A few weeks ago I got married to the love of my life and it was truly the best day I’ve had in my 29+ years on this Earth. The day honestly went better than I expected and for the most part I couldn’t be happier with how everything turned out.
Looking back on the day, I realize that there are a few things things that people say about every wedding. Some of them turned out to be true, and others turned out to be completely false. If anyone out there is engaged or hopes to get married one day, here are some of the things we learned from our wedding day.
“You won’t have time to eat.” – FALSE
Any time we told people about our reception and the food we were serving, people would say “It’s too bad you aren’t going to have time to eat any of it.” There’s this myth that the bride and groom are going to be too busy socializing to be able to enjoy dinner at the reception.
For us, this was completely false. I was paying a crap-ton of money to throw this party, and at the very least I was going to enjoy the food. We talked with the DJ and the venue and made sure that the head table (where we were sitting with our wedding party) was dismissed to the buffet first.
We loaded up our plates and had one of the most delicious meals we’ve eaten in a long time. Our reception food was better than I even thought it would be (we didn’t get to try it beforehand) and we were able to eat and socialize with our friends.
If you make eating a priority like we did, then you’ll have no problem getting food on your wedding day/night.
“10% of people who said they will attend won’t show up.” – TRUE
Every person we invited to the wedding cost us money, so I was trying my best to make sure we had an exact count and that when we paid for 128 people, we had 128 people show up.
We felt really confident that we had the right number, and then things happened. Some people get sick. Some people have family issues that come up. Some people are just so old that after the wedding, they are too tired to make it to the reception. Some people don’t show up and you have no idea why (we still haven’t heard from some people).
I thought we had our number nailed down, and we had at least 10% of people not show up (some told us beforehand, others didn’t).
My suggestion to anyone getting married. Either reduce your number by 10% or have some backups ready to sit in. We had quite a few friends in town that we wanted to invite but didn’t have the money to add them. Looking back, we should have told them they are first on the list if someone doesn’t show. To some people that’s probably an awkward conversation (“We want you to come but can’t afford it, but if someone doesn’t show you can take their spot”) but I wish I had done it so we had more people celebrate with us.
“Nothing will go as planned.” – TRUE
As I said before, this was the best day of our lives and we really had a lot of fun. With that being said, the schedule we laid out for the day of the wedding wasn’t even close. Here are just a few deviations from the schedule:
- My bride didn’t show up to the church on time for pictures because the hair dresser and makeup took longer than expected.
- We were told we only had 30 minutes for pictures after the ceremony. We got 45-50 minutes and could have had longer.
- Basically everything at the reception was played by ear and our entire 5 hour schedule was thrown out the window.
Our plans never really materialized, but honestly that’s okay. It was kind of nice at the reception knowing that everyone was having such a good time that we didn’t have to do any of the “tricks” to get people back on the dance floor. People were dancing all night long so we just kept it going.
Who needs plans anyway?
Readers: Do you have any other wedding day advice to people who might be getting married soon?
Kevin McKee is an entrepreneur, IT guru, and personal finance leader. In addition to his writing, Kevin is the head of IT at Buildingstars, Co-Founder of Padmission, and organizer of Laravel STL. He is also the creator of www.contributetoopensource.com. When he’s not working, Kevin enjoys podcasting about movies and spending time with his wife and four children.
Love this! We definitely had time to eat (there was no way I was not going to eat!), and we had around 10% not show up as well. We forgot to budget that in though, so it was a lot of wasted money for us.
Everyone who RSVP’d to our wedding showed up. Apparently there isn’t a lot to do on a Friday in February around here. We even had a few crashers show up when the band started playing, but that was ok by us since the food was already gone and it was a cash bar (inlaws didn’t want to pay for an open bar which was fine by me).
If/when I get married, I’m making damn sure I have time to eat! Haha
People will drink more than you think they will! Granted, we did open the bar before the wedding ceremony even started (which we got props for) but people drank way more than we thought. It was the only area we went over budget. Make sure to have champagne only opened and poured, because we had tons that wasn’t drank.
I would sadly agree about not getting a chance to eat, at least in peace. We sat down first and some guy, who I to this day have no idea who he was, came up and started talking to my husband nonstop. So I sat and listened to their conversation for my dinner, not ideal. In retrospect I would have had brunch together to enjoy some private time with just the two of us.
Congrats!
Great follow up on your previous post about your marriage. I’m planning to get married next year, so now, I’m having a preview of the things that could probably happen on my wedding. Wish me luck!
My best advice is “You are the only one who can ruin your day.” So many times I hear people talk about how things didn’t go as planned and it ruined things, etc. But honestly, your day is what you make of it. Sounds like you did a great job of keeping that in perspective!