Thoughts on Planning a Wedding

I will probably write a few wedding blog posts in the future that fit the usual “how to” vibes. Those might include: tips to create a packages to ask your bridesmaids to be in your wedding, how to plan a bridal shower that works for you, mastering wedding to do lists, wedding icebreakers, and tips for designing & printing your wedding communications. However, as a party planner, an engineer, and a gal who has been planning her wedding for two decades, and in general, an overthinker, I also wanted to explore some overall thoughts on wedding planning.

I’m about two months out from the wedding at this point so I have had some time to settle into the outcomes and think through the execution. While execution might sound like a weird word, my response when folks have asked how the wedding went has been “well executed.” I again attribute this to my party planning & engineering background.

Before we dive in, here are the logistics. We got engaged June 29, 2020. There were two bridal showers (one in December 2021, one in March 2022), one bachelorette party (March 2022 - here’s the post on how to throw a bachelorette party in New Orleans), one bachelor party, a rehearsal brunch (not dinner), a welcome party, a ceremony (in location 1), a reception (in location 2), and a post-wedding brunch. There were about 215 guests. Funding for the wedding came from three different sources ending up being a 50/50 split between parents and us. I have also been saving for this wedding for years as big parties are a thing that have always been important to me.

This post is broken down into:

General thoughts on wedding planning
The hardest parts about wedding planning for me
Unexpected wedding planning items
Tips for future brides from a new bride
Tips for future guests from a new bride
My favorite moments from my wedding

In general, throughout this post, I talk about my thoughts on the wedding. While John and I are a planning team, there were a lot of times that I had a stronger opinion than he did. Also, asking him to go back and re-think through every decision that was made for the sake of a blog post didn’t feel like a good “new wife” thing to do.

General thoughts on wedding planning

On starting the process | The place that we started wedding planning from was figuring out what our goals were. Our goals were to 1) get married, 2) introduce cool people to each other, 3) show off Philadelphia, 4) share great times around the bar, and 5) hit the dance floor. These goals helped to shape how we planned everything else for each individual event throughout the wedding from bridal shower through post-wedding-day brunch.

On planning during a pandemic | We were lucky that we got engaged during the pandemic (as opposed to before) because it meant that we didn’t need to do any rescheduling. We waited until we though the coast was going to be clear enough to have a large wedding and booked it for then. To everyone who had to move their wedding plans around once, twice, three times - I feel for you. I hope that you were able to put something together worked and felt like yours by the final round of changes. We also decided to ask that all of our guests be vaccinated or have a negative COVID test before the wedding weekend. We did not follow up with each guest individually to confirm this, instead we put it as a “check the box” confirmation on our RSVP survey.

On choosing a venue | Once we had our wedding goals, choosing a venue became pretty easy. We knew we’d get married at a church, so the reception venue would be a stand alone venue. We looked at a few ballrooms and they were beautiful, but they didn’t feel like us/me. (I just kept picturing the kind of dress I felt like you were supposed to wear in a ballroom and I couldn’t picture myself in it.) We ended up choosing Reading Terminal as our venue because of its unique characteristics. It is a large indoor market in downtown Philadelphia with multiple food stalls serving food from all over the world. We actually got to choose which food from which vendors we wanted to be served throughout the evening. There is also a fully stocked bar in the center of the market, so instead of 4 beer options, there would be +30 beers on tap. There was also no formal seating for guests, just enough seats to sit down when you needed a break or wanted to eat something messy. This allowed us to build an event where people had a high likelihood of running into each other, show off a little bit of Philadelphia, and have great times around a bar.

On hiring a planner | Our reception venue came with a planner, so if I was going to hire a planner it was just going to be for the first half of the day. I started doing a little bit of research and quickly discovered that there seemed to be two types of planners - the ones who do a lot of the really pretty parts of the event (decor, branding, etc.) and the ones that do logistics. I’m not a person who is super into decor (see next paragraph), which meant that I would just be hiring somebody to do logistics for about 4 hours. The prices for that were higher than I was willing to pay. I also knew that as someone coined “personnel manager” by her high school orchestra conductor that I would totally be okay being that bride standing on top of a pew in a wedding dress loudly telling people where to go next. (Note: this never happened, much to my dismay.) I decided this was enough.

On the pretty stuff | I decided pretty early on to not deal with “the pretty stuff". I’m a logistical person and don’t really have the mental capacity for pretty. This cut out flowers (I don’t like the smell of them anyway), hair and makeup (I didn’t want to spend hours in a chair getting ready the morning of my wedding), and centerpieces (I usually find they get in the way of conversation and there weren’t assigned seats anyway). It saved on cost and I didn’t miss any of these things. This was definitely something that I had to explain to people throughout the planning process that it was all going to be okay without these things though.

