What do you wish you’d known, when planning your wedding?

[Honkytonk01]

Just that.

I’ve got 7 months to plan my wedding and I’m already getting lots of comments about how much we have to do in a short space of time! We are recently engaged. The venue is booked thankfully but have pretty much everything else to organise.

Whats the best piece of advice you would give to someone planning their wedding?

If you're having flowers go all out for the bouquet and less on the table decorations. No one cares about table flowers but your bouquet will be in most of your pictures

What a knob the guy I was marrying was.

This is apparently obvious to everyone else in the world but I wish I'd known that it's traditional for brides to choose the wedding dress with their mums. I was so in a rush and keen to get it sorted ASAP that I went with SIL instead because she was free sooner and I really upset my mum as she felt pushed out

My brother and his wife did this. There was absolutely zero atmosphere.

after attending ours with a proper DJ they said they really regretted not finding the money.

Also, having it on a weekday is cheaper but means people are less likely to be able to come.

Lastly, have a guestbook for guests to write a message! DH did this later with the wedding photos and it was a lovely idea but four of the people at our wedding have since died and he only managed to get a message from one of them. Getting messages on the day is so lovely and will give you something to look back on and treasure.

My only regret from ours was not having a photographer. I hate having my photo taken and DH didn’t care one way or the other, but I was having such a good time that I didn’t care who was taking pictures and I regret not having more. We had a photobooth, which everyone used and was definitely worth it, but we wish we’d had photos with more of our guests.

That I really, really shouldn’t have shown up.

That there’s an order to the decisions you need to make -
• sort your dress first as there can be a run-in time of months and the style you settle on will affect other choices
• next look at bridesmaid dresses as the colour might be controversial.
• only when those two are sorted do you think about colours of things like flowers/napkins/booklets/seat covers and other fripperies. (Don’t try this process backward)

Stay the fuck away from Pinterest and Instagram if you value your sanity

It’s easier and cheaper to run with herd and get a standard wedding package than to reinvent the wheel

It’s perfectly ok to care about things that other people think are a waste, and to be indifferent to things that matter a lot to others- think about what’s important to you and put your money /effort into them. You can have an iPod or a live band; let your mates snap pictures on their phones or get high resolution pictures from a professional ; do your own make up or hire an artist , etc

Don’t let anyone make you feel bad for what you care about but don’t be pushed into spending your money on things that don’t matter to you.

and finally, protect your relationships. It’s not worth falling out with any of your family and friends, or your fiancé.

Don't bother with disposable cameras. All the photos came out crap, waste of £150 once development is paid for.

Check with the venue for hidden charges. We got told on our last payment that it was £1.50 per piece of cake cut. They weren't providing the cake and they also didn't serve it. They just cut it and left it on a plate. To add to that we had 2 cutting cakes (sponge) and our real cake was fruit. They forgot to cut the fruit cake. So the next day we had a 3 tear cake to take home that they had thrown the box out for.

Be prepared for people to mess you around by canceling right up to the day before. We replaced 4 people and still had seats we couldn't fill.

You don't need a cake topper, particularly one that costs £100 (£50 17 years ago) and looks nothing like the two of you.

Check that the hotel is actually handing out the fizz and wine that exorbitant corkage has been paid on, rather than being tight with it in the hope that guests will buy more drinks.

I wish I had done the classy thing and asked for no gifts. In our defence 17 years on we're still using the Denby Imperial Blue crockery set and our John Lewis towels.

if you expect the bridal party to dress in a certain way, then you pay for it. Do not pay for some of the groomsmen suits and then expect others to pick up the tab for theirs.

Oh yes disposable cameras are a huge waste of money. I suspect photo booths may be the modern equivalent, they also seem to be a huge waste of money.

Don't do a free bar, but put a generous amount of money aside for a bar and have a cut off.
Free bars lead to drunkenness and piss-taking

People don't really take notice of much but will remember happiness, hunger, misery and fights, and truly hideous clothes or food

@KirstenBlest we didn't do a free bar, but I was invited to a work friends evening do with one and was shocked by the grabby behaviour of some of my fellow colleagues. Maybe drinks vouchers is the way to go - slightly tacky, but much fairer for all including the hosts.

We did ours in three months. One of my colleagues was beside herself because I didn’t buy my dress until the week before!

