What was way easier than you thought? What was harder?

Finding our wedding venue was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be. I knew just from photos online which venue I wanted to get married. We tour that venue and a coup others just to be sure, but my husband, both of our moms (they went venue touring with us) and I loved that venue the best.


The thing I thought would be easier, but wasn't were escort cards. However that's because my husband wanted something very specific. He wanted one that looked like hockey tickets so I found a template on Etsy. That part was easier, but they included photos and he didn't want to use the same photo for each one. We took like six different photos and he wanted a pattern to determine who got want photo. For example, person 1, 7, & 13 all got photo one whereas person 2, 8, & 14 got photo 2 and so worth. It was a pain in the butt to do and ended up taking much longer than I thought. He was out of town so he couldn't help me even though it was his idea. They did turn out very pretty though.

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Oh, they look super cute! Definitely worth it!

View Quoted Comment Thanks! Our guests thought they were really cute as well so it was worth the hassle. Plus it was nice to have a personal touch to our wedding.

Finding the venue wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be. Figuring out the budget & then having to readjust (sticker shock) because we didn’t realize how expensive weddings were was a big one.

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Oh yeah, the sticker shock is real for sure.

I'd heard about budget drama, about FS that didn't care, seating charts, all of those things.

While sometimes DH panicked and "didn't know what to do next" (those moments usually ended with me threatening to drop the planning book on his head, since he couldn't be bothered to see it at his feet), his interest was never the issue.

Our problems came with the ceremony. DH wanted a Catholic wedding, as he is Catholic. I am not Christian, but I agreed, for his sake, to *try* to get the Church to approve us.

It, uh, went POORLY.

As in, we found out 3 1/2 months before the wedding that they wouldn't approve us poorly.

So, yeah, the most stressful part of wedding planning for us was figuring out the ceremony and officiant. At the last minute before we ordered invites (DH had wanted to order them BEFORE we talked to the priest, I'm glad I resisted).

We also had drama from my family, but had *somewhat* anticipated that? I underestimated it, yes, but still, knew it was coming.

I would say the most difficult things were/are the seating chart and me being impatient about the RSVPs trickling in.


Everything else has been pretty easy to moderate so far.

Getting rsvps from people and in turn, finishing the seating chart have been BY FAR the hardest parts! We had to follow up with a good half of the people we sent invitations to to get their response and we got so many "I'll try to make it". We're one of the firsts in both of our families to get married so I guess they don't understand how much we're paying for them and that we need a response. Our wedding is this upcoming Saturday and we've had more than one person call us THIS WEEK to change their rsvp 🙄

I found that booking our vendors was A LOT easier than I thought it would be and what our married/engaged friends had been telling us lol. We booked 4 of our vendors within the first few months of our engagement, and were able to get great discounts from them! I've just always been told horror stories of not being able to find vendors until the last minute because everyone was getting booked up, but thankfully we thought ahead and planned a 2022 wedding, giving us over a year to plan!

I am DREADING the table seating chart...completely dreading it lol. I'm hoping we can give our DOC our lists of separate families and friends and that they'll be able to create the seating chart lol.

Learning to be patient with vendors has been beneficial though! I feel like couples instantly think that their wedding is the only one that matters and that vendors ONLY deal with them, when the reality is that they have tons of other clients to work with along with their own personal lives. So learning to not get too worried or upset when they don't respond right away was tough, but very eye opening and gives you the reality check you need!

Table settings with our original guest list were much easier than with the final list of guests who actually RSVP'd yes.

One of the things that didn't work out quite like I planned was picking a venue close to where we lived (about 20-25 min away). I thought it would be easier because many of our local guests wouldn't need to get hotels for the weekend, we could use local vendors, and we could do prep stuff and drive décor and things to our venue really easily, but it actually ended up making it harder in ways because we have a much less captive audience for the weekend/wedding itself. So for example, my in-laws don't want to drive to our venue (45 min from their house) 2 nights in a row and their siblings want to carpool, so now we are not having a rehearsal dinner and they are not doing anything to help us get ready at all, they are literally showing up right at the start of the ceremony and will probably actually leave early to drive back home. But if we had picked a venue that was an hour from us everyone would have just gotten a hotel and would be there the whole time with us, and now I'm not even sure people in the wedding will show up early enough for us to pin their boutonnieres and do some photos before the ceremony starts.

