Learn From My Mistakes

This blog post is to tell you exactly what not to do while planning your wedding. For the most part, my wedding planning process was smooth, one hiccup here and there, but overall stress-free!

Here are some tips as to what not to do based on my personal experience to make your planning process even more relaxed than mine was.

Tip One:

DO NOT buy your dresses too big or too small!

This goes for the bride, bridesmaids, and mothers of both the bride and groom. Yes, dresses can be altered, but why spend a ton of money on alterations when you can buy a dress at the size you are when trying on the dress and have it slightly altered during your fitting. As for brides trying to shed the pounds before the day of, get the dress at the size you are during your fitting or wait until closer to the wedding date to buy. Do not buy a dress smaller than the size you are in the hopes of losing weight! I cannot stress this enough. Forcing yourself into a dress unrealistically too tiny could be psychologically damaging or even cause unflattering pictures of the day.

There is nothing more beautiful than a confident, happy bride in a well fitting dress--no matter her size.

When I picked my wedding dress, the store only had it in a size that was two sizes bigger than I needed. I was told by the consultants that wedding dresses --this one, in particular, ran very small. So it would be in my best interest to get the dress that I was in even though it hung off of me. They told me that it could be altered to fit me perfectly down the road. Because I was no expert, I listened. Several months later when we were doing the fittings for my bridesmaids, they wanted to see me in my dress. Luckily, the store had my dress but in my actual size. To my surprise, the dress fit like a glove. I was immediately upset because I would save a substantial amount of money in alterations if I had gotten the correct size in the first place. I spoke with the manager of the store and requested to exchange the sizes, finally after some heavy persuasion, I was able to get the correct size even though it was well over the 30-day exchange date. Bottom line: Get your size!

Bonus Tip: Large chain bridal salons do not usually let out bridesmaid's dresses, so make sure they also get the right size

Tip Two:

Print your return address and mailing address on the invitations through the service you use

When printing invitations it's easy to think "Oh! Here's an area where I can save some money, and I'll write them myself." Do yourself a favor and spend it. Especially if you have a large guest count like I did. You'll thank me later.

Do not let your computer auto-fill the addresses either. I thought my computer knew my address and I did not check it. Well, what do ya know? I printed the wrong return city on all 220 of our wedding invitations.

Bonus Tip:

You can pay someone to hand-write your invitations for you using calligraphy if you have a bit of extra money to spend. You don't have to do it yourself, and they'll look like they were written by an angel if you do.

Tip Three:

Make it ridiculously easy for your guests to RSVP

While creating the RSVP cards, make sure to not only stamp the envelope but also to note that the guests need to write who they are when they return their RSVP. Do not rely on your guests to think about these things, make it super easy for them. Put a line for the return address that says "Fill Me" and also a line that says "Who's comin'?". If you invited a family of five and they RSVP "coming" Does that mean all five? Just three? Which ones? That is something you need to know for the seating chart.

I made the mistake of not putting those two things on my response cards and paid for it by having to track down the people that sent me blank cards.

Tip Four:

Do all of your research

Make sure you do all of your research before you hire your vendors! Mind you, I am a research addict. I will research for hours and read every review before I book, but there are tricky companies out there that can pay to remove bad reviews or in my case, make you sign a cause in their cancellation contract stating that you and your spouse are legally not allowed to write a bad review about their company on the internet. No wonder there wasn't a single bad review for this company...

Luckily my fiancé and I were able to get out of the contract well before the wedding after only losing a bit of our deposit in exchange. The ordeal could have been avoided entirely if I had been skeptical of this "too good to be true" deal.

Be skeptical, ask around, go to bridal shows, give yourself options!

Tip Five:

Before you do anything, make a budget sheet

My fiancé and I were fortunate enough to have my parents shoulder most of the burden of paying for the wedding, we are forever grateful to them for that support. This tip applies even more to the couple planning to pay for their wedding themselves! I cannot stress this one enough.

Make. A. Budget.

Write down a max number and then go from there. Do not make the mistake that we did and start planning without one. Before you know it, you have a wedding budget sky high from where you imagined it to be. Eventually, we all sat down and created an Excel sheet to calculate every possible expense of the wedding and bounced it off of a number we created to feed the rest of the expenses. This small preventative step would have saved us a lot of time and money in the long run.

Tip Six:

Ask before you buy

Ask your vendors and venues before you buy any decorations or anything for a grand exit. For example, we purchased sparklers in bulk after The Fourth of July for a steep discount so we could use them for the exit pictures. Smart right? Wrong. While we asked the venue's permission to use sparklers and if they have extinguishing buckets, we forgot to ask our photographers if the sparklers were the correct type and size. Turns out they were not. We needed much larger sparklers for the pictures to turn out the way I envisioned. Does anyone need 300+ tiny sparklers?

Several venues will not allow flower petals for the flower girls, rice for exits, confetti, etc. Check with everyone before you take the liberty of buying things you might not be able to use, it'll save you money in the long run.

Some venues actually allow you to rent from their stock decorations! Going this route will save you the trouble of having to resell all of those table number holders and whatever else you will never be able to use again!

Tip Seven:

Stop trying to please everyone

This is your day as a couple. Don't let other people ruin it by demanding things of you. If you don't like what they have to say, just smile and say "Thank you for your input, but that is not really how I want things done or to look." A polite and straightforward way to say back off. I know it can be hard with family sometimes because they all have the best of intentions, but standing your ground is essential to fully enjoy the day you've created for you and your future spouse. Planning a wedding is stressful, adding the extra pressure of pleasing everyone that could even possibly have an opinion is unnecessary.

With Love,

Macy