The BIG DAY! It’s here, or almost here. It’s crazy to think you’ve spent months planning for something that only lasts for a few hours. There are so many moving pieces to today, that something is bound to not go as planned. It’s okay.
If you look up Type-A in the dictionary, I swear my picture is there. I thought I had everything planned to a T and taken care of… But that wasn’t the case. We had a few hiccups and our day was still perfect.
Here are a few tips to help your day go smoothly:
Steam the dresses and your veil beforehand. I figured everything would get messed up on the way to the venue so we waited, don’t. It’ll save you time to steam everything earlier and then just go through and touch up your robes, dresses, and veils when you arrive at the venue.
If you want to do a photo op where you exchange letters with each other or pray around a corner, write the letters in advance. I thought it would be more sentimental to write the letters as we were getting ready, but there was no time. We also had to write our vows down in our books because we both had them on our phones. Basically, anything you can do in advance- do it.
Be patient during your pictures. Jett and I didn’t do a first look so we knew we were going to spend quite a while taking pictures after the ceremony. We had decided to take our family photos immediately after the ceremony before our elderly relatives walked back up the hill to our reception. It was a smart idea, but once we got into taking pictures I kind of threw our list out the window and started haphazardly calling groups of people. Our photographer just went with it- bless her soul. I want to say the reason I did this was that our relatives were getting antsy, which was true, but I should have not let their mood affect me and stuck with the script. Our couples session went well, we had enough time and our team got some amazing photos of us. We ended up not getting many pictures of the bridal party together because by that time I was just ready for a drink. Just be patient during your photo shoot and stick to the script. You will have these pictures forever and you probably paid a lot of money for them so make sure you get what you want. The drink can wait!
Have your wedding planner/caterer/friend pack up food for you. Jett and I did eat a little during our reception but we were hungry again by the time we got back to our room. Luckily, we had our wedding planner pack us up some food and cake… but somehow silverware and napkins never made it to our room! We ended up digging into our food with our bare hands. It was hilarious but it would have been better if we had utensils…
Have your mother/MOH/wedding planner take a few iPhone pictures during your couples photo shoot. I had the intention of asking someone and I can’t remember if I did, or what but we ended up not having anyone take any pictures of us. We didn’t pay extra to have our photographer edit pictures during the reception because we only had one photographer. We also chose to have a phone-free service so there weren’t too many pictures of us to have immediately. It ended up not being a big deal because we immediately went on our honeymoon and took a ton of pictures there, but it would have been nice to have some shots in advance.
There are tons of blogs, books, etc. out there with day of tips, but these are the ones that were most important to us. What tips do you have?
