Hey Babes hey! I just celebrated my third wedding anniversary, and I thought I would share 11 Things I Wish I Knew Before Getting Married so you can hopefully learn from me and or just get a peek into what I learned from getting married. You know that I’m a #realtalk advocate and someone who doesn’t want to pretend anything is perfect so I’m happy to share these wedding planning tips with you.

My wedding day was magical and I will always look back at it as one of the best days of my life. There were just a few things that I wish I was more prepared for. Little details, thoughts and unexpected feelings shocked me because my expectations were so high and I wish I could have read something like this as I was planning my wedding. I hope if anything besides insight and a few little laughs, it might save you a few frustrations and heartache.

Ok, so now onto the good stuff.

1. Things Are Going To Go Wrong And There Is Nothing You Can Do About It

This is a hard as hell pill to swallow, but I wish I knew this, like really knew it in my bones. So many people said this to me along the way, and I’m sure I was my own worst enemy with this because I wanted everything just soooooo perfect, and quite honestly, I didn’t believe anyone who told me this. It’s a lot of pressure because you know…it’s a once in a lifetime moment. But really, I wish I would have accepted this because it would have allowed me to relax just a bit more. So if you’re planning a wedding, please babe PLEASE let this sink in and get real cozy with it and accept it. I had a wedding planner, I had two maids of honors, and so many helpful people and things STILL went wrong. It’s the name of the game. I have yet to hear from one bride tell me everything went perfectly on their wedding day. Hope that sinks in for ya.

2. People Will Get Mad At You

It’s a transitional time in your life, not just for you, but for everyone around you. Your parents, your siblings, YOUR FRIENDS, or your In-Laws to be might get their feathers ruffled. It’s inevitable that someone will take something the wrong way, say some passive aggressive thing to you, project their own BS towards you. One or two of your bridesmaids will get pissed about something. Again there is nothing that you can do, just try to be as self aware as possible and try to not let it break your heart. Some things will be easier to deal with than others, but just know that everyone loves you deep down and weddings make people feel all the feels about their own life and how things are changing for you and how they might also be changing for them. It’s a reminder of perhaps what they don’t have yet, or what they once had or who the heck knows. Just know if you’re being a decent human being and someone is pissed and they don’t let you know, that’s on them.

3. You Will Blow Your Budget, And Then Blow It Again

So we were hoping to spend just 10k on our wedding, in Southern California in one of the most popular cities to get married in ……insert all the crying and laughing emojis here. We really had no idea what we were in for.

Now obviously you can only afford what you can afford and there are ways to get married for way less, but we weren’t willing to cut certain things out of our budget. But I’m also not really sure how people actually budget for a wedding, because some things just cost what they cost and it’s almost impossible to get them under your budget, soooo if you get what I’m saying, it’s basically impossible to budget. If you’re reading this and you were able to do this, I applaud you and please share all your secrets you magical woman you!

It would go like this… I want to spend only $350 on flowers. Florist- Not possible, wholesale costs of peonies are x, making your budget at least $1,000. You don’t know how much things will cost before you start, which is why it’s so hard unless you have a  I also understand that planning and paying for a wedding in other parts of the country cost way less so take this with a grain of salt, but in California, this is not crazy talk this is real life.

In every situation, we just tried to pay the most affordable price while still getting what we wanted and what we could afford.

Life somehow knows when to rain and pour on you sometimes, in the middle of planning our wedding, we had to spend an unexpected $5,000 on a new vehicle along with some repairs. But you get the point, something will likely go wrong during your planning from another part of your life and it will probably impact your budget.

4. You Will Be Overwhelmed With Love

This might seem like the obvious, but I was so overwhelmed by the amount of love that every single person was exuding at our wedding. The energy was unlike anything I have ever felt and it was amazing. You will basque in complete joy for a solid 24-48 hours and it’s magical. A friend asked me if it felt like I was walking on a cloud, and that makes complete sense to me because that’s how I felt. Pure magic.

5. You Will Experience Sisterhood

They say it takes a village to raise a child. The truth is, it also takes a village to marry a couple. This was probably one of the most beautiful parts of my wedding that had nothing to do with my husband. It was seeing the amount of love and acts of service and giving from all the women in my life. From my bridal shower to the days leading up to the wedding. I saw my Great Aunt and Cousins care so much about all the details of my bridal shower. Another Aunt flying in to help days before the wedding and helping my Mom with just about everything in my Moms household to accommodate guests. She literally cooked, cleaned, helped with laundry, drop off and pick up of people and things, to shopping with me last minute for wedding decor supplies. The day of, I saw my sisters, and bridal party step up to help with the insanity that happens the day of any wedding. My childhood friend’s mother saved the day by picking up the linens I left in my car 30 minutes away from the venue.

I hope you get to see this and experience the women in your life like this on your wedding day. It was not lost on me as I was surrounded by so many important women on my life, that I couldn’t start the next chapter of my life without them.