On weddings in general | What a cool experience. How wild to have so many people you’ve known from all stages of life together. I can’t explain to you how wild it is to know that all of these people drove in, trained in, flew in from all over the world to be there. I have always and will always love weddings. My own wedding absolutely solidified that for me.

The hardest parts about planning a wedding for me

I had always heard that the guest list was the hardest part. That was definitely one of the top difficult items for me. It was made even harder by the fact that there was a pandemic so you hadn’t really seen anyone in two years.

I always knew that I was going to have to make hard decisions about who to invite to the wedding - what would I choose to do about people with whom I had lost touch, people who invited me to their weddings, and even people that I had been in their weddings. After a lot of thought, I made those decisions. I’m still not 100% sure I made them correctly, but they were made and I expected them ahead of time.

Work friends was another really tough one for me. Being a management consultant, there’s not really a such thing as work friends, it’s more like work family. This is mostly because prior to the pandemic we used to travel 4 to 5 days a week with these people and live out of the same hotel. You very quickly became more than friends. You became each other’s survival mechanisms when things got out of control. But work friends encompassed a good number of people and I was out of space at the church. I ended up deciding to invite the majority of the work people to all wedding activities except the ceremony. This was admittedly awkward and I felt not great about it. I actually sent an email to them asking if they wanted an invitation knowing this caveat. I didn’t just want to send an invitation because technically (per Emily Post) if you receive an invitation you’re “supposed to” send a wedding gift (and I genuinely wasn’t fishing for gifts). I think I mostly just confused people though. I still don’t know what an alternative solution would have been besides getting a bigger church, which didn’t exist.

Then there were people with whom you’re just starting to become friends. The people that you might actually see more frequently than your longer tenured friends because they live closer to you. My original thought was that it would be weird to invite these people to such a substantial life event. But a friend shared with me that she wished that she had invited the people she planned to take into her future instead of the ones who were part of her past, and this really stuck with me. A few weeks before the event I reached out to these people to invite them, yet again, to only the non-ceremony events. In retrospect, I really should have just invited them right off the bat. It would have made things less messy on the back end and I always knew that it would be exciting to have them there.

The other part of the guest list that was tricky was figuring out plus ones. I ended up deciding that everyone should have the option of a plus one, but in order to keep a better head count on the situation (as I said, control freak), I texted everyone who wasn’t married to ask if they wanted a plus one, waited for their response, and sent the invitation accordingly. That said, if you’ve been keeping up with this, you know we had a head count problem, so I asked that the plus ones didn’t come to the ceremony.

I thought that asking if people wanted plus ones was the polite thing to do because in many instances I hadn’t been given a plus one and would have enjoyed having one; however, I learned after the fact that there were certain people that possibly should have just gotten automatic plus ones invited to all events with no questions asked. All I can say is that I tried to execute correctly and I hope nobody’s feelings were horribly hurt.

Other than the guest list, I found that I wasn’t great at three-dimensional “pretty stuff” questions. As I mentioned, I cut a lot of it out - flowers, hair & makeup, and centerpieces. However, it still took me months to pick a bridesmaid dress color. Partially because of the color and partially because of the ridiculous cost of bridesmaid dresses.

Photo by Justin Johnson Photography, earrings by McRitchie Made

Unexpected wedding planning items

When you’re planning a wedding and choosing who’s going to be in your bridal party, you’re thinking - great, I have the best crew of people in the world to help me get ready. What I didn’t realize is how many people you’re going to need assistance from that aren’t in your wedding party (because the wedding party people already have an assigned task at that time). This might actually be a reason to hire a planner so that you don’t need to worry about these things. Instead though, we went through the guest list to see who might be willing and able to assist with the items that came up. The three items we didn’t think about ahead of time were: someone to help with the processional into the church (because the doors need to be closed between the bridal party entering and the bride), someone to facilitate getting all of the guests onto the buses at the hotel (because the bridal party wouldn’t be there) and someone to meet the popsicle team to help figure out where to setup at the church (because I ordered popsicles for people for after the ceremony). We chose church friends to help with the processional, a school teacher friend to help with the buses, and an experiential marketing friend to help with vendor coordination and it all worked out just fine. Note to self though: we should really send them extra thank you gifts.

