1. Our wedding song. I wish we had picked a romantic top 40 hit from the year of our wedding so that when it gets replayed on the radio we could be nostalgic. We picked an obscure song that is beautiful but never comes on unexpectedly.

2. Not doing a hair trial. I wound up with some weird Game of Thrones braids inspired mullet thing, and the curls fell out as soon as I left the hotel because it was super humid. I would have opted for something different.

3. Making cupcakes instead of buying a cake. We did a lot of DIY–made the beer and mead for toasts, assembled flowers and centerpieces–because it was cheaper but also we like making things. But the cupcakes, in retrospect, were a ton of work and not that great.

4. Not preparing a speech. I thought I’d just go up, thank everyone for coming and sit back down. Short and sweet, get it out the way. That’s exactly what I did, without mentioning my parents or my wife.

5. I really wish we had the ceremony video taped. We spent a decent chuck of money on the photographer, and our photos look great! We didn’t think we wanted a video at the time, but a year and change later I really wish we did.

6. I wish I had walked slower down the aisle to my (now) husband. My dad and I both naturally take long strides when we walk, so what was supposed to be a 1-2 minute-long walk of suspense turned into a brisk 20-30-second stroll.

7. Choosing bridesmaids more carefully. If a girl is full of drama, even if she’s a close childhood friend, she won’t just ‘take it back a notch’ because she can tell it’s important for you. If she’s full of drama, keep her away!

8. Paper invitations and RSVPs. Set up a wedding site and have people RSVP there. The amount of stress I put myself through trying to get paper mailed back to me in an era when no one uses mail anymore was so unnecessary. At one point we’d gotten very few RSVPs back and I had a total crying meltdown about how no one was going to come. Of course they were going to come, it’s just no one uses mail anymore. Save yourself the headache and the money. It’s my biggest wedding regret.

9. Not paying for a babysitter. We had so many young kids at our wedding. It was kid friendly but if we had two babysitters watching the kids it would have been more fun for the parents.

10. Don’t get the friend of the family as a DJ, get a pro.

11. Not huge, but if I did it all again I wouldn’t waste time on a garter or bouquet toss. I think they’re pretty antiquated traditions and they weren’t at all necessary.

12. Getting married in late July. It was so fucking hot

13. Having a two year old as a flower girl. It was fine, but she definitely wasn’t old enough.

14. Smashing cake in my new brides eye, ruining her makeup in the process. Don’t smash the cake in the face.

15. Having my dress so tight. My seamstress told me since it was strapless I should have it tight so it would stay up. It was so uncomfortable. I could only eat a couple bites of dinner and have a couple sips of champagne before I had to stop due to it getting unbearably tight. Couldn’t drink at all for the rest of the night, and felt like I couldn’t 100% enjoy the dancing cause all I was thinking about was getting back to the hotel and ripping the damn dress off.

16. I regret leaving for the honeymoon the day after the wedding. I would have been nice to sleep in, have brunch in bed, and spend most of the day naked together. Instead we got up at 5 am, went to the airport, and spent 9 hours traveling.

17. I would have slept in more on my actual wedding day. I was super tired the whole time.

18. Not paying for a cleaning company at my venue. Me, my wife, and wedding party had to stay 2 hours later to clean up to get our deposit back.

19. Renting a nice room in a fancy hotel. And then expecting to have sex when we were both just absolutely fucking exhausted. Don’t get me wrong, my wedding day was possibly the best day of my entire life, but it would have been just the teensiest bit better if we’d gotten some charming bed and breakfast and not forced ourselves to have tired, tired sex at like 1 in the morning. Turns out fancy ass hotel rooms are basically just like a clean version of non fancy ass hotel rooms, not that my poor ass would have known that before hand.

20. Not hiring a photographer. We thought we’d save money and just ask friends to take lots of pictures. They took some but I have maybe 5 pictures worth looking at. No pictures of the cake or table settings. I kind of remember what they look like. The only decent pic of my husband and I has our flower girl in it. She’s sweet and I love her, but it looks like she’s our kid. Every time people see the photo they’re like “I didn’t know you had an older child…” Hire a photographer people!

21. Not having a good breakfast. We got married early in the day on a beach and all I could think about was how much I wanted a breakfast sandwich with eggs, cheese, and bacon on a toasted english muffin with just a touch of hot sauce!

22. Registering for gd china. I didn’t want it. Knew we would never use it. Received every thing. Never have used it in 25 years.

23. Not doing some sort of dance lessons or practice. We literally just swayed side to side slowly rotating for the entirety of it..

24. Spending so much money on a cake. We bought for 100 guests but maybe 25-30 actually had cake. We had absolutely loads left over. People just ate their dinner and when the cake was cut people were a few drinks in and didn’t care.

25. High heels. Hubby and I got married just the two of us on a beach. Why did I think buying high heels was a good idea? Honestly, I’m not even wearing them in the pictures. I don’t even think I did wear them at all. I wanted to buy these cute sandals but for some reason I didn’t.

26. Having a wedding caterer. The food would have been so much better if we’d just gone to a chain restaurant that specializes in feeding large groups (El Pollo Loco, Panda Express). Sure, it wouldn’t have been classy delicacies, but it would have been warm and everyone would have been satisfied. Our catering was overpriced, cold, and totally a waste of money.

27. Cheaping out on the photographer. Half of my photos were taken at weird angles.

28. Letting other people help pay. As soon as that happens they take over the wedding. Guest list, decor, cake, everything.

