What I Loved About My Wedding and What I’d Do Differently
Weddings are exciting, but sometimes they can be complicated to plan. It can be difficult to decide what’s worth spending your money on and what you should skip. Every bride is different, but here are four things I did at my wedding that I wouldn’t want to have happened any differently, and three things that I would change if I could go back.
What I Loved
Passing on a Head Table
My husband and I opted against having a head table. Weddings are busy and it can be hard to spend as much time as you may like with your friends and family. We decided that we will have plenty of time to spend just the two of us in married life, so we’d be better of sitting (together) near our family that had traveled across the country to see us.
Setting Up a Kid’s Table
There are quite a few children in our lives between our nephews and our cousins. I love kids and I didn’t want any of our guests, no matter how young, to have a bad time. We went to Dollar Tree and spent a little less than $35 on glowsticks, coloring books, crayons, and bubbles. The table was a hit! It made my heart happy to see all of the children playing and coloring together as the night went on.
Buying Our Flowers from Sam’s Club
Florists are expensive! Luckily, I’m not afraid of a little DIY, so we ordered our flowers in bulk on the Sam’s Club website and arranged them ourselves. For less than $700, we had enough flowers for 12 centerpieces, 3 bridesmaid bouquets, my bridal bouquet, and a heavily decorated arbor. Even after that, we had an abundance of flowers left over. I ordered sunflowers, orange daisies, blue daisies (painted), baby’s breath, and dyed blue limoniums. I’d also ordered some greenery, which Sam’s Club canceled last minute. Fortunately, we had plenty of flowers so my arrangements didn’t!
Using Real Candles in the Centerpieces
I’ve never been a fan of fake candles. I love the way that real flames flicker, and I’ve never seen an artificial candle imitate this closely enough for my liking. Using real candles helped to create the intimate lighting I had aimed for. We bought our candlesticks and tealights from Dollar Tree and our floating candles from Hobby Lobby.
What I’d Do Differently
I Can’t Believe I Forgot the Sparklers!
I’m not super upset about this (or, luckily, about any other part of my wedding), but I’d wanted to have some sort of firework at my wedding since forever. In the haze of planning, I completely forgot to include sparklers in our special day. I didn’t realize I’d forgotten until days, maybe weeks, after the wedding was over. Oh well!
Find a Flower Girl
My husband and I have two nephews and no nieces, so we decided that one nephew would be our ringbearer and the other would be our flower boy. Despite asking him to talk to his brother and confirm that this was okay multiple times in the months leading up to the wedding, my husband put off the conversation regarding whether our nephew would be our flower boy until the week of the wedding. His brother apologized but had to decline, because he didn’t think our nephew had the walking skills to make it down the aisle alone yet. If my husband had had this conversation earlier, we probably could have worked something out with one of our little cousins. Unfortunately, it was too late to find a replacement and we had to do without.
Use Our Playlist
We decided to skip paying for a DJ and spent months making a playlist for our reception. My father-in-law had queued up a playlist to play while we took photos, and then we were so occupied that we never went back and changed the music. The music that played was alright, but I really regret not using the music that we’d spent so long choosing since it was full of songs we both love.