Top tip is to keep it simple. Provide plenty of food and drink, don’t keep people hanging around for hours for photos you’ll probably only ever look at a handful of times and cut out all the crap like favours.

@MrsJaneyLloydFoxe totally agree I wasted money on stuff like fancy cars that only we got to ride in, total waste of money!

Keep in touch with the wedding planner at the hotel. We hadnt a clue really, we'd said what we wanted, arranged it only about 4 months before had paid in full from the outset, so didnt have any contact until a couple of days before to take a table plan. Seemed the planner we had seen had left and I was greeted with "oh we wondered what had happened to you, you need to pay". We already had!! Of course their fault too as they hadn't tried to contact us!!

I'd stop taking any notice of the people telling you that you don't have much time; you have plenty.

We had five months to plan our wedding; in this time we also bought our first house, and this took priority really...

The ceremony was more important to us than the reception; the main priority at the reception was ensuring people had lovely food and lots of it.

Didn't go in much for all the planning people seem to do now - I bought my dress from Monsoon one day in my lunch hour.

If you're willing to let go of some of the details (and I appreciate that not everyone is), say yes to people who offer to help. My mum sorted out our wedding cake - I told her colours and rough number of guests expected and she turned up with a cake.

We've never watched our wedding video and if we were doing it again probably wouldn't bother with a photographer.

Went to a florist the day before and bought flowers.

We weren't going to have church flowers but a couple of women from church were so outraged by this that they just did them anyway which was very sweet.

We didn't have an evening do but the hotel's very lovely bar was open for anyone who wanted to stick around.

@rookiemere , IIRC we put a limit on the bar and it was a lot of money. It ran out and there were some very drunk guests moaning

I've been to free bar events and it ends up in CFs taking the piss esp if staying at the hotel

Oh I forgot one more thing I wish I'd known - I had a corset style dress and I drank coke - this was a mistake as it was so gassy it filled up my tummy and I physically couldn't fit food into it which was a shame as we'd booked a Chinese buffet place for the reception and I could barely eat anything.

Also, remember boobs change size throughout your cycle - the dress fitted me perfectly 2 weeks before the wedding day. On the day my boobs had got smaller and I had giant gaps. We ended up making a makeshift bra out of micropore tape to fill it up

One thing we got right (well lots of it was right, but this has been discussed) - I asked a friend who was just starting a photography business to do our official photos, she did them for free in exchange for using them in her portfolio and website. We got lovely photos and they were much nicer than the ones people took on their phones.

That I'd enjoy it more than I realised, be less shy than I expected and because of both those things I wish I'd been braver inviting a few more people to share in the loveliness!

That you don't need lots of relatives there.
That you don't need an "evening do", because they are awful.
That "less is more".
That if you pay for it all yourself then you can have it exactly how you want it.

Nobody wants to sit next to people they don't know!

My tip is to spend an evening reading all the threads on MN about what people hate at weddings. You will find that there are common themes, such as

not enough food and drink / only one type of food eg hog roast / drinks too expensive / not providing for dietary requirements

too much waiting / standing about / not enough chairs

long / boring / inappropriate speeches

This is interesting to me because I've been married twice:

1st was the big white wedding. We still kept it fairly cheap but we had it all: cars; cake; photographer; a big "Mr and Mrs Surname" sign. I was 22. Thin. Had gorgeous highlights and a bang-on-trend wedding that would have made a fab Pinterest board, if Pinterest existed. (He left me after 2.5 years. No kids thankfully)

2nd husband: we ran off to Gretna Green at the first chance we got when Scotland would let us over the border during the Covid times. And in 3 weeks, we're following up with the belated "family do".

This time it's in our back garden. No cars, no first dance, no cake cutting, no wedding planner, no bar.... just 2 bands, 90 people we actually like, a hog roast and some humanist "vows" on our lawn. My dress isn't even white. Now I'm old, fat, have several kids in tow and my only highlights are the greys running along my centre parting.

What nobody told me the first time is that it's just a day and the big thing is not the where or the when. 10/10 it's the who. It's taken us a few years to get here but I'm married to / marrying the love of my life and I wouldn't do all the faff again for all the burlap on Pinterest.

That said... I suppose everyone fancies the big white wedding once. So make it count and don't marry the wrong one!