Want to know what brides actually regret about their wedding day? Almost none of it has to do with flowers, or even money. The stories we hear are about hair and makeup running an hour behind, or the lunch nobody remembered to eat. One bride on Reddit, asked years later what she regretted about her wedding day, didn’t mention a single vendor: “Eating a piece of cake. I heard it was amazing but we didn’t have a bite! We cut it and let them take it away to serve. Never made it back to my chair to try it.”
I’ve shared my own list of things I would have done differently at our wedding (my feet still haven’t forgiven me for those shoes), and the same ten day-of regrets keep coming up in reader stories. The great news? It’s possible to get a handle on each one of them, and many of them ahead of time.
1. Not Booking Enough Time for Hair and Makeup
This is the regret that causes half the others, because one late updo pushes back everything that comes after it. As a general rule, budget one hour in the chair for each person. Sometimes the wedding party’s hair and makeup can take less time. Just make sure you’re starting first in case there are any issues.
A makeup trial before you book your stylist is SO important, and definitely something that you shouldn’t skip. Give yourself at least three months before your wedding day in case you need to book another trial. Once you find your perfect hairstyle, be sure to ask your stylist when you should wash your hair before the wedding day. I got my hair professionally blow-dried the day before the wedding so it looked fresh for the rehearsal dinner, and was ready to go for my updo the next day. For a full hour-by-hour breakdown, use our wedding beauty timeline.
Smart move: If you have the budget, consider having your hair and makeup artist stay an extra hour after the ceremony for touch-ups. If you can only keep one, choose makeup, since your hair should be pretty much set for the entire event.
2. Skipping the Shot List Conversation
Most pro wedding photographers have done enough weddings that you shouldn’t have to worry about handing them a list of traditional wedding photos you want them to get (IE: The bouquet! The dress!). Instead, focus on moments (or people) they might not be aware are special to you.
“Photographers have a love and hate relationship with wedding shot lists,” says photographer Jon Lemon of JC Lemon Photography. “I don’t mind having a checklist because those are the things that are important to my clients, but I make sure that they are only giving me the things that are not obvious. I don’t need a checklist that says, ‘get a picture of the rings.’ But if they have personal items that are important to them, [or] if there’s going to be a moment between two people that’s not obvious to me like, ‘Hey, I’m going to go talk to my Godfather real quick and have a few words with him before the ceremony starts. I want to make sure you’re there with me.’ Those kinds of things are really important to know.”
The brides with photo regrets almost always wish they had planned the family groupings ahead of time, so put that list in writing and go over it with your photographer about two weeks out. Our list of things wedding photographers wish brides knew covers what else to ask at that meeting.
3. Not Putting Anyone in Charge of Your Stuff
“I forgot to put my veil back on for photos! I took it off for cocktail hour and then our photographer asked us to hang back when our guests went inside for dinner so we could take more pictures. I totally forgot to put it back on and while the photos are amazing I am kicking myself because they’d be better with a veil. I also forgot to put my sparkly hair clip back in after I took my veil off and didn’t wear it for the whole reception. Basically- put a bridesmaid in charge of making sure you’ve got your accessories in order!”
— via Reddit.com
Heads up: Pick one person before the wedding who owns the card box, the guest book, and your getting-ready bag once the night ends. Cards and gifts should leave with someone you trust the moment the reception is over.
4. Going Without a Day-Of Coordinator
“[T]he number one thing, and not just because I am a wedding planner and I come from that background, is the day of coordinator, at a very minimum,” says Maria Erickson, founder of Plum & Ivy Events in Chicago, when we asked what she would have changed about her own wedding. “It can be the most logistically simple wedding, but you just, as a client, as a groom, as a bride, you don’t want to be dealing with this on the day of. You want to wake up, you want to be in a little bubble. You want somebody to hand you a mimosa, somebody to curl your hair, somebody to get you in a dress and you just want to float through the day. And you cannot do that unless you have a right-hand person that is going to make sure that the vendors are doing everything that they’ve promised in their contracts.”
“Over half the things you ‘forgot’ shouldn’t have been your responsibility to remember in the first place,” one commenter replied under a bride’s long list of day-of mishaps.
No room in the budget? Then deputize the most organized person you know who isn’t in the wedding party, and give them the timeline, the vendor phone numbers, and the authority to answer questions.
