My Top 10 Wedding Regrets

Finally! Here it is! My top ten wedding regrets to go along with my favorites from a few weeks ago. 

I wanted to give a little disclaimer: I know I can't change anything about my wedding day. And I know that the most important thing is that we're married now and living out our vows. I also know that dwelling on things we can't change isn't always great for one's peace of mind...

However, it's good to know why we regret things so we can do better next time. Not that I'm getting married again-- but there will most definitely be chances later on to make better choices and to have a little more humility when it comes to hosting parties, family matters, or other major life events. I also promised myself I would say something positive about each thing at the end, so without further ado... My ten wedding regrets!

1. Focusing on The Reception More Than The Liturgy 

One of the biggest mistakes I made was focusing more on the reception than our actual wedding ceremony. Although there are more details in the reception than the ceremony, I definitely obsessed about little details way more than I needed to... 

While there wasn't anything horrible about the wedding Mass, I wish I would have done a few little things differently here and there, like extending the pew bows down the whole isle, thought about buying a few flowers for the church, and most of all, I wish I had been more educated on Latin hymns. 

The choir was great and I got to have the violin for Canon in D (Basic, I know. I just love it for a bride's entrance!!) but I wasn't really familiar with many Latin tunes when we sat down with our choir director to discuss the wedding music. He did a good job filling in where we weren't sure, but I wish I had a master list of appropriate Latin Mass wedding hymns that I could look up, listen to, and choose from. 

Also, I've read that the Veni Creator Spiritus is a traditional Latin wedding hymn and I like the concept of calling upon the Holy Ghost before our wedding! Oh well! Lots of the guests raved about how beautiful the ceremony was, and honestly, that is one of the best things about the Latin Mass. It is beautiful because of what it is. Music (provided that it's good and fitting music) and flower choices only add to the Mass, they can't subtract from it's beauty. 

2. Save the Dates

So here is the picture we used for our save the dates. No, that isn't how dark they were when we printed them. They were darker! I tried to brighter this one up for the blog but...yeah. That is reason number one I wish we hadn't done save the dates. They just didn't look very good. We also did postcards to save money, which resulted in our faces getting stamped in the process of mailing. We could have saved so much more money had we just not sent them!

 

Besides, I've come to learn that when it comes to weddings, the people who love you most will be there no matter what. And the people that don't make the effort or have more important things to do (and some things really might be more important) God wants them somewhere else and that's ok!

The second reason I wouldn't have sent save the dates, is that our guest list changed a quite a bit between the save the dates and the invitations. The problem is that once you send a save the date, you're automatically required to send an invitation. Even if you lose touch, or have a fight, it's a little awkward and bad manners to just not send the person an invitation. 

Had we not sent the save the dates, we would have had more room for a few people I regret not inviting (more on that later) I'm trying to find a positive here but it's hard! Just don't do save the dates. Or only send them to family and close friends!

3. The Registry

I think registries are so much harder than they used to be! There are endless options online and it's hard to tell good quality from poor. You can't feel the fabrics and see the size of things in real life before adding something to your registry. I really wish I could have gone to a store with my fiancé and take a scanner through the store like they used to do! Is that still an option these days??

I unfortunately, and unintentionally went for quantity over quality and that is a BIG regret. 

The bath towels we received got holes within the first year of our marriage! I'm so sad that I didn't register for a China tea set, some higher quality sheets and towels, and some cloth napkins. Part of my problem too, is that it's hard to know what you need until you're actually living as a married couple. For instance, I thought I might need a drying rack so I registered for a cheap one that extends over the sink. That resulted in a broken bowl...And it was too small anyway to hold all the dishes we used since we didn't have a dishwasher in our first house.

Also, I'm a shopper. I like to pick things out myself. Maybe having a smaller registry with higher quality items, and some smaller cheaper necessities, would have allowed people to give us cash or giftcards instead.

At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter! We have since bought new towels and we are slowly thrifting and Facebook Marketplacing our way to our dream home! Not having all the new and expensive stuff right at the beginning of marriage is just part of the journey! Plus, everyone was so generous in their gift giving to us! We have been very blessed!

4. Bride & Maid of Honor All at Once   

My sister and I got engaged a few weeks apart. We also got married two weeks apart. That meant the entire process of getting engaged and married was either joint or super close together! On the one side it was nice to get it all done at once. We didn't have to put all the wedding stuff away for a few months only to drag it all back out. However, I wish I would have been able to give just as much time and energy to my maid of honor role as I gave the bride role. 

I have a lot of regrets in this area: I wasn't allowed to hear about the engagement, or be involved in the surprise, I guess because my own was coming soon. I should have communicated that it was important to me early on.

