Planning a wedding can be incredibly stressful. Sure, there’s a lot of fun things like choosing a dress and doing food tastings with all the different caterers and cake vendors. However, when you’re in the thick of it things can get very overwhelming. When we got married, we had very little knowledge of what all goes into planning a wedding. Now that we’re wedding professionals, there are a million things that we look back on and wish we would have done differently. Don’t get me wrong, we ended up having a day that was special and unique to us and we are so thankful for how amazing the day was. Yet, there are several things we would have done differently and so we hope you find this helpful as you plan for your big day!

1. Don’t try to do everything yourselves 

Okay, this is the first tip I bring up because literally all the things that are following this probably could have been avoided if we didn’t’ try and take on so much responsibility for our day. We were really trying to budget for our wedding because we knew we wanted to pay off our student loans and buy a house within the next year. So, we cut a lot of corners and spent a ton of time looking up DIY wedding tips on Pinterest. Yes, we did save a lot of money and ended up having a very affordable wedding, but it was incredibly stressful and made it difficult to enjoy the time that we were engaged. Looking back, we definitely wish we would have hired a wedding planner! If you’re looking for a good one, we highly recommend Lindsay from Opulent Events!

2. Hire a wedding coordinator (or a team of them)

This is probably our biggest regret. Sure, we saved money and did everything ourselves, however, a lot of responsibilities fell on our friends and family the day of our wedding. I’m pretty sure my parents had a hard time enjoying the day. My mom had to make changes to the seating chart the morning of our wedding, my friends had to help clear tables at the end of the night, and overall it was a lot of work that ended up falling on people who really should have been able to enjoy the entire day. While we are so grateful and thankful that people were willing to help us out with different tasks, we wish we could go back and pay someone to take over those tasks because they really do add up and it’s a lot to ask of people. 

3. Be selective with who you ask to be in your bridal party

Choosing a wedding party is a really difficult decision. While I do care deeply about each and every person that was in my bridal party, I will say this: choosing someone to be in your wedding party because you feel like you “should” is not a good reason to include them. 

4. Talk with both sets of parents about what each will be contributing

Each family is different when it comes to how they can support a couple in their wedding planning. It’s important to have conversations early on in the process to figure out how and what each set of parents is able and willing to contribute to the wedding. If they’re willing to financially contribute, figure out what the budget would be or which services or vendors they’d be willing to chip in for. If they are unable to financially contribute, ask if they’d want to be involved in other parts of the process. For example, maybe they might be willing to help with stuffing wedding invitations or helping to manage the RSVP list. Luke and I took on a lot more responsibilities than we should have and we had plenty of family members who would have been willing to help but we failed to ask. 

5. We forgot to choose our first dance song!

Okay, this one is hilarious…Somehow, Luke and I completely forgot to choose our first dance song! I have NO idea how this escaped us but we were eating dinner at our reception and that’s when we realized we hadn’t chosen a first dance song! So, literally during dinner and right before the wedding speeches, we were trying to decide on our first dance song. We ended up choosing our favorite Taylor Swift song at the time, “New Year’s Day” (Lover wasn’t out yet, otherwise for sure we would have chosen that!). Anyway, the moral of the story, we missed a few things and had to fly by the seat of our pants on our big day. Had we hired a planner, this probably all would have been avoided.

6. If you’re debating on getting a videographer, do it!

Because we were trying to save money on our wedding day, we didn’t even think to budget for a videographer. We didn’t realize that we’d want a videographer until it was too late. We absolutely love our wedding photos and they definitely captured our day well, however, we don’t even remember a thing about our ceremony. I was so nervous I almost fainted and so I was just too busy trying not to fall over. Honestly, I don’t remember much about it and we wish we could look back and watch it on film. Also, we are now offering video – contact us to learn more!

7. Set aside time to NOT talk about your wedding

It gets super easy to feel behind on wedding planning and focus on booking the next appointment or planning the next detail. The list will honestly not go away until the day is here. Be sure to still go on dates, talk about your dreams and things you look forward to after your wedding day, be intentional with your time, and remind each other why you love one another. It’s easy to get so caught up in the wedding and so make sure to make the priority about your relationship and not just the big day. We definitely did this when we could, but both of us wish we would have done it more because the planning seemed to dominate way too much of our time.

8. Plan your day around what matters to you most

We got married on a Friday night, which made sense for us for various reasons. Our church did Saturday and Sunday service and so it was the only time it was available and we knew we wanted to get married there. That being said, we didn’t think about how that would impact our wedding day as a whole. Because we got married on a Friday, we had to push the ceremony to later in the day because it would allow people to attend and not have to take a ton of time off of work. We didn’t even think about how that would affect the reception, dance, and everything else. They always say your wedding day will go by fast. For us, it felt like it went so fast we didn’t even have a chance to see everyone. We really value our guests and we’re looking forward to spending time with them and so when we didn’t get to see everyone, we both realized that we’d maybe have done things differently. So, my biggest piece of advice here would be to sit down before making any plans and talk through the things that are most important to you.

Hopefully, you found this post helpful! We’ve learned SO much over the years as wedding professionals! We’ve compiled many resources, one of which is a free wedding checklist download – check it out!

Want to learn more about our wedding photography and videography services?

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