5 Things No One Told Me about Planning a Wedding

Aug 16, 2017

What is up my squad of lovely brides? Last week on Twitter I ran a poll to choose this week’s Wedding Wednesday post and 5 Things No One Told Me about Planning a Wedding won! Wedding Dress Shopping came in close second so go ahead and subscribe and follow me on social media because that will be coming soon as well (and boy, was that an ordeal!).

I have a bad habit of overestimating what I know. When Justin and I got engaged, I thought I had watched enough wedding related reality television shows to what there was to know about wedding planning. Well, I was wrong. Let’s chat about the things no one told me about wedding planning:

People Will Judge You

While your wedding day should be a reflection of you and your fiance as a couple, be prepared to have people judge every decision you make along the way. I wasn’t expecting the number of questions I would get in regards to decisions we’ve made when it comes to our wedding. The best way to get around this type of situation is to keep most of the wedding details to yourself (and your fiance, of course). As long as you keep the focus on you and your fiance and what you want your wedding day to be, then nothing else matters. I’ve done my best to ignore any comments or stop myself from assuming that people will think a certain way about our choices.

It Can Get Uncomfortable

Seriously, why didn’t anyone give me a heads up about how uncomfortable wedding planning, and weddings in general, are? If you’ve read my post about my depression story, then you’ll know that my parents got divorced when I was in college. By the time our wedding rolls around, they will both be remarried. You can imagine all of the anxiety that comes with having to deal with including both new spouses in the wedding. Not to mention the fact that the first time either of my parents will meet Justin’s family will be two days before the wedding. While my parents are on good terms, the whole thing still makes me anxious and I’ve had to confront a lot of feelings from those dark days in college that I wasn’t expecting. Consider this your head’s up.

It’s Expensive

We knew weddings were expensive but… y’all. They are SO expensive. Some of it is our own doing, like spending almost $400 on custom water color work but I honestly had no idea how much things related to weddings cost. According to this article from The Knot, the average costs of weddings in the U.S. is more than $35,000 and couples in the area we’re getting married typically spend more than $54,000 on average. That’s more than double our budget. One of the first steps in my post The Only 4 Steps You Need to Set Your Wedding Budget is to research wedding costs so definitely make sure this step is at the top of your list once you start wedding planning.

Save the Date’s Are Pointless

Speaking of budget, we totally could have just skipped our save-the-dates. We initially ordered our save the dates in May to send out in June or July but… that didn’t happen. August is almost over and we’re just now sending them out. Because most people will have to travel for our wedding, our invitations will go out sooner than your typical three-month advance making our save the dates pretty much pointless. Side note: I do love our save the dates, which are from Minted.

It Goes By SO Fast

I still feel like it was just yesterday that I was saying we had finally hit the one year mark until our wedding day. Now we’re almost at the 9 month mark AND we’ve almost been engaged for an entire year. What?! You can check out my 10 Month Wedding Update to see what we’ve checked off our list so far!

And there you have it, my list of things no one told me about planning a wedding! I’m sure that this list will continue to grow as we get deeper into the wedding planning weeds so I will definitely be doing a follow up post. Thanks again to everyone who voted in my Twitter poll to choose this week’s Wedding Wednesday post so make sure to follow me on there and Instagram so you can get in on the behind-the-scenes action!