Wedding Regrets?

My wedding was unplugged. None of my friends nor family have any photos.

Commenting to save the discussion, to help me before I get married

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I am hoping I can help at least one or two brides not have to go through the same thing I went through. I had dreamed of my wedding day so long. I expected little things to go wrong, but not the pictures. In all seriousness, HIRE a professional to take your photos. Do not use a family member, a family friend, even one who is a professional. Hire someone instead.

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I told my husband how I felt about our wedding. I told him I would go back and change everything given the chance. He actually agreed with me. He let me know what he was sorry for not letting me make the decision to postpone our wedding. It actually feels better that he knows that I didn't enjoy our wedding day, like I thought we would.

We actually have made plans to have pictures redone by someone else since all of our wedding photos are of other people instead of us as a couple. (i.e. we have like 12 photos of our groomsman bc he had an unusual mustache, but 4 of us which are even in focus) The only photo I like from our wedding day is one of me and my bridesmaids, and my husband and his mom. Those are really the only two good photos of me and him.

Ok, I realize I am 2 years late here, but just wanted to share that I will be married for 3 years in April, and there are many regrets I have about my wedding day which have, at times, kept me from looking back on it fondly. It has gotten MUCH better after a while, but the first year after my wedding was rough (speaking from a total “first-world-problem” angle). I do think different personalities have stronger feelings about little regrets, what people think, “what could I have done differently?”, etc. and that was the case for me. I would cry because of how angry I was at myself - for little things. I just wanted the regret to go away. I know that is dramatic/ridiculous, but I wanted to share in case there is anyone else who might search google, and read this thread in hopes of finding they’re not the only one.
I will say that the biggest things that helped me, post-wedding, were: being firm with myself about speaking positively and saying “whatever” /“oh, well” whenever I thought of a regret. Another thing that helped was thinking on my honeymoon, because it was the best time of my life, also helped having an incredible husband who helps give immense perspective, and lastly, I’d say find three beautiful/bright spots to dwell on. When I think on the best parts of my wedding, I think of my amazing church family, who helped on many ways, the cake that my husband MADE, and my FIL’s face when I walked down the aisle.
While I’m here, and if you’ve read this far... I’ll share just some regrets:- Like you, not hiring professional photography- Also like you, not pushing it out a few months/saving more $$- Reception venue (my small church) - Going dry- How my dress was altered- Letting my sister (only BM) pick her dressThe biggest though, was not eloping, because I do think it would have been better for my personality and where we were at financially, at the time. Having said that, I am incredibly thankful for my wedding day.Sorry this is so long, but feels good to right this out somewhere, and hope it helps someone! Thanks for reading.

Hey just wanted to say that our wedding planning was extremely rushed too. We had no idea how much needed to be done and set our wedding date 4 months after our engagement because we wanted to be married quickly (and I was away for over a month overseas during that time so in reality we had 3 months to plan). So yes I can relate to how you feel about everything being rushed!

Everyone always says "oh the important thing is that you and your husband are married at the end of the day!" But that doesn't take away from the disappointments when things don't go as planned. I put so much into planning the wedding, had basically no free time from the day we got engaged to the day of the wedding. Sorting out all the details, dealing with difficult in-laws... it felt like the day had better be great because we've put SO much effort in. It's very saddening when you feel like your efforts have gone to waste due to others' actions (in this case, it sounds like your uncle was not a good photographer, among other things).

I wish I could offer you more than just solidarity but that's all I can offer! We also had quite a few things go wrong and it is taking me a while to get over these things. I think it's also my perfectionist personality making it especially difficult. But I am learning to be kinder on myself and tell myself that I shouldn't be sad about these things because there was no way I could've known about 99% of the things that went wrong. I hope you are learning to be kind to yourself also!

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We've been married now for about 2.5 years and we chose the best thing for us is to not discuss the wedding pretty much at all. We have a few mementos from the date, but that's all we decided to keep. Since we were both disappointed we decided we are going to plan a 10 year vow renewal ceremony and "maybe small reception" to do things differently without the input from family, friends, etiquette rules, etc. We still have a long way to go, but we feel this would be the best thing for us to do.

In fact, my mom out of the blue mentioned our wedding the other day and suggested we do a vow renewal. I told her we plan to, but before I could go into any ideas we had, she immediately jumped in saying things like, "I can't wait" ; "You're niece could be the flower girl she will only be, what 6 or7 ?" ( yep, you guessed it she was born recently) " A beautiful Florida renewal" and we can do to this and this....I was like, "No, I have already got something in mind planned. She still continued planning in her head....I finally changed the subject. Thankfully, we still have time to figure out what WE ( as in my husband and I ) want to do, and forget the rules.

View Quoted Comment Thanks, your comment really helped me.