Before we dive in, I just want to preface the fact that I absolutely loved my wedding day. At the time of planning and with the knowledge that I had, we planned the best day we thought possible, but there are definitely things that I would have done differently. It doesn’t mean that I regret anything about the day, but if I was planning it all over again, here are some of the things that I would have done differently.
Most of our favorite moments from the day were the ones that we spent together away from everyone else. It was just easier to focus on each other and forget about the stress of everything else. We loved everything about our ceremony and it was so special that my best friend was our officiant. We loved our first look, private vows and our private last dance as well!
The first thing that I wish I did was put more intention and time into the rehearsal dinner. It was super lowkey, but I wish I had let people give speeches and had a welcome party. My family is from Ohio and my wife’s is from California, so I wish we did a welcome party to get the opportunity to talk to more of our guests and meet people that we had never met before so that we didn’t feel obligated to do that at the wedding. I just wish we were more intentional and thought a little deeper into this part of the wedding weekend.
My venue offered us a day of coordinator which was later switched to an “on-site manager” so I wish we knew this a little earlier on and hired a month of planner/coordinator. This would have taken so much stress off of my wife in the weeks leading up to the wedding and on the day of. We weren’t aware that our venue made that change until a week or two before the wedding day, but looking back, I wish we did it anyway. The big thing is just to do whatever you can to alleviate stress on the day of the wedding so that you can focus and actually enjoy that day and be as present as possible so that you aren’t worried about things the entire day.
Something that I have been seeing that I really love are the audio guest books that people do. These are little phones that guests can leave a message on. We did a record player guest book, so the phone would have been perfect next to them and I just love that you can hear people’s voices rather than just read their words. I always love adding these into my couples films if they do it!
I love when couples eat privately together before the rest of the guests eat. I think it is so sweet that you get to eat together and have some alone time as your first meal as husband and wife! It’s so incredible to just slow down and be present together on a day that goes by so fast. I also would have done our little cake cutting during this time as well to keep that private. Then, as guests are eating, that gives us more time to go around and talk to everyone and thank them for coming.
I think an after wedding photo/video session also would have been super fun. We stayed at a really cute airbnb right down the road from the venue and I would have loved some fun flash photos and even video interviews of us reminiscing on the day as it came to an end.
My wife and I did a lantern release send off which sounds great in theory, but it was just too much to coordinate with people who had been drinking and never done that before. I wish we kept it simple and did confetti or sparklers. I would have loved to include the lanterns but maybe doing that later with just us.
I definitely would have invested in weekend coverage with my videographer if I did end up doing more with the rehearsal dinner. I would have looked into doing an adventure / storybook engagement session as well to add more depth to our film and just make it more us. I love wedding films with good stories and looking back, it would have been super cool to do something like that and to document those emotions and that season of our life leading up to the big day.
That is all I can come up with! There were so many things that I loved about our day but these are the big things that I would have done differently so that you can consider doing them for your big day!