I was sent some of the products mentioned in this article for review. There are affiliate links in this article. All opinions are my own. All of my wedding photos in this post were taken by LittleLeePhotography who is based out of northern Michigan but travels for weddings.
I got married a few months ago. I found planning a mostly fun experience, but I’m very “type B” so I wasn’t overly detail-oriented throughout. There were a few things we planned that worked really great, and others that went a little bit “wrong”. It’s a little bit of a funny experience that many say your wedding is the best day of your life – and for me it was the first time I’d planned a large social event like this. Yet, most of what I learned from the experience can’t really be reused because it’s a once in a life time event! So, I thought I’d pass along my wins and losses to people who aren’t yet married so perhaps someone else can still benefit from what I learned.
What Went GREAT at My Wedding – You Should Try It Too!
We wrote customized vows, and despite both of us struggling with social anxiety, we read them in front of everyone in attendance. We were both really nervous about doing this, but we wanted to truly share our hearts with each other as we both feel this is a key part of what weddings are really about. So, we pushed ourselves to be painfully vulnerable and it’s easily the best decision we made for our whole wedding. Anything and everything else could have gone wrong and I wouldn’t have cared because when we were standing up at the altar reading our personalized vows to each other, I was overwhelmed with love for him and in feeling his love for me. Best day ever for this part alone. The quality isn’t great, but I uploaded our vows below if you’d like to watch.
Coofandy suits from Amazon for all the men. I was sent these for review, but they’re only about $150 to buy all four pieces (blazer, vest, shirt and pants) making them around $100 cheaper than most suits cost to rent. Plus, the guys got to keep them for later use. The shirts and pants can be used for plenty of other events, but because we went with black even the vest and blazer might get reused! The fit you see below is after alterations.
My two nephews (the one with no tie and the one with a bow tie) did not get their suits from Coofandy, but the other four men did.
Sola Wood Flowers. I went with the raw version that you have to dye yourself, and this was fairly labor intensive. A group of five or six of us spent about five hours one Saturday dying a few hundred of these flowers. However, it was a fun day of crafting and the flowers are WAY cheaper than real flowers and last forever. When buying them “raw” and in large quantities they can even be cheaper than traditional faux flowers. I resold most of them after our wedding so I made a little bit of money back, but kept my bouquet and my bridesmaids kept their bouquets too.
Advice For Doing Things Differently At YOUR Wedding
Provide more cameras and put them out at tables. We had one FOTOFOTO earth-friendly camera. These are disposable cameras that are made from upcycled materials, and they get recycled after you send them back! When you buy a camera it include the film and the development of your photos! It’s such a cool concept. I set it out for any guests to use, but realized nobody was using it. So then I tried sort of ‘assigning it’ as a project to a preteen in the family, who took a few photos but then forgot about it. I think the only way they would have been used better would be to have them at every table. I think having just one or even a few spread out, makes people feel a bit more awkward about grabbing it to use. Where if each table had their own, it would make it more clear that it’s okay for anyone and everyone to use, no need to worry about ‘hogging it’ from others.
This photo is from an Etsy shop called ElmwoodCrate that sells these. I have no partnership with this Etsy shop, and haven’t purchased these but just thought they were so clever.
Make a list of suggested photos for guests to take and either hand them out or have multiple signs visible to guests. I was a little bit surprised that very few family members used their phones or personal cameras to take photos. I had a cousin who took a lot, and I had given my DSLR to our teenage nephew who took a lot, but almost nobody else took any at all! Our photographer has about a 12-week turnaround so it’s tough to wait on those professional photos and having amateur ones from your guests really helps tide you over! I think the fact that most of my guests took no photos might be due to an increase in the “screen free event” trend at weddings where a lot of couples are asking people to not take any photos? But, I personally really would have loved for our guests to take more photos. I think a great way to encourage this is putting out these signs to give people suggestions for what photos to take.
Check myself in mirror before photos and before ceremony. This sounds so obvious, doesn’t it? What kind of a bride doesn’t check their appearance before their wedding? Well, me, apparently! What happened was, I checked my appearance after doing my makeup, but I did my own hair and left it in a gel cast. My intent was to scrunch it out just before photos, to have the least amount of frizz possible. However, I got so busy with the events of the day that I totally forgot to ever scrunch the cast out, and nobody told me! This is particularly funny because over at WavyHairCare.Com (and on WavyHairCare my YouTube channel) I teach other people how to care for their naturally wavy hair. This frequently includes using gel or mousse and then scrunching out the cast. So, the fact that one of my mistakes involved my hair is so ironic.
Make a schedule and make it visible to guests somehow. In most cases, there is at least a short delay for guests between the ceremony and reception. If you can let them know what time the reception will start, they’ll know how long they have left to wait. Some guests may plan to stay for certain events like the cake cutting and garter toss, but not to stay much longer, so seeing that you have these events scheduled for set times can give them an idea of when they’ll be heading home. I intended to do this but ran out of time the night before the wedding, and I felt bad that our guests didn’t know what time each part of our event would happen.
General Advice For Wedding Planning
I joined a lot of wedding groups while planning, and I noticed some themes related to problems people ran into. This advice is based on that!
Base your budget on your actual values, not on other people’s expectations. So many questions that are in wedding groups are variations of “Will people judge us if we don’t have an open bar? We can’t really afford to buy everyone drinks.” or “My fiance and I had planned on a small cake for us to cut, and then sheet cake but (family member or friend) says that’s tacky. We’d need a 4 tier cake to have enough for all of our guests and that would cost at least $500. Do we really have to spend that much?” If any particular aspect of the wedding doesn’t matter to you, it doesn’t matter if someone else would buy a more expensive version. Very little about weddings is truly essential. You could get married in some pajamas, and not exchange rings, technically! So try not to let other people’s opinions make you feel like you ‘have to’ do things if you and your future spouse don’t really share that belief.
Invest in what matters to you. Whether you have a big budget or a slim budget, pretty much everyone has some sort of budget they have to stick to for their wedding. When trying to decide how to portion your budget, my suggestion is to talk to your partner about what is most important to each of you. If you have always dreamed of having really long curled hair and your hair is currently short, maybe one of your top priorities should be paying for extensions for your big day. If your husband has always imagined getting married in the same venue that his parents got married in, that venue should be a priority.
Consider how you want to feel, and what will create that feeling. My therapist suggested this to me early in our wedding planning process, and I’m so glad they did! It’s part of what led me to realize that more than anything else, I wanted to feel really connected to my partner during our ceremony. I wanted to really FEEL his love, and to make sure he really felt mine. This is part of what led us to decide to have really vulnerable, customized vows. Other couples might want to feel peaceful and might know that big events give them anxiety, so perhaps having a microwedding would be ideal for them. Others might want to feel like them and their new spouse are the center of a huge party, absolutely surrounded by everyone they know and love – in which case prioritizing a big wedding is probably best. If you determine how you both want to feel first, you may be able to return to this idea when debating any decisions by asking which decision will best support the way you want to feel.
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Hi there! I am Emily Evert, the owner of Emily Reviews. I am 28 and live in a small town in Michigan with my boyfriend Ryan and our two pugs. I have a large family and I adore my nieces and nephews. I love reading memoirs, and learning about child development and psychology. I love watching The Game of Thrones, Teen Mom, Sister Wives and Veep. I like listening to Jason Isbell, John Prine, and other alt-country or Americana music. I created Emily Reviews as a creative outlet to share my life and the products that I love with others.
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