When it came to bridal showers for my sister, I didn't have much input in the planning. And our "bachelorette weekend" (aka: a mother-daughter weekend at the lake) was for both of us so I didn't even get to do anything special for my sister then either! After my wedding and honeymoon it was difficult for me to help with my sister's wedding as much as I would have liked. And I think I might have let her down in that week leading up to her wedding. 

These are things I obviously can't change, but part of me wishes we would have just waited to get married a month or so after. On top of being more present to my sister, maybe we would have gotten spared some jokes about a double wedding and financially crippling my dad. Ha, yeah probably not. 

But on a happier note, it was such a fun season in my life to go through engagement, wedding prep, and the whole wedding weekend experience with my best friend! 

5. The Bridesmaid's Attire 

I saw my ideal bridesmaid dress from the online boutique, Dainty Jewells. They are a modest dress website, I'm assuming a Christian company. The dress I wanted was a tea-length light blue dress. It was frilly and fancy and I loved it!! I looked for it again to add a picture here but they don't have it anymore. 

The reason I didn't end up going with the dream bridesmaid dress was because it was a little more expensive, maybe $20 more, than the floor length, China-made, basic bridesmaid dress I ended up with... Dainty Jewells also does custom orders and sizing for wedding parties so nobody would have to worry about alterations. At the time I didn't want to bother my bridesmaids with having to measure themselves and send them in to Dainty Jewells, which I now realize is not that big of a deal and makes things easier in the long run! A few other reasons: I think some would have been skeptical about the tea-length dress for a wedding. Also I wanted more of a dusty blue color. Ironically, the dresses and bow ties were the only things dusty blue. The invitations turned out sky blue and everything at the reception was white.

Ultimately, I just wanted something modest and affordable for my bridesmaids. So I went with a basic bridesmaid dress. I didn't hate them, but if I could do it over, I'd get the better quality, small business, a little more expensive, but so much prettier, bridesmaid dress!

Then there's the veils. I wish I would have saved a little more of my money and bought better quality veils for my bridesmaids; something pretty that they would want to wear again! But we went for functional in the case of the veil because I had already spent a lot of my money on other wedding things. On a final positive note, everyone looked great in their dresses and the veils looked totally fine in the pictures!

6. Rehearsal on Friday Night 

Ok Mom...you were right! We should have had the rehearsal and dinner on Thursday night! Here's the story: The year I got married, half of my family was very involved in a homeschool sports program. My parents did a lot in running the football games, one of my brothers was playing and my sister was a cheerleader. Fall was super busy. And Friday nights (game day) were even busier! 

My mom suggested that we have our rehearsal & the dinner on Thursday night because of all of this. My pride said absolutely not and we continued on with the Friday plans. 

Now, let me be clear. I still hold the belief that a wedding is more important than high school sports...However, there were a few other reasons why it might have been better in this case to have it on Thursday. 

First, the rehearsal was on first Friday, so the priest who was marrying us wasn't able to make it due to Mass that evening. I think we missed a good opportunity to include him more in the wedding since he also wasn't able to make the wedding reception the next day due to the Vigil Mass. Big regret. 

Second, a free Friday for me would have meant more time to put together bouquets and an earlier night for more sleep. Maybe my future husband and I would have done something unique like praying a holy hour together on the eve of our wedding. So much more meaningful! 

Third, my younger brother would have been able to make the dinner. My other brother was still making his way home from college for the wedding and my little sister was sick (she recovered by the wedding, praise God!) so it would have been nice to have one of my other siblings there. 

Fourth, isn't such a big deal, but we wouldn't have had to worry about having a meatless option for us and some others who don't eat meat on Friday. Besides all that, the rehearsal and the dinner was very nice! My in-laws did a wonderful job and I felt very blessed!!

7. The Guest List  

This is probably the hardest part about wedding planning!! Obviously we couldn't invite every single person we wanted or we might have 500 people or more show up at our wedding! Plus, after we had about 350 people attend, I think that was big enough! 

My regrets are more about our reasoning behind inviting people, rather than the number of them. It seemed like many people were only invited because we felt obligated to include them. 

You know how it goes: "Well, if we invite Mrs. X, we have to include Mrs. Z." 

I did some research on wedding traditions before writing this, because I was curious about how the rules of what is acceptable have changed. What I found was that weddings used to be intimate events. You had your family and very close friends; not every person you've ever had a pleasant conversation with. 

I'm not necessarily saying that's what I wanted. I wanted friends from our church community, and lots of others that we consider good friends. But pairing the tradition of a small and intimate wedding, with the idea of focusing everything on the Sacrament of marriage, my guest list would probably look a lot different if I was making the list today (and considering my parents agreed with my ideas of a more exclusive wedding)

I'm just not a fan of inviting someone simply because you grew up with them, or knew them really well at one point in your life, or even someone because they expect to be invited. 

