Not too long ago, the gorgeous Twistie posed this compelling question: What if you don’t care? As in, what if you don’t care about wedding cake or finding the perfect wedding dress or reception table centerpieces or having real linens? Of course the answer is that your wedding will not be ruined just because you don’t spend ages hunting for a dress or you have paper napkins at the post-ceremony brunch buffet. My advice is always going to be “If you don’t care about it, don’t do it/don’t stress over it/let someone else handle it.” It’s pretty good advice, if I do say so myself!
The only problem? Every so often a bride comes out on the far side of her wedding and discovers that she does care or ought to have cared about certain details. There are definitely things I thought I didn’t care about while planning a wedding that I can now say I wish I had cared about because they are the things that cause those tiny pangs of regret I sometimes feel when looking at my wedding photo album. And I would love to hear, from those of you already married, what you wish you’d cared MORE about while planning a wedding. Maybe you didn’t put much thought into your bouquet and it stands out as an afterthought in your pics. Or your wedding cake was only so-so but you wish it had been fabulous. Could be you are sorry you didn’t devote more of your budget to your wedding photography or your wedding rings.
In the absence of a time machine, there’s not a lot we married ladies can do about it now… other than to suggest that brides-to-be and grooms-to-be take our stories into consideration when planning their weddings. It sounds and feels a bit silly, but it makes a lot of sense to create a list of things you and your intended don’t care about and then to meditate on it for a bit. Try to imagine your future wedding photos – do the things you think you don’t care about make an appearance after all? You may be surprised to discover that a few things on that ‘don’t care list’ suddenly feel more important! Or you may find that you really don’t care and can safely devote yourself to the things that are actually important to you. Either way, you have just upped your chances of having the wedding you really want.
It’s going to sound terrible, but sanity (closely followed by sleep!). It can be so easy to fall down the rabbit hole where every wedding is styled (whether professionally or, often more intimidatingly, at great length and with individual and lovely flair by the couple themselves), so you forget that these are the creme de la creme. When you think you’re Just Not Good Enough, and you have to try harder for it all to be beautiful and “you”, it’s probably already great. Not to suggest settling and being “just ok” for something so important, but it all seems amplified before as individual details – afterwards, it’s you, him, and how you both felt, and everything else is *there*, but just not quite so prominent as it was when you worried about it.
I wish I had cared more about spending time with my guests. I was so obsessed with punctuality and things being just right and everything looking as it should that I didn’t have enough time to say hi to everyone–not even during the reception. Even though my guests were all lovely people who probably understood that it was a busy day, I still feel rather sorry about that.
Looking back there is only one thing that still bothers me. The plan for the cake was to save the top layer in the freezer for our 1 year anniversary (it was suggested by the baker). My MIL said she would take care of it at the end of the day. Well at the end of the day it got placed on a shelf and forgotten about until the next day instead of being put in the fridge. I was very upset about this for so many reasons. It was something that was obviously not important to her. If I could go back I would have put my MOH in charge of it. I’m sure this probably seems like a very small thing in the big picture of wedding planning but everything else otherwise went the way it was supposed to and this has always nagged at me.
I wish I had listened to my husband and had our ceremony videotaped. I love our pictures, but I wish I had a record of the day in motion.
I wish we had videotaped the ceremony. Not so much for a keepsake to watch and treasure forever, but because we had a fairly traditional Western Christian style procession, I was the last one in, and therefore missed seeing my niece as a flower girl, among other moments.
Also, I would have done a receiving line and had assigned seating for our guests at the reception. I dismissed both as more stuffy than I thought our crowd generally does, but there were problems with my thinking. I had planned we’d go table to table greeting our guests, but there were inevitably a few people we crossed paths with, and I regret that. I also think place cards would have been good as there were a couple of confusing incidents with people trying to figure out where to sit/not sit, who to mingle with when they didn’t know others, etc. Neither of these were big deals at all, I doubt anyone else thought to criticize the decisions, but as hostess it was an area I wish I had been more thoughtful in.
I wasted too much time worrying about what everyone would eat and how I would cook it for the nine days that we had houseguests. (Do not do this – have houseguests for your wedding – unless they are self-sufficient.) I cooked all the food. I should have told them they were on their own – here were some takeout menus and here was the phone. They didn’t appreciate it and filled up on bourbon and cheese at 4 p.m. anyhow.
@The gold digger Ack, that sounds like my idea of hell! Please, brides-to-be, heed this most valuable advice and do no offer to put anyone up unless they understand that you will not be feeding them and they will be responsible for finding towels and things. The bride, she shall be busy.