I also didn’t expect the cascade of thank you notes through the year leading up to your wedding. If you have a large guest list and there are a number of events, you are always behind on thank you notes, so you need a constantly updated list to see who needs one and whose have been mailed. I didn’t start this list until a few months into the planning and it would have been a game changer up front. It also became complicated to figure out if you were supposed to send a thank you note upon receiving the gift or after the wedding. I ended up deciding that anyone who sent anything in the mail two weeks prior to the wedding got a separate thank you card. After that, the gift thank you would be incorporated into the “thank you for attending” communication/card. Please note, I feel absolutely blessed to have had this be the situation; but it still felt worth noting for logistical purposes.

Finally. It is wild how fast it’s over. And this isn’t me saying that thing everybody says about the reception flying by. It’s true, it’s fast, but just try to breathe and hold onto the feeling of being there and look at all the photos later. What’s wild is how 24 hours after the wedding, it just not a thing you talk about anymore. The thing that you’ve been knee-deep in for months or even years is suddenly done. You’ve left everything you had on the table. The last time you saw your bridal party all together was probably during the entrance into the reception and you never really said bye. You don’t even really know if your guests had fun. The vulnerability hangover that comes from that is seriously no joke. In order to help combat this I’m thinking about putting a “tell us your favorite part” postcard in the thank you notes when they are sent out that people will return to us.

Tips for future brides from a new bride

I’ve combined all of these thoughts and information into tips for future brides purely based on my own experience. These are just what came to top of mind, I could probably continue to talk about this all day thoguh.

Put the big plan together first: Right from the beginning we figured out how many individual events we were talking about: five - the rehearsal dinner/brunch, a welcome party, the ceremony, the reception, and the morning after brunch. This meant that we were able to break down our budget by event to get a more accurate estimate up front. The welcome party was because we had so many out-of-town guests coming in. The morning after brunch was to see people one more time before they left because we knew we wouldn’t have much time at the wedding to see anybody (even though we planned to do a receiving line at the church - but that truly flew by).

Figure out what’s important to you and do it - and also figure out what’s not important to you and don’t do it. This one is easier to say than it is to execute. Figuring out what’s important, great. To me, that was comprehensive invitations and a communication plan, time to relax the morning of the wedding, an ice breaker game, surprising people with unexpected treats, and lots of singing. This is where I invested my time and our money. I asked a friend to do a meditation session with my bridal party the morning of the wedding. I planned for singing to happen multiple times throughout the wedding events. I found ways to spoil people. I also figured out pretty early what wasn’t important to me: hair and makeup, flowers, centerpieces, and garter tosses. It took me a long time to really put my foot down about those though. But when I did, everything finally came together.

Do what you (and only you) want when it comes to attire. You’re the one who needs to live in it all day. (Unless someone else is paying for it and gave you specific instructions.) I got some excellent advice from Nicole at Feel Good, Dress Better about searching for a dress. I went through the entire BHLDN website and analyzed every dress to see what I did and didn’t like about it and then came up with a list of those things to decide what I was looking for. I could have used these elements to search at multiple shops, but instead I just went to BHLDN. (It was a pandemic still, and I’m also a lazy shopper.) I truly did love my dress when I bought it.

That said, I wanted to cut the train off of the dress because it was heavy and I didn’t think I’d be able to dance in it and I wanted to wear (white) jeans to the reception. I should have doubled down on both of those things way earlier and decided not to care about what anyone thought. The train on my wedding dress annoyed me all day (even while bustled) and I didn’t put enough thought into the outfit I changed into at the reception because I didn’t decide for sure until 72 hours before. I waivered for so long on whether or not to do it I didn’t truly have time to go shopping for an appropriate shirt. I’m still glad I changed though, it was definitely the right decision for me. Immediately somebody came up to me and told me how much happier I looked.

Photo by Justin Johnson Photography, dress from BHLDN

Photo by Justin Johnson Photography, this is me not knowing what to do with a train so wearing it like a toga to get it out of the way. Also, yes, we didn’t have a ceiling. The pipe to the toilet on our third floor busted three weeks before the wedding and flooded the whole house.

