While some might say that a wedding is just a big party, this underscores just how much planning and organization actually goes into putting together a party. So it’s no surprise that, despite people’s best intentions, sometimes things just don’t go as planned.
People from across the internet share the things they hated about their own weddings, as well as some of the things they loved. From good ideas implemented poorly to folks who cheaped out at the wrong moment, get comfortable as you scroll through, upvote your favorites and be sure to share your own examples in the comments below.
Stuffing cake in my wife’s face. No exaggeration, i regret it to this day.
One of the traits of a successful marriage is to protect your spouse, with words, with your actions. Protect in this case has the meaning of upholding their dignity, their honor, etc. shoving cake in their face is not doing any of that and it’s very very public.
Don’t do it. Plus it messed with her make up, I really really wish I hadn’t. :(.
Letting my Ex-MIL dictate pretty much everything. It stopped being our wedding and became her wedding. And she is crazy.
The whole wedding was no longer focused on my wife and I but my MiL handing my wife off to me. Which is really ironic because after that moment MiL became even more controlling. Some things she did….
* She had a mommy daughter dance.
* Made an 30 minute long speech about raising my wife, including playing several inappropriate baby videos.
* Made a toast to herself
* Cut the cake with my wife
* Tossed the bouquet herself
* Tried to outcast my small family (party of 6) to the corner
* Departed the wedding in our limo with us
* This is the weirdest one. The bridal lingerie literally said “mommy’s girl”.
The wedding was ruined for me. The worst part? It set a precedent that my MiL can do whatever she wanted in our relationship and my wife would always choose her side. This eventually caused a split after MiL spanked the hell out of my daughter and my wife took her side.
Well, we could have had the wedding in fall 2019, but my wife wanted more time to make sure everything was perfect, so we decided to have it in April 2020.
Getting separated from my wife while at the wedding. She went to the bathroom and then got swarmed by friends and family and she disappeared what seemed like hours. Also, in general getting pulled away from eachother. When I would get a drink or talk to someone.
The reason I regret it, is because my wife looked so absolutely stunning that day and I just wanted to look at her the entire time. My wife is still hot but something about that dress.
Buying the suit I wore…As a groom I rented and nothing fit right. All of my pictures showed. As much as my wife spent on her dress I could have spent the $500 to buy the perfect fitting suit. Really short sighted on my part.
I regret spending so much on my dress. And my parents paid for it! It was beautiful but I feel like I could have bought a cheaper one and still had a great day.
Not a bride but a recent groom. I regret not having the priest not announcing “No photography” at the beginning of the service. We have some awesome shots ruined by people sticking their heads out in the isle while she was walking down.
I regret not turning around to watch my wife walk down the aisle.
It was an outdoor wedding with no music, and I was told to stare at the nearby ruins so I didn’t accidentally see my wife as she made her way to the back of where we had the ceremony. With no cue, I had no idea when to turn until she tapped me on the shoulder and giggled a small “hi”.
Her dress was amazing, and the ceremony went well amidst a surprise downpour (two hours earlier than expected), but I really wish I had been able to watch her walk the aisle.
My husband and I went off alone to be married in the woods. No regrets on that, but I regret not going further off-trail for the actual vow exchange. A lady on horseback yelled at me that the “white thing on your head is scaring my horse”.
Wearing heels. Also letting my sister in law convince me to stay at her house the night before instead of a hotel. I slept on a tiny, uncomfortable futon with my giant future husband, and slept maybe an hour.
I remember early in the process telling my wife-to-be that if anyone is talking about the chair covers, napkins or plates after the wedding then the wedding must have sucked. Relax.
Letting the photographer dictate where we should be for the entire night. Going back I would have told him do all the photo poses you want in the first hour then leave us alone.
Also would have had someone walk around with us when we said hi to each table to help us get out of drawn out conversations to make it go faster.
My regret is not taking the time out to enjoy myself.
Both my wife and I spent a lot of time going around and talking to people, making sure we got through everyone and not missing anyone out, and doing things to make sure everyone felt included.
Since then, we’ve found out that everyone was super happy and we didn’t need to spend that time seemingly appeasing everybody.