Isn't it important to ask who is going to support the couple in their marriage? Who do they (or their parents) want to celebrate the Sacrament with? How often do the couple (or the parents) foster a relationship with that person outside of work or church groups? Actually, I want to make one of those charts where it asks a question, and you follow the yes and no arrows till it gives you the answer to "Should I invite this person to my wedding?"

I can't really complain about the guest list too much. My parents were very generous in their guest list number for me, my husband, and my in-laws.

8. The Reception Venue

This one is small and really not a huge deal but I wish I would have chosen a venue with an outdoor option. Although really, it didn't even need to have an outdoor area- just some natural light would have been enough! 

I'm not someone who likes sitting in a dark room when the sun is out. I like sunshine and warm, welcoming light! Our reception area was dark and sometimes looking back at the pictures, it makes me cringe (see picture to the left. we should have done a backdrop or something there lol) One wall was just a room divider and there were no windows! Honestly, I think it was only chosen because of the size and price.

My mom wanted us to go look at a pretty event barn for the reception, which is much more my style, but it only sat 250 people or something and we had invited about 400! I thought it probably wasn't worth it to get my hopes up. Since then, I've often thought about what would have happened if we went with the barn and had 350 people there...Would they kick people out? Charge us a fee? Would anyone even know? I am very grateful that everyone had a seat though. Having been to a wedding where everyone didn't get a seat, I realized that is an important thing for a wedding reception, especially if the guests are eating! 

9. The Professional DJ

A DJ not something I thought of as a personal thing, but now I kind of think it is... Our DJ, he did his best, but there were a few issues I had with using his company.

First, there were some delays. We made our entrance and the DJ wasn't ready, at least he didn't seem ready, even with the signal to go. We got halfway down the isle to the dance floor before he started our entrance song, so when we got to the dance floor, supposed to jump right into our first dance...we kind of just stood there awkwardly, waiting for the song change. I suppose that could have been just because we're awkward people or maybe there was an issue with the timing of the signal, but I honestly think that having a friend with an iPhone might have been faster and like I said before, more personal.

It's weird having a random guy make commentary and direct us around when we might have had a friend or family member keep things light, funny, and familiar.

On another note, I did not like the party lights. I think we had restrictions on hanging things from the ceiling and walls at our reception hall, but I much rather would have had soft, romantic lighting. Our wedding reception was not going to be a party scene. I wanted it very family-friendly. The strobe lighting, tame compared to some, felt way off for what I was going for and it was harsh for pictures. 

It all ended up fine in the end though! He did a good job with the photo dash we did.

10. Being Afraid to Make My Reception Unique 

I loved how my wedding reception turned out overall, but I don't think I really thought about the different options I had. Since my sister and I got married so close together, we made it easier on ourselves by using the same caterer, DJ, and reception venue, all on top of using the same Church and priest to marry us. I can see why some people asked why we didn't just do a double wedding! 

I think if I did what I really wanted instead of what I was supposed to do, I might have a morning wedding. Not super early, but 10 or 11am with a light lunch and dancing to follow. We wouldn't have to rush out of the church (sidenote: another big regret- we didn't take couple pictures in the church!! I think maybe we just forgot to add it to our shot list and then we didn't think about it in the moment. Even if we did, it might have been too close to the Vigil Mass to go back in anyway. Ok, back to my dream wedding...) 

I would have skipped the bouquet toss, which was super awkward and not my personality at all! I would have added an advice or date night ideas jar in the back. I probably would have chosen a different venue like I mentioned before, full of people that we really wanted there. 

Oh, and eating separately in the back room alone, which is something that I chose, is something I probably wouldn't do again. Because, in addition to having people you care about at your wedding, the reception is for the guests just as much as the couple. We should have eaten with them and given them an opportunity to come up and congratulate us, also giving us the chance to thank them for coming.  

And this brings me to my conclusion. I think the reason why I had so many regrets is because, for the most part I just did what was expected of a wedding in 2023. Influenced by Hollywood and the wedding industry, I think many of us Catholics don't align our weddings with how we actually want live our lives. That is, pro-life, hospitable, humble, and faith focused. 

Instead we believe the lie that the day (mostly the reception) is all about the bride, luxurious and expensive looking, all about impressing the guests, free of the messiness of family life, perfectly captured on camera and film, and that the couples happiness depends on the day going perfectly. 

Now, while I have a lot of regrets, I can't pretend like I didn't love my wedding day. It was the happiest day of my life because I married the love of my life! Now, we can take the wisdom we gained from our mistakes and use it for the rest of our marriage! 

Thanks for reading as I look back on my wedding day! 

Enjoy the rest of the summer weddings on your calendar💕