"If I could do something differently at my wedding I would have had some activities at the reception (other than dancing). I feel like the crowd cut down a lot after dinner (and that’s probably normal to an extent), but maybe if I had come up with some other activities they would have hung out a bit longer. I did think about doing it before the wedding but it dropped off the list as I prioritized the more important things."

“After the mother/son and father/daughter dances, I wish we would have designated a special song to dance with each other’s parents (bride dance with groom’s father and groom dance with bride’s mother). During the planning process, we got caught up organizing everything else that this wasn’t even something we had thought of. Since we are so blessed to share a strong bond with our parents, that sentimental dance would have been a memory we each would have cherished for many years.” 

"Make a specific email just for your wedding stuff! Use this email for only wedding items so you can have it all organized when you book vendors"

"If you want some of those beautiful portraits that you’ve seen all over your photographer’s website, then you need to set time aside for them. You’ll be looking at around 15-20 minutes, which, in the grand scheme of things isn’t that long. Taking just a little while away from your reception to do these will be so worth it, I promise. Remember, these will probably be the photos that will grace your and your parents’ living room walls for the rest of your lives so they’re worthwhile taking some time over! For bonus points, do some more as the sun starts to set, during the magic ‘golden hour’. The light will be flipping incredible and you’ll get some totally amazing shots. You seriously won’t regret it. It’s also really nice to have an excuse to escape the party and have a little space and a few moments with your new spouse. For the rest of the reception you’ll be talking to everyone else constantly!"

"I couldn’t have cared less about the whole ‘first dance’ thing, but I do wish we’d taken some time beforehand to plan what we might do. We’re not exactly natural dancers so an embarrassing shuffle to All You Need is Love was about as much as we could muster. Even if we’d just planned a little spin or a dip or something it would have been much less mortifying."

"I’ll never forget throwing my bouquet, it bouncing off the back wall and hitting my maid of honour in the head. I really wasn’t that bothered about the tradition of throwing it, and in fact I forgot about it completely until someone reminded me to do it right at the end of the night!

Don’t feel obliged to include anything in your wedding just because it’s tradition. If you don’t care about it, ditch it!"

“I wish someone had filmed the speeches at our rehearsal dinner the night before our wedding. We were married in Jamaica and the wedding vibe was more of a giant party and group vacation as formality isn't our style. The rehearsal dinner was a Jamaican BBQ, complete with a steel drum band, that turned into an epic non-stop dancing, drinking, laughing, and sweat fest. Our friends gave their speeches that evening—there was so much great storytelling—I’d love to be able to relive that time in our lives now."

“I wouldn’t have a big traditional wedding like I did—a 200-person black-tie, big-band affair at my parent’s golf club. It was a great day but the planning sucked the life out of me and my family for a year, putting stress on all our relationships. In the end, it just wasn’t worth it. I would have preferred a celebration with a lot less pomp and circumstance.” 

“I loved my wedding, but I wish I got to enjoy more of the food! There was so much going on when dinner was being served and at the time, I just didn't have much of an appetite. I took one bite of the cake before we hit the dance floor and the next time I passed the dessert table, it was gone!” 

"We regret not taking engagement pictures beforehand. My husband and I felt we really didn't need them, so we skipped them to save money. But on our wedding day, my husband had a hard time getting comfortable in front of the camera. An engagement shoot definitely would have helped with that."

"I wish my husband and I had taken dance lessons beforehand. We are both awkward, so just walking out onto the floor and trying to dance in front of everyone we know was weird. We couldn't even finish the song."

"I regret inviting certain people just so we didn't offend them, only to have them show us exactly why we didn't want to invite them."

"I wish we'd waited a day before leaving for our honeymoon — we left at four o'clock in the morning the following day to catch a flight, and everything moved so fast that it took until the middle of the next week for it to hit us that we were actually married and on our honeymoon."

"I wear glasses 365 days a year. But I decided to wear contacts the day of our ceremony, and they were itchy and gave me a migraine. I should've just worn my glasses — my husband likes me more with them anyway."

"I wish I'd anticipated that people would just not show up or cancel at the last minute. At $60 a plate, we lost hundreds of dollars because so many people didn't show up."

"I regret staying in a separate place from my husband the night before our wedding. We had already been living together for three years, and being apart created so much unnecessary anxiety."

"I really wish I had actually stopped to enjoy the night. I was so concerned with making sure everything turned out exactly as I envisioned that I barely got to eat dinner, barely spoke to anyone, and didn't even get to try my cake until the next day!"

"Drinking too much during our reception — my husband and I spent our first night as a married couple on the hotel bathroom floor, sharing the toilet."

"If I could go back, I would've had a budget wedding with maybe 40 friends/family of MY choosing instead of 200 people that I'll never see again. Different gown (no train or veil this time). And REAL flowers instead of fake ones."

"I would have made sure to plan a bit of alone time for myself the day of. I didn’t get even 5 minutes to just be by myself before my wedding, to breathe or reflect or generally be in the moment. That morning was a blur of people and activity. I found it exhausting to have some kind of audience for an entire day, sunrise to well after sunset. A moment to happily freak out about the fact that holy s**t, I’m about to get married! with no one watching would have been awesome."

"I wish I actually saved our vows. I have zero copies of it and neither of us remembers what all we said. Ugh."