Photo by Justin Johnson Photography, happy Chrystina, earrings by McRitchie Made

Add in a touch of you wherever you can. What makes you, you? What do you love? What do you want to share with everyone you love? Figure out how to add these things into the wedding wherever you can. I created a 12-page invitation booklet instead of a traditional invitation so that it felt more like my annual holiday cards and newsletter updates. We did the rehearsal dinner/brunch at one of our favorite date night locations, Talula’s Garden. We bought popsicles from my favorite popsicle shop (the Lil Pop Shop) for our wedding guests between the ceremony and reception. We bought felt flowers from a local vendor (Felt Up by Amelia) to give out at the after-wedding brunch to all of the mothers to celebrate Mothers’ Day. I asked all of the guests who were choral singers if they would participate in an impromptu Hallelujah Chorus during the reception. Twenty people said yes, we got the audio file to the DJ (DJ Heiress through Stylus DJ Entertainment), and it went off without a hitch. I had a passive icebreaker game available for those who wanted to participate (and the winners got doughnuts). Then we hosted the morning after brunch at Varga Bar, one of the locations we went on our first date. These are the moments from the wedding that I remember the most and the ones that have been mentioned by others.

John’s two important things were the bar and the dancing. We had those covered too. The bar was easy, and we spent three hours one night hashing out all of the songs on the wedding playlist. The cocktail hour covered everything from Broadway to video game music; our bridal party walked into a brass band version of the Super Mario 64 Bob Omb Battlefield theme; the dancing portion consisted of a number of pop, hip-hop, and line dances; and we ended the evening with the Beatles’ All My Lovin’ (which was perfect).

Find out what the non-negotiables are from the wedding budget contributors up front. We did pretty okay with this. I asked everyone if there were specific people they wanted invited, if there were specific activities they wanted to happen, if they had specific categories into which they wanted the money they were donating to be spent, etc. The conversations weren’t as hard as I thought they would be. We were lucky.

Figure out what you want out of your photos and talk to your photographer about it. I LOVED our venue, but I didn’t love how it photographed purely because of the number of colors of light in the space. There was white light, yellow light, red light, warm light, cool light, pointed light, diffused light - the list goes on. It’s really hard to get a well-lit candid photo that isn’t just ALL flash. I’m sure I’m exaggerating, but that’s how I felt in going through photos I found on the internet. I decided that I wanted all guests to enter through a manned photo booth up front (one of our two photographers was setup there) where every person would have one nice shot taken of them and then any other photos we got from the reception would be a bonus. The photographer said that this ended up working out really well, and I’m excited to have it as a keepsake!

Give people a prompt for the guest book. We didn’t do this and I wish that we had. Most people just ended up writing their names like an attendance sheet, when it would have been cool to ask a question like - where did we meet, what’s your favorite memory, or what’s something you’ll never forget. I think the result would have been more fun to read through.

Start the thank you note list early. Keep a running list of all the gifts you get and whether or not you have sent a thank you note yet. Start this the second you get engaged so that it includes engagement gifts, bridal shower gifts, bachelorette and bachelor party gifts, and wedding gifts. Sometimes it’s not even writing a thank you note for a gift, it’s writing a thank you note for the effort someone put into something. The reason this gets complicated is because even though you get a lot of gifts the day of specific events, there are also gifts that get sent in the mail all throughout the process as well.

Buy a fancy storage box for all the cards you’re going to get. You’re going to have engagement cards, bridal shower cards, bachelorette party cards, wedding cards, and more. Instead of figuring out how to store these things, just buy a fancy box from the Container Store and throw them all in. This way you can go through them easily at any point and then just throw them back in the box when you’re done. No need to organize everything in a detailed way when you can hide the mess and have fun with it.

Figure out how you’re going to use your time off (of work) to help with the planning. If you days of vacation days to spare and can use them to finalize details the week before the wedding, you might not need to hire any additional help; however, if you don’t have this time to take, you might need some additional help the week leading up to the wedding (whether from a wedding planner, bridal party folks, or family members). That week leading up to the wedding has ceremony drop offs, reception drop offs, hotel bag drop offs, hotel bag creation, booklet folding, favor finalizing, and more. Think through these items ahead of time and see whether you’re going to be able to handle it. Otherwise, ask for or hire help.

Find a proof reader. My mom was my proof reader. She checked the save the dates, the invitations, and the emails that went out before the wedding ahead of time. She read for spelling, grammar, consistency, and general correctness. This was amazingly helpful. My mom just happens to be an amazing proof reader (honestly, this should have been her day job), but if that’s not your mom, maybe find a friend in the industry, a party planner friend, or someone who just really understands logistics. (Consider this my official offer to be this person for you, whether or not I’m invited to the wedding.)

Keep a long to do list. I will write a full blog post about this. But in general, keep a running to do list of everything that needs to be done. This could be on paper or digitally. Write down absolutely every item so that you can stop thinking about it (because you know it’s on the list) and keep updating and rearranging items so that they make sense up to the week of the wedding. Throughout this process I used a Google Doc (18 months in advance), a bunch of index cards taped to my closet doors (3 months in advance), and a run of show Google doc and to do list (1 week in advance).