I was also really surprised by the number of people who didn't RSVP and who we had to follow up with after our deadline, as well as how many declined. We are having a small wedding (50 guests) so I anticipated that if we only invited our closest friends they would actually be respectful and responsive and most would attend, but nope. Its something I kind of expect when you invite 200 people and half of the people you maybe see once a year at a family holiday, but it was not what I expected from who I considered to be our nearest and dearest.

Whatever, I'm so glad its this weekend and will be over soon!

From someone who had to cancel because of covid, then wanted to do a destination then decided to do a local wedding, I’d say trying to mail down location was hard but easy at the same time. It was just getting my fiancé on the same page to do it local and then he picked the venue and I fell in love with it! So far finding vendors and booking them was easy. We knew what we wanted and checked them out and liked them and just booked them. I’d say the hardest for me was finalizing the registry haha we are in an apartment and have been living together for a few years now and won’t get a house probably for 3-5 years but I wanted to put a lot of “house type” things on the registry that we will need eventually but not necessarily right now. That was kinda difficult for me cuz I wanted to put alllllll these things on there but my fiancé was the practical one and so we compromised on a few things. I think we’re both happy with what’s on it and I promised not to make anymore changes 😂

Getting people to RSVP was so annoying aha.

another thing was the logistics of everything - i guess i didn't realize how much of a time crunch everything would be

Finding a venue was easier than I thought it would be! My fiance and I really wanted the same things in terms of location, style, etc., so it was simple to narrow down from there.
Figuring out the guest list has been rough! I'm hearing whispers though the grapevine that family, who never talk to me outside of Christmas/Thanksgiving, are hurt at the prospect of not being invited. I'd rather have those I'm closest to there than family I barely speak to, so I'll have to stand my ground.

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Oh no! I have heard that kind of thing can be quite tricky! And then it's like, well what do we do instead, because of course, it's not a wedding without an officiant! I'm glad it all got smoothed out in the end though!

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I can understand how hard it must be for some weddings, for sure. Especially if you have narky difficult people who have to be placed at either end of a room and such! I'm glad the rest has been easy for you though!

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Ugh, SO RUDE! Our venue requires us to give final numbers a month out. I honestly don't think people do understand - either the expense or the reasoning. I have to keep telling myself that we wanted to have them there, would have paid for them if they'd come, and budgeted for them, so to just let it go but it is infuriating.

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That's so true. We're in a similar boat - booked our vendors 18 months out and didn't really have too many problems with locking them in, and ours have been very good at getting back to us, but I will say I'm surprised by how little contact there has been. Most of it has been us being proactive and being like, ok, 100 days out, here is our run sheet, here is our preferred menu blah di blah, not them contacting us and providing us with ideas. Maybe we're just too efficient and haven't given them a chance, haha.

And you never know! maybe your table plans will be super easy and you'll be surprised! I hope for you anyway

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Oh I know what you mean about accommodations and things. I'm sorry it ended up like that, it's disappointing. But how exciting it's this weekend! I hope it's fabulous and wonderful for you

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Haha, that's too funny about the registry! We've been living together for a few years now too, so we decided not to have one. It's fairly uncommon in Australia these days as most people do tend to have been living together. It's an unspoken rule that everyone just wants cash in an envelope. Unless it was a very close friend who I wanted to give a specific, personal gift to (alongside money) I've never given a boxed gift for a wedding.

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Ugh yes! So far we our RSVPs have been pretty good, we have a while to go and are at 60%, but I'm still expecting to have to nudge people. We know some people have booked accommodation, for example, so they're definitely coming, but they haven't RSVPed. Like just do it!!

And argh logistics, so true. There are just SO MANY moving parts, and so many intersecting vendors that you do have to sit and plan every piece out and look at it from 50 angles. But then loads of unorganised people have had weddings that just kind of 'winged it' and they're still married at the end of the day so no harm, no foul I guess? lol!