Did you like the sneak peek I shared with you? A big thanks to Cassi Claire for those beautiful images. Also for this incredible graphic she made for my facebook page.

Amazing, right?

After planning our wedding for the past 17 months, I'd like to think I learned a thing or two. Overall I am happy with the result but there are definitely a few things I would have done differently.

{Wedding Day Advice}

Be Prepared for the Unexpected...

Everyone always tells you that things will go wrong. Deep down I knew this, but truly didn't believe that much could possibly go wrong after all of my meticulous planning. Well- let me tell you...I felt like a million things went wrong! Starting with the day of the rehearsal, I left an important bag at my florist, an hour away from my house! She called me and left a voicemail which I received shortly after driving the hour home from our initial meeting. I for the life of me could not understand why this was happening on a day when I had so much to do, but, of course, it ended up working out. My dad offered to drive me there to pick up the bag, and then we went to lunch. It was a perfect little father-daughter afternoon on my last day as a single lady and one of my most treasured moments from the weekend : )

Other things went wrong too. During the ceremony, our reader read the wrong passage first and then abruptly stopped in the middle of the second reading and just sat down, I forgot props I made and pictures I wanted to get, and we had about 10 minutes to take bride/groom photos but the funny thing is that everyone kept commenting how flawlessly the entire day went. Nobody knew the difference when it came to the readings and thanks to our awesome photographer, we only needed 10 minutes to nail the shot. So I guess the take away here is that nobody even noticed all the little things I thought went wrong.

*A Word About Contracts Be careful what you agree to in your contracts. Agree to the minimum you think you will need. Vendors will always let you add more services, but not all vendors will be flexible in removing services from an agreed upon contract. For example, the minimum number of people to reserve the room we got married in was 50, which we knew we would have. So when the hotel asked us for an estimated number of guests we told them 125-150. They went ahead and listed 125 on our contract as our minimum number of guests and held us to that number when it came time to pay the final balance. Luckily, we were only 3 people short, and they allowed us to use those 3 people to count as vendor meals, but then the night of the wedding, an additional 4 people (who we already paid for) just didn't show up. Live and learn.

On the other hand, when I originally met with our florist, I ordered church altar pieces. After meeting with our church, they expressed a preference for a different florist, one they usually work with. I called my wedding florist and asked to remove the altar pieces from the contract and they did it no problem. Just something to be aware of.

*People Will Surprise You People will disappoint you. People who I thought wouldn't miss our wedding for the world weren't there, people who told us they were coming, just didn't show up and people came to our wedding, stayed over in the hotel and didn't give us a gift. It happens. There were also those people were amazingly supportive, and sometimes its the last people you expect it to be.  Your true friends and family will support you no matter what and those are the people you want to celebrate with.

Thank you for reading, following and encouraging me during this process. I will miss blogging here each week!  I hope you will keep up with me over at The East Coast Bride or on Pinterest.