6. Planning A Wedding Isn’t Fun

I think that most people think that wedding planning is so much fun. And it can be, but the normal sentiment from most brides is that it’s actually quite stressful. Being engaged is pure magic, daydreaming about your wedding is fun, actually making a million decisions and paying an arm and a leg for things is not that fun. It’s easy to get overwhelmed with the details, even when you are a decisive person. Now that I’m married and it’s been a few years, whenever I talk to other married women, they say the same thing. So don’t feel bad if you aren’t having the time of your life like you thought you would. It also has nothing to do with your decision to marry the person you are engaged too. Wedding planning is just stressful AF.

7. Your Guest List Will Be Long

When we first started planning our wedding, I was really excited about an intimate wedding with 75 guests. That quickly went out the window once we started to make an actual list. Your parents will want to invite their friends and don’t forget about including plus ones. You can and will very quickly get into the hundreds of people invited. Overall, we invited 180 people, and 125 attended. The other thing to keep in mind here, is that certain venues will have certain legalities and rules once you go over a certain amount of guests. For example, if we went over 150 people, our venue would then have to provide security, we would need to have additional bartenders, and more expensive venue insurance, and then seating etc etc. all would go up. And this is all additional money out of your pocket of course. The small details like this blew my mind..

8. Finding An Officiant Is Harder Than Finding A Wedding Dress

This is a tough one. We wanted a religious officiant, and I was so overwhelmed by the other details I completely forgot about the people in my life that could have filled this role. But if you’re someone who doesn’t have a home church, or have tons of pastors or priests in your life, finding an officiant is hard AND expensive. This was another item that I was shocked by- It’s a business people!

Since we weren’t getting married in a church, an officiant wasn’t part of a package deal. We had no idea how to even find one. I searched high and low, and the going rate was about $500. FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS!! Now, I get that people are totally allowed to charge what they want, I just never thought that this was a business or that it would be so expensive.

Eventually we found someone in our price range, and after a meeting, we made the decision to book him. It was much more work than I anticipated putting into finding an officiant. Also a tip is to look for people that have video of their work so you can actually see them in action. You wouldn’t book a florist without seeing their creations, so don’t do the same here.

9. You Probably Won’t Have Sex On Your Wedding Night

OMG, yes I’m really going there. I know this one might be crass, but it’s real life and there shouldn’t be shame around talking about sex. But, we were soooo exhausted. Also, this is totally normal. And if you know yours truly, then you know that I googled to see the stats on how many people actually have sex on their wedding night, and let me tell you, the number is low. It’s just something that I had never thought about not happening, and didn’t expect the reality. Just know that whatever happens for you, it’s totally fine.

10. You will want to do it all over again

Planning a wedding is tough work, and if you’ve never helped plan a wedding before, you really don’t have any clue what to expect and will likely be super stressed, but now that I’ve gone through the process, as well as have helped plan numerous events professionally, planning a wedding is cake work. I know what to expect, and I wish I had this knowledge going in. I have so many little details that I think about that I wish I could do over. And that’s not regret, it’s just knowledge. I wanted to include this one because I felt a bit sad and depressed after we got married, like “dang it, I wish I could have done this, or I wish I did that  this way”.

Just know that you will want to marry your husband all over again because it was the funnest best day of your life, and because you now can plan a wedding in your sleep. Just don’t get down on yourself because it might not turn out exactly as you would have imagined.

11. DIY Weddings Are NOT For The Faint Of Heart

Not all DIY weddings mean building tables and bars for your wedding. It also means finding all your own vendors, vetting them, pricing them out and booking them. Most venues these days do that all for you, or have a complete list of “Approved Vendors” for their venue that must be used. We didn’t go this route because we really wanted great food, and since this is generally the biggest expense of a wedding, we wanted to bring in our own caterer and custom build our wedding menu. And what we got would have easily costs us 6x more than what we paid for.

But, sometimes I think to myself, if we had to do all over again, and for how much we actually spent, it would be by far, MUCH easier and less stressful to get married at a venue that provides everything for you. Sacrifices and compromises are pretty much the name of the game when planning a wedding. However, I also like to beat to the tune of my own drum, and we really didn’t want a cookie cutter wedding. I wanted great food and cocktails and wanted things our way. We didn’t want the standard food buffet line-up with terrible mashed potatoes and tasteless veggies.

If you do decide to go the DIY route of crafting your way to the altar, just remember to not be too hard on yourself and don’t expect your girlfriends to become carpenters or seamstresses overnight, or at all.

 

All in all, I  hope this post helped you either prepare yourself mentally for your wedding, or provided support in community to know that you aren’t alone in your feelings or experiences. I loved writing about this topic, so if there is something else you’d like to know, I’m happy to answer it. Leave me a comment below and I will either answer your question, or put together another blog post on the topic.

Weddings are fun, but remember the most important thing- as long as you get to marry your favorite person at the end of the day, that is all that really matters.

XO,

Cristin