29. Allowing my friends to drag me to a strip club the night before for a bachelor party. It was dumb and we ended up getting a DUI. My wife was furious at me because I had specifically told her we would not be going to a strip club but I caved to pressure from my douchy friend. She was standing there at the altar in her dress furious at me and trying not to cry during what should have been one of the happiest moment of our lives. I learned a very hard lesson that day.

30. Asking a friend to run the video instead of hiring a professional.

31. Inviting 75% of the people. Most of them I never see and are not involved in our lives. Would have rather spent the same amount of money on 25% of the people and had one hell of a high-end party.

32. My dress. I knew what I wanted but I just went with something on sale even though I felt uncomfortable in it. I wish I had been a little more pushy on what I wanted to wear.

33. Not paying attention to the photographer more. We gave him a list of things he needed to shoot for portraits, and he forgot to get a picture of me, my wife, and my parents…

34. Inviting an estranged relative…

35. Not downloading my slideshow to a flash drive. I made it in Google Slides and didn’t realize how bad the internet connection was in the reception area. It wasn’t a big deal all things considered, but I spent a lot of time scanning in pictures and just posting it on Facebook was kind of disappointing.

36. Rehearsal dinner – I didn’t even want one at all as we were doing a 15 minute ceremony and it just seemed like an antiquated waste of time and money. Wife wanted to invite the extended family and make a party of it. I caved, and then she claimed she was too busy to plan it and I had to organize everything. It wasn’t what she had in her head and she was just as upset as she would have been if I had put my foot down and said no dinner at all. MIL also invited 6 extra people day of because they wound up coming in a day earlier than they had planned. We ran out of space and everyone was cramped and miserable. Complete waste of $1500 and countless hours organizing.

37. Marrying someone I wasn’t actually in love with.

38. Getting upset about literally anything. There were some snafus, the pastor didn’t bring any notes, the PA system was broken (outdoor on a windy beach, no one could hear anything). We paid for fireworks that evening that the event coordinator who came with the venue forgot. My mom was BEC the whole time.

But i choose to focus on the beautiful details. Our photographer was wonderful, the bonfire with smores was amazing. Everyone said it was the best wedding they’d ever been to. I just wish I wouldn’t have been so nervous and upset with the little things.

39. The pastor we got for the ceremony.

We had a very small, inexpensive wedding. We found a gazebo in a park, invited some close friends and family. My mother in law really liked this pastor, and we agreed to it. My husband and I aren’t religious, but I thought since she liked him, it would be ok.

We didn’t meet him before the ceremony. Big mistake. He droned on, made a few off color jokes. Didn’t ruin the wedding or anything, but I would have liked to kept it sweet, simple and to the point.

40. 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.

41. Having a wedding.

We wanted to do City Hall and hiring a photographer for photos in the park. Spouse is an only child, and MIL wanted a wedding, so we sucked it up and put together a small one.

She did pay for half of it, but I still would have preferred spending the money on LITERALLY ANYTHING ELSE.

42. Forgetting to take the sales tag out of my dress, and having the outline of a card rectangle clearly visible in the photos of the ceremony springs to mind…

43. Not having a good contract with the venue. We signed the venue contract he gave us. Our $3,000 venue became $15,000 as soon as everyone bought their plane tickets. We almost called our wedding a month before it was supposed to happen.

We should have. Day of the venue owner was trash talking us. Demanding extra money. My best man spent 12 hours after the wedding cleaning because the cleaning crew we paid for through the venue was there to “only pick up cigarettes butts”. $500 worth of cigarette butts. It was a nightmare.

44. There were a couple people that we decided to not invite. More accurately, we needed to cut a few after booking the hall and realizing how many we could fit in the room. I didn’t realize how hurt those few people would be. They brought it up years later. I still feel bad about it. My wife’s uncle and his wife are horrible people and they brought people that weren’t even invited and basically forced them into their already full table. It was awkward. I regret inviting them and not inviting the hurt friends that I mentioned above.

45. Inviting people I didn’t really want to invite. They just cost you money, you don’t interact with them at all, and they usually don’t bring a nice gift to make up for it.

46. Not taking a picture. We just did a quick wedding for legal purposes with my friend presiding and aunt and uncle as witnesses. It was a nice little sweet ceremony that lasted about 10 minutes over a nice area with a view before we went to dinner. Didn’t realize we hadn’t taken any pictures until like a week later when we wanted to show someone. Whoops.

47. This will sound petty, but I regret wearing my hair up. It felt so unlike me and the sticky layers of hairspray wouldn’t brush out when I got undressed that night.

48. Not having our grandmas as flower girls. We didn’t have anyone to be flower girls, and I didn’t think of asking grandmas until way after the wedding.

49. Letting my mother in law have any say in anything. She ruined the food.

50. My number one regret is telling people not to take pictures. I know it sounds dumb but it is much worse than that. In our agreement with our photographer she told us that other cameras were not allowed as the flash from another camera could ruin our pictures. So we politely told people to refrain from taking pictures and explained the situation. We had a great wedding and the photographer even sent an extra photographer to work the wedding (2 instead of 1). A few weeks after we tried contacting her for the photos. We got ghosted. We tried for about a year to track her down. We were still willing to pay for the photos, even unedited. We just wanted the photos. Fortunately some people didn’t get the message so we have a few (10-20) photos from our wedding. The worst part was that someone had contacted my wife through FB two weeks before the wedding warning us about her but we decided to take the risk because there probably was no way to get another photographer in that kind of time. When she showed for the date we were relieved and thought we dodged a bullet.