5. Building a Timeline That’s Too Tight
“So many weddings die on the vine because of bad timelines,” says Ian Gotler, co-founder of RedShoe, one of our favorite DJ collectives in the country. “Standing up and sitting down 100 times when it’s unnecessary, not giving yourself enough time in the beginning of the night so you’re catching up all night later on.”
Your timeline is what will keep your wedding day (and all the people associated with it) on track. Once you create it, you’ll want to make sure your vendors, wedding party, and anybody else who needs to arrive at a certain time gets a copy. While every wedding is unique, some general estimates to build around: 30 minutes for the ceremony (an hour for some religious ceremonies), one hour for cocktail hour, one hour for dinner, five minutes per toast, and cake cutting about two hours before the reception ends. Our full wedding day timeline breaks down every hour, from vendor arrivals to the exit.
Pro tip: Your actual ceremony start time should be about 15 minutes after your invitation time. Guests will thank you, and so will your photographer.
6. Not Confirming Final Details With Your Vendors
The week of the wedding, confirm your schedule with your vendors and review all remaining payments due. Finalize your day-of timeline and distribute it to your wedding vendors and any wedding party or family members who need to be on-call. This is also when you should plan your vendor tips. Cash (or Venmo) is preferred, however checks work, too. Just make sure the vendor’s name is spelled correctly. Consider buying a box of thank you notes to place the cash within, then label each envelope and create separate piles according to when they should be given out.
One bride learned this after her planner went quiet ten days out: “Confirm with every vendor yourself.”
Trust this: No good vendor is annoyed by a confirmation text the week of the wedding.
7. Never Breaking In the Wedding Shoes
Break in your wedding shoes! Wear them around the house to scuff the bottoms to make them less slippery. Also, feel for any potential pain points and add cushioning where needed. Our guide says to do this three days out, but if your shoes have any real height to them, start a week or two earlier and work up to a few hours at a time.
“I remembered when I got my shoes (I’m a guy), and didn’t thought of breaking them in before the ceremony. They came out to be the hardest shoes I’ve ever owned, and I had to wear them the whole day. after the wedding I wore birkenstocks for a whole month to heal all the blisters”
— via Reddit.com
Learn from my broken-feet mistake and stash flats under your sweetheart table, too. And toss blister cushions in your makeup kit either way.
8. Not Practicing Vows and Speeches Out Loud
Start working on your vows early and practice, practice, practice. Write your vows in a vow notebook or a nice piece of stationery, but have a backup printed out just in case. Reading them out loud beforehand tells you which sentences you can’t get through without crying, and roughly how long they run. If you’re still staring at a blank page, our guide to writing your wedding vows has prompts that help.
The same goes for anyone giving a toast. “If you have one or two speeches, to me, that’s perfect,” says wedding planner Brooke Avishay of Orange Blossom Special Events, who recommends telling every speaker to keep it to five minutes or less. “It’s important to remember you are spending a lot of money for one day…you don’t want everyone sitting there for 45 minutes listening to speeches.”
As one bride put it years after her wedding: “My husband is a fantastic off the cuff speaker, but I could have used some more rehearsing for mine.”
9. Forgetting to Eat and Drink Water
“At my brother’s wedding we totally forgot about lunch! After hair and make up we realized we were starving and weren’t near any restaurants. Father of the bride came to the rescue with falafel sandwiches though!”
— via Reddit.com
Our sample wedding day timeline has an actual line item for lunch (30 minutes), and the wedding day essentials checklist in my book includes easy, healthy snacks, water, and a reusable straw so nobody has to choose between hydration and lipstick.
This is also a perfect job to hand off. “I assigned ‘jobs’ to my bridesmaids like making sure I drink water, keeping the bridal suite tidy, etc. and their help with those things made a huge difference,” one recent bride shared on Reddit.
10. Having No Plan for Weather
“I had Hollywood curls and they looked flicking amazing. The ceremony was extremely windy so on all my pics I look like I just woke up.”
— via Reddit.com
Could your hairstyle survive that ceremony? It’s worth asking at your trial. Tell your stylist where you’re getting married, ask for a style that can handle gusts, and pack bobby pins and hairspray for touch-ups between the ceremony and reception. The same thinking applies to your face: use waterproof makeup when you can, especially when it comes to your eyes, then lock it in place with a setting spray.