We both regret not taking a bit of time out and just enjoying ourselves with our immediate friends.
We’re desperate to go to another wedding at the same venue as guests, so we can get the experience we created for ours.
Not eloping. Our wedding was relatively small and inexpensive (less than 10k, less than 60 guests) but we could have spent that money on a sweet beach elopement and doubled up our honeymoon to be two weeks.
A reception line. I got talked into it, I didn’t want to do it but felt pressured. All I did for 3/4 of my reception was stand and say hello to people it was miserable and took a lot of the fun out of the day.
Letting a homeless guy into our reception venue to use the restroom. Half-hour later, he’s still in there. A few of my guests jimmied the door open and found him passed out on heroin.
Actually it’s NOT doing something..my wife’s uncle ,as our wedding gift,hired the dj. I wanted to talk to the dj to make sure that he’d have the songs we wanted “don’t worry about it he has everything” so I didn’t….. Don’t get me wrong he did a good job it’s just that he had every song but the couple that ment something to us!
I would move speeches to before dinner is served, people are quicker when they’re hungry and not drunk yet.
I personally wouldn’t bother with the first dance, we’re not dancers, it was really f*****g awkward.
The one thing I would reccomend to everyone is having party bombs – like mini indoor firework and inside theres silly stuff to play with. We had groups of people from different places who didn’t know each other, it was a brilliant icebreaker and so much fun!
Thinking it was so important to get all of my family there. In retrospect, those that had to be convinced and accommodated shouldn’t have been there.
Txting my wife “yo, are we still on for today?”.
I should have made my wife eat her meal. We sat at the table alone and chatted while everyone else was eating and she said she wasn’t very hungry after eating like 1/4 of her plate.
Turns out that half hour was the only 30 minutes of the day she wasn’t hungry. I finally went downstairs and got her a plate of hors d’oeuvres after her trying to politely sneak down for two hours.
They spirited her food away some point after dinner and she still regrets not getting to eat the great food we picked out.
Posing for pictures. Ended up putting so much energy into getting perfect pics we didn’t spend time in the moment. Just ask your photographer to do candid shots only and focus on enjoying the day. Your pics will be great whether you try hard to have perfect photos or not and you won’t look at the album nearly as often as you might think.
Using a friend to take the wedding photos instead of paying a professional photographer.
I was in grad school at the time and we were trying to save money, so we asked a friend of my wife’s to take the photos. He was an amateur with a new camera. Nearly every one of our wedding photos is either grainy or blurry. Some of our family in the wedding has died, and it really makes us sad to not have good photos of the family together.
Tiny wedding in a beautiful state park. I forgot the rings in the car and my dad was kind enough to jog back and get them. That’s the only regret I have for that day.
I did have video and im glad but I wished I’d splurged on a better videographer so I agree on that especially if you’re doing a micro wedding or know people won’t be able to come who matter to you.
My husband and I gave our vows to a trusted friend to review and she gave us feedback about how to align them better.
In all honesty, I regret dancing so much. We danced so much, we forgot to go around to individually thank everyone for coming. They all came to us on the dance floor to say hello. 10/10 still dancing.
I wanted a small event for about 20 people. My fiancée agreed, but then her mom insisted they have a lot of very close and important family members, they JUST HAVE TO invite. So we agreed on a bigger wedding, but parents suppose to pay. We searched for a wedding venue and estimated a cost for 90 guest (less then 30 where from my side of the family), but everyone was happy about it (including me at this point)
They all agreed for the costs except my mom, who was widowed for 10 years at this point and couldn’t afford it. So I offered I’ll cover her part myself. I was working abroad and sending most of my money to my future wife and let her organize everything and trusted with wathever she was doing with that money. A few months before the wedding was due and I came back to my country I discovered my money covered the whole wedding. Her parents ghosted the subject.
That marriage didn’t hold up. I calculated how much money I’ve put into the wedding just because of my ex-mother-in-law’s delusional thinking and I’m still goddamn mad at this waste of money.
Also… only 20 members of my family showed up against 60 of hers (that totally had to be invited) and the ratio of money in the envelopes from both sides was still 50-50. I’m even more mad.
Note: this post originally had 66 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
