I’ve been B-listed, knew it, and was totally excited to be included. They were new friends, who I was becoming closer to but wasn’t that close with yet. I didn’t expect to be invited, and when I was, I was thrilled, even knowing I was on the B-list. We ended up becoming close friends over time but the friendship was new.

      I don’t know that the B-list works well if you are really close to the people. It can work well for new friends who you aren’t close to yet, but want to invite anyways.

      • I think the B list thing is brilliant but yes you do have to be careful. What seems better is maybe invites in waves to different circles. Like if you know most of your declines are going to come from extended family, maybe all the family invites go out first. Then, you send the second wave of friends you’d like to invite but not enough room, parents friends etc. The groups aren’t mixed so they won’t know that the initial invitations went out in the first place. This is what we plan to do in order to avoid inviting close to 350 people, knowing that a chunk of the family I have to invite, but don’t know, won’t travel to come to the wedding. I don’t want to take the chance of just inviting everyone and then these relatives RSVP yes…that seems to dangerous for me!

11. 1) Budgeting Time, YES. We didn’t start early enough for all the DIY I wanted to do because… well I’m a procrastinator. Ultimately we still got the most important things done (paper flower + mini typewriter centerpieces, card box etc) but that last month was really stressful and I wouldn’t want to repeat it.

    2) I’m glad I fought for the “offbeat” things that I did, but on the day of I wish I would have fought for what we wanted just a bit more because a few things were definitely not us.

    It’s a long story that I won’t get into *too* deeply but in summary, on setup the day of a lot of extra family showed up that we weren’t planning on and kind of started taking over everything, from the table setup (“but you have to have reserved seating for the FAMILY! Oh not friends too, that’s not FAMILY”) to trying to change our reception plans because “This is a wedding and that’s how it’s done.” SIGH. Ultimately we ended up fighting on a whole lot on the morning of the wedding, and it’s really hard to be like “NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE” when you’ve got multiple people fighting you every step of the way. I did still insist on most of our plans though, so much that I was basically in tears by the time I had to leave, but I wished I fought for more instead of just giving up on a couple really ridiculous things because I was just so tired of it. For example, nobody even used our “reserved for family” head table even though it was supposedly SO IMPORTANT, it just sat there sad and empty up front until I threw the stupid reserved sign away later on that night.

    So basically, I guess I just wish I fought for all the things that were really important to me, I wanted to have no regrets. I am glad I left some details that I knew people would be kind of “WTF” about until they happened. Example- When I showed up in my bright blue Vans under my dress my mom was all “you can’t wear sneakers THIS IS A. WEDDING.” Well oh well, they’re the only shoes I’ve got now and the wedding is about to start 😉 etc.

    Other than that though, I don’t think I would have done anything differently, it really ended up being a wonderful night 🙂 And for all the fighting for “traditional” things some people did they all seemed to have a good time anyway.

12. There were a lot of things that I really loved about our wedding and that I thought we did very right. I did what I wanted for the most part and we broke many “traditions” and it was interesting to me that the very people that I thought would miss the traditions complimented us on the unique aspects of our wedding and loved it when they saw it executed. (ie: religious family members loved our secular ceremony because we obviously put so much of ourselves into it)

    I did not have a lot of back-up with planning and organizing from others though and not only did this affect my health in the weeks right before the wedding, but I discovered that when the actual week of the wedding came that I really DID need the help and someone to help with organization.

    Some of the bigger stresses of the day were that the sand for the sand ceremony and the glasses that we were using to pour the sand ended up in the wrong car–my car, because they were so important to me and fragile–and were not at the ceremony and I had to have a friend go and get them.

    I realized the morning of that I had forgotten to shave my arm pits and I was hasty about it and managed to cut myself with a bad razor and my mother and bridesmaid’s new mission was to stop me from bleeding all over my dress.

    The reception hall put out round tables and my mother showed up with rolls of table cover that needed to go on rectangular tables. (Note: the one thing that she was in charge of.)All of the tables had to be taken down and rectangular tables put up in the precious time that we were meant to be decorating.

    Both ushers missed the rehearsal and the morning of, I did not have a chance to give them instructions since I was hiding out in my dress–they pretty much looked cool for the day and weren’t sure what they were supposed to be doing. (We had a park wedding that was a bit hard to find and we had intended on having them direct cars from the entrance rather than seat people.)

