Real Brides (and Grooms!) Confess Their Biggest Wedding Planning Mistakes

Every bride has something she'd do over—if she could. Here, some hard-won wisdom from the recently married.

By:

Michele Bender

When you're planning a wedding, you try to think of everything. You go over the details until you’re absolutely sure you’ve covered all your bases. You even work on developing a relaxed attitude toward those inevitable minor glitches—the kind that will make warm, funny stories later on. But then there are the things that even the most well-organized bride and groom get wrong and would change if they could. Their true confessions— and hard-won wisdom—may help you avoid making some bridal blunders of your own.

*Javier Gomez Studios*	Money Doesn't Buy Happiness “If I could do it over, I wouldn’t assume that a vendor who charges top dollar is necessarily the best choice. My high-priced florist and band were awful: The band didn’t sing the songs on our list, and the florist, who was said to be a ‘celebrity floral designer,’ skipped meetings and showed up two hours late for setup. Meanwhile, the wedding coordinator and makeup guy I found on craigslist.com were fabulous—and they charged very reasonable rates.” —Michelle, New York, NY
iStockPhoto	Don't Overdo the Dieting “I’d been dieting like a crazy person for three months, and then I was so nervous and excited that I barely ate anything the four days before the wedding. When I put on my dress, it hung on me like drapery— even though I’d had a final fitting just a week before. In the photos, the dress actually shows a gap in the back. I was mortified when I saw them!" —Loryn, Westport, CT
Long's Photography	Don't Expect a Cakewalk “My cake didn’t have the icing that I ordered, and it was too small to feed all my guests. My mistake was that I didn’t ask for references from the baker. I just didn’t think the cake was such a big deal, and I trusted that he would produce what we had discussed. My advice is to get references and call them. I didn’t find out until it was too late that a lot of people had been unhappy with this baker’s work.” —Lindy, Johnstown, PA
Hoffer Photography	Get Wedding Photos to Friends and Family—Pronto “I had a few prints of my wedding pictures made for us and our parents. I got as far as having friends and family mark the prints they wanted, but I didn’t follow through. I’d also wanted to make a scrapbook, but that fell by the wayside. Now I wish I had that scrapbook! My advice is to order reprints a few days after you get your pictures back, and make your scrapbook, pronto. Otherwise, you never will.” —Mandie, Morristown, NJ
*Bliss Events*	Give 'Em a Schedule “I should have had an itinerary written up for the bridal party, listing the exact times when certain key things, like toasts, dances and cake-cutting, would happen. Because I didn’t do that and was just winging it, my brother was nowhere to be found during the bridal-party couple dance. Everyone went looking for him, but he’d gone outside to smoke and he missed it.” —Mandie
*Luciana Pampalone*	Check Your Makeup "I should have had photos taken of myself at my preliminary makeup session. At the time I thought it looked great, but when I got my professional wedding photos back, my eyeshadow showed up glittery and metallic. As a result, I hate all of my wedding pictures. If I’d seen this beforehand, I could have had my makeup artist make the necessary changes. —Loryn
*Leah McCormick*	Be Attentive to Your Guests “Many of our guests traveled a long distance to attend the wedding, but I only spoke to them for a minute or two in passing, or not at all. I wish I had made a concerted effort to spend five minutes with everyone at the wedding and visit each table in an organized fashion. It meant a lot to me that everyone came to share our day, but I realized later that some of them didn’t know that because I didn’t take the time to talk to them.” —Lauren, New York, NY
*Elizabeth Messina*	Don't Overlook the Details “Make sure the small things are attended to. For example, I should have checked to make sure the air-conditioning in the ballroom was working. It wasn’t, and our wedding took place on a stifling August night. Everyone was sweating!” —Sarah, Boston, MA