If any part of your day is outside, decide the rain plan with your venue in advance, including the exact hour you would need to call it. Put umbrellas, a rain bonnet, and even rain boots on your wedding day essentials list next to the safety pins. We’ve rounded up more wedding day rain tips, including how photographers make rainy photos gorgeous.
One Last Thing
Some part of your wedding day will go sideways no matter how well you plan, and RedShoe wedding DJ Ian Gotler has the healthiest take on that we’ve ever heard: “Nothing is wrong, everything that happened was supposed to happen, just let it go. You’re running late, you’re running early, the cake didn’t show up, it’s all part of the experience of getting married. Just let go and have fun, it’ll be fine.”
And for the regrets that show up before the big day even starts, we’ve collected the planning mistakes brides say they’d take back, too.
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A big one! Putting your cards in a public area or on a table easily accessible. Gift cards and money are easily stolen. Have a lockable metal box, cute locked mailbox or a guard at the table. Not everyone there or who passes there is honest!
After reading your article, I realized weddings have gotten so complicated! We were married 40 yrs ago, June of 1986, the day after my husband graduated from university. It was a Sunday and Father’s Day that year. The Friday before, my nephew turned 3 and we had a small party for him. I had spent the school year taking 1 year long class, working part-time, planning the wedding by myself, designing and making my wedding dress. We had a $2k budget and pulled off a beautiful event with zero regrets. Wedding venue – an Orchid greenhouse on a bluff overlooking the Pacific ocean was free because the owners were honored that we had asked to use their place. Reception was in the local grange hall rented for about $150. My entire outfit came to $200 (shoes from Payless, some 10 year old ivory satin I had saved, a mail order bolt of ivory chiffon, some faux pearl beads and faint pink silk orchids for the sweetheat neckline). Groom wore a suit. Bestman wore his Navy blues. Second best man wore a suit. Matron of Honor, 2 young bridesmaids, Mother of the bride and Groom’s Mother were told were a dress any pastel color you want. It ended up being a lovely mix, one with a touch of lace, and two of a subtle floral pattern. I made a Juliet Cap of faux pearl beads and pink rose buds, as well as silk floral head wreaths for the MoH and 2 bridesmaids. All bridal party members paid for their own attire and they were all family members. Two photographers. One shot the wedding the other shot the reception. Both were our friends and hobby wildlife photographers. We paid for film and developing, their talent was their gifts to us. Wedding video was done by a family member who set up his brand new vhs recorder on a pedestal across from where we stood for our vows, the recording was his gift. Ceremony was for family only except for a couple of friends who were assigned duties like my boss and his wife serving champagne while group photos were taken. Music for the ceremony was played on a tape recorder. I did hire a professional florist for my bouquet, MoH bouquet, 1 basket each of single orchid stems in water vials for the 2 bridesmaids to pass out to guests after the ceremony, 2 Mother’s corsages, and the 5 boutonnieres. Ceremony was at 6pm and reception for 150 guests was at 8pm, so most people wouldn’t need dinner. I worked at a high end hotel, so one of the cooks said for her gift she would make all the food if we bought the supplies, deal, $200. We had 2 kegs of good beer, had bought enough champagne for toasting and a bunch of rum for daiquiris (both were stocked up when on sale during the prior year). Cake was a gift from a friend who made cakes to earn extra cash. Music was a gift from a friend who was a soundman and brought all his equipment and music stock for us to use. Table linens were borrowed from my hotel, even the fancy cake table cloth. Tables were decorated with driftwood we had collected from the beach (we lived on the north coast) and turned into candle holders by 2 friends (the candles and their labor were their gift). Under the driftwood I placed fresh ferns and wild flowers collected that morning from the countryside, free. Instead of the usual Jordan almonds, we had a big bowl of M&M’s next to the guest book. When we wanted to leave the reception, I called the hotel and I talked the front desk clerk into sending out the classic limousine to pick us up, free. Earlier that afternoon when I went to check-in to get ready for the wedding (did my own hair and makeup) the clerk handed me the key for the bridal suite and I handed it back saying that “no, I can’t afford that room, I reserved the 3rd floor corner room looking over the courtyard”. The key was handed back to me saying yes, this is a gift from the hotel manager. So by keeping things simple and friends gifting much of what we would have had to pay for, we were able to pull off a beautiful, very memorable and elegant event. No stress because I took the time to plan all the details.