For those recently married

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Coming up on my one year wedding anniversary…and looking back there is only one thing I would change about our wedding, I wish our reception was a little bit longer (our presiding priest got a little carried away and gave a 45 min. homily…lol…our reception only ended up being about…3 hours long? maybe? although…we sent people away “wishing for more”…which is better then at some weddings I’ve been to where the reception drags and drags)

Things we did that I LOVE:
-had 4 priests and one deacon at the Mass.
-said our vows with our hands over the crucifix that now hangs above our bed, and we say our prayers together in front of it
-gave away rosaries blessed by Pope Benedict that I got during World Youth Day as reception favors, instead of matches or bags of candy or whatever
-the day before the wedding we:
–had a Holy Hour for vocations
–had the rehearsal for the Mass
–had confession
–daily Mass
–THEN went to the rehearsal dinner

Try to relax and enjoy the day…it was the best day of my life (lol so far…still waiting on this little one to make her appearance), it was so fun…what a special, awesome time, those last few days leading up to the wedding! Keep things simple and in perspective so you can enjoy every moment and not be stressed!!
 
As with the poster who recommended making everyone’s role clear beforehand, I would say make sure there is someone “running the show” other than you. Our priest was old and fairly laid back, so I wound up having to run much of the rehearsal, and then my wife and I, because we didn’t hire a DJ but didn’t think to put someone in charge of actually running the reception, wound up having to make sure things kept moving afterwards as well. In retrospect, we should have found someone we could trust to anticipate and handle things that needed to be done, so that we could just sit back and enjoy. It’s not that we didn’t have people running all sorts of particular jobs, we just could have used a figure other than ourselves to which everyone could look for guidance.
 
I got married last july. Here are my recommendations:

Before you do any shopping aroung for wedding stuff, decide first on a budget, and decide which things are most important for you, and which things you’d be willing to do without.

For my husband and I, we really wanted good reception food, and good music at the mass (I’m lucky because I am part of a choir and had friends sing for us).

My husband and I saved ourselves a lot of stress by choosing a reception hall that came with most things included - ie. dj and cake.

Also useful is to make a calendar of when you plan to do what. This also makes sure you only panic about one thing at a time, because you know you’ve made time for the other things.

Really important is that whatever you decide, you and your husband to be keep a unified front and don’t back down on anything at the pressure of other family members without consulting each other first. In a way, preparing for your wedding is when you begin to become a ‘unit’ that decides things together, and the (name removed by moderator)ut of others comes second to that.
 
  1. Assign EVERYTHING to SOMEONE ELSE.
  2. Make it very clear to members of the wedding party what their responsibilities are.
  3. Shrug it off, and enjoy the day.
I had a million and a half things go wrong (well, not really), but no one cared because we were all having a good time despite everything.

The biggest single thing I wish I would have done was solicited more help in advance. Delegate, delegate, delegate. They don’t even have to be good at it, just outgoing enough to be able to corral guests at the proper times.

Examples: run the rehearsal, gathering belongings in the dressing room after the wedding (was left to do this by myself, and was late for the reception), buttoning up your bustle (had to have my brother do it b/c everyone else left), cut the cake after the ceremonial cutting (unless caterer is being paid to do it), collecting gifts at the reception, moving your suitcase to DH’s car, cleaning up afterwards (if you are doing your own decorating, etc; our wedding party and all of DH’s family bailed, so it was me, DH, and my family- yeah, we can back after the end of the reception:o because I didn’t have my suitcase), someone to collect your dress and DH’s tux the next morning and take it to the cleaners or rental place.

Have on call several people with cars, who know the area, and who wouldn’t be heartbroken to miss something- parents of close friends might qualify for this role. For example, my parents were invited to the wedding of my dad’s coworker who also went to our church and boy scout troop, so my mom offered to get flowers and make bouquets when the florist was a no-show.

Also I wish I would have created a wedding day schedule for myself, and assigned someone to keep track of it for me.
 
One of the things I was most pleased with was having our out of town guests meet us after the rehearsal dinner… despite rude family members of DH scolding our guests for eating the leftover food (there was SOOOOOOOOOOOO much left, and none of us were in-town to take it home anyway) after we encouraged them to do so. It was great to be able to spend some time with them since they traveled so far to be with us. I just sent out e-vites for this.
 
Also wish I had set aside time for a private moment with DH between wedding and reception. Mom was very much opposed to a break in between, but it totally would have been much better if we had given ourselves plenty of time to get all the pictures taken and take a deep breath in between.

We were horribly rushed during the pictures and didn’t get all the shots I wanted.
 
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