    These are just a handful of things that brought out the stress in me and on another day they might have been more manageable.

    In retrospect, if you do not assign someone to be a day of coordinator or hire one, write out a list of the grooming that you need to do the day before that you might forget in the craziness as obvious as it sounds. Put someone in charge of setting up things that are important to you BEFORE the week of the wedding and tell them that they are in charge of getting that stuff where it needs to be as well because you won’t be able to do everything even if you are typically superhuman.

    I wished I had charted out the room and the tables and not left that to my mother. It would have saved a lot of time and stress during the decorating of the reception hall.

    Except in advance that Murphy will crash the wedding in some way. Hopefully only you will notice though.

13. I hadn’t thought that just letting bridesmaids pick their own clothes would cause problems. Does anyone have any experience with that being an issue?

    • I was really, really basic. I asked my party to wear any black clothing they wanted. Now, that did actually result in SEVERAL follow up questions from them, but most of that was because they were shocked that I honestly didn’t give a crap what they wore but had heard ZERO direction wasn’t appreciated. But there were some more details that would have helped put their minds at ease – details that were addressed in follow up questions and emails. I realized that what I should have done was say something like the following:

      I’d request you wear black or black/white combo of some kind – dress, skirt/blouse, or pants. I honestly mean whatever you like, but so you know the general tone, my dress is tea length (for the bridesman, that means just past the knees). I’m wearing red heels for the ceremony and switching to red converse for the reception, so just wear shoes that are comfortable for uneven terrain and/or for you feeling comfortable, however you mix those things. There will be no set hairstyle or jewelry or make up or parasols or whatever. Above all, remember this is a BBQ/picnic wedding in a park where you will sit at a picnic table and potentially get dusty – dress accordingly 🙂

    • Yes, it can be a huge problem. My almost-stepdaughter got to pick and chose a white lacy bride-like dress. I should’ve been clear. I should’ve said anything blue, or jewel-tones, or beach colors, or something. I also don’t want my SIL’s gorgeous legs to pull focus, but I didn’t say “fuller or longer skirts” so now I’ll just have to suck it up (wedding is in 2 days) – too late to expect changes.

14. My best friend wanted us to wear “green” for her wedding, but dude there are like a bajillion shades of green (from teal/blue to pukey yellowish green), so she went to a paint store and mailed us a paint sample swatch that was in the color scheme she envisioned. While none of our dresses looked super like the paint swatch, they were all within the range she was going for. I thought it was brilliant because I was able to take that swatch to the stores with me and rule out stuff that was too far one direction or the other!

15. If they don’t RSVP they don’t get a place at my wedding haha. That’s a hard line and I’ll stick to it.

16. Yeah, some of these things could definitely get chalked up to “things I wish I’d known,” too. FH has already agreed to a big ol’ 5th or 10th anniversary shindig so I can put all the stuff I learned in planning the wedding to good use.

17. I’ve had two of my friends have a long horizontal table for the bridal party and long tables running vertically in front, they just put name tags for immediate family at the ends closest to the bridal table and left blank cards for everyone else to write their name, everyone got to sit with who they wanted and there was not grumbling. We are planning to do the same with my family, its hard when there are divorces, cousins who don’t speak etc.

18. Well for a Good man like me that is still Single today which i really was hoping to find a Good woman to be married with a family, i really wish that i could’ve gone back in time since it definitely would’ve been much Easier finding a Good old fashioned woman back then since it was a hell of a lot Easier meeting women in those days compared to the women of today that are Not so nice anymore to meet now. And with so many women that have their Careers today which many of them are now so very high maintenance, independent, selfish, spoiled, greedy, picky, and very money hungry today with a very bad attitude that many of them have these days since they really think that they’re God’s gift to men which their really Not at all which the women in the Good old days were totally different and Never like that at all. Women have certainly Changed over the years which is the real reason why many of us men are Single because of this which i am sure many other men like me that are having trouble finding Love too will certainly agree with me as well. Just like that song that Cher sang at that time, if i only could turn back time. Our family members were very Blessed at that time since finding Love with one another certainly came very Easy for them since many of them are still together now as i speak.

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