Overcommunicate. HIGHLY recommend this one. For the people who don’t care, they won’t read it. For the people who do care and really want to understand how things are going to work, they’ll eat it up and ask the appropriate follow up questions ahead of time. I truly believe this is the key to any successful event. I created a PowerPoint presentation months ahead to present to my aunts to let them know what the logistics of the weekend would be (they had a lot of great follow up questions that helped guide my planning and future communications), I created a 12-page wedding invitation that answered many questions about the weekend, I sent a LONG email leading up to the wedding weekend with every piece of logistical information people could ever want, and I started a Facebook group for people to communicate in real time on the weekend of the event and scheduled posts ahead of time to remind people about the important details in a timely manner. Now, I admit, there was a joke made about this during the best man’s speech about my communication style, but honestly, it was a point of pride for me. People knew what was happening and felt empowered to ask questions if they had any.

Double check to make sure everyone got there invitation. There were a few instances in which people moved and so they never received their invitation. These people eventually figured out that they were invited when they got an email asking them to respond or when John’s parents tracked down a phone number, but knowing earlier would have been better.

Don’t forget to eat. I knew that eating at the reception was a thing that people warned each other about (apparently usually couples don’t get to eat, but I think event planners have started to help with that one), but admittedly I didn’t think about early in the day. I accidentally got hangry. We had breakfast at 11:00am on the morning of the wedding, so I wasn’t thinking about eating before heading to the church at 2:00pm. However, by 4:00pm after the ceremony and the receiving line, I was cranky. It’s the worst to be in a mood in general, it’s also the worst to be in a mood around your bridal party because they’re people who are giving up their time, energy, and money to be there for you, and now you’re in a mood while trying to shoot photos in the absolute freezing cold and the rain. Just eat. Bring backup food. Order a pizza to the church. Don’t be like me.

Don’t leave anything in the hotel you might want during the reception. I left my change of clothes for the reception in the hotel because I figured it was close enough that I would just be able to go back and change. Absolutely not. Any moment that you walk out of your wedding is a moment that you’re not at your wedding. I ended up asking a bridesmaid to go back and get it for me. This all totally could have been avoided. I could have dropped it all off days in advance. That would have been better.

Take a look at the temperature (and weather) ahead of time. We were covered (pun intended) when it came to ceremony and reception locations, but our photo locations were weather-reliant. It down poured on our wedding day. We figured out this was going to happen ahead of time. We talked a lot about umbrellas. The photographer had umbrellas. We brought umbrellas. What we didn’t do was check the temperature or the wind chill factor. In retrospect, I would have gotten all of the bridesmaids matching cardigans if I had realized how cold it was going to be. They would have been cute in the photos, everyone would have matched, and we wouldn’t have been miserably cold. (I know that some people do shawls for their bridal party, but we were hoping not to have that issue in May. We were wrong.)

Tips for future wedding guests from a new bride

Honestly, all of our guests were fantastic and I don’t know of any drama that happened at all during the weekend. However, being on the planning side of it now, there are two things I have added to my own personal list of ways to be an absolutely superb wedding guest.

Use both parties’ original names when you’re writing a check to the couple. That makes it easier for them to sign the back of the check when they’re cashing it into their account. Even if they plan to change their name(s), that paperwork will take months, so it’s easier to have the checks to cash when they’re made out to the original names. It’s not the worst though, banks see this all the time and the people who are changing their names just need to sign two different names on the back of the check instead of one. (This was our guidance from Chase bank.)
Text your favorite parts of the event to the bride and groom the next day or week. They’ll appreciate knowing whether or not you had fun and what moments stood out to you after all of the thought they put into the event.

My favorite moments from my wedding

Now that you know all the things, let’s talk about my favorite things. There were a lot of favorite moments from our wedding, but I love a good “top list”, so here it goes in no particular order -

The Hallelujah Chorus: Absolutely the best moment of the wedding for me. To have twenty people who didn’t even rehearse sing the Hallelujah Chorus together in Reading Terminal Market, was fantastic. I also found out after the fact that some people were skeptical it was going to come together because of the complexity of the piece and the fact that we didn’t actually rehearse. I never had a doubt though! Even though we were completely unbalanced on sopranos, I think it came together very nicely, and I’m so grateful to the folks who took video footage of this.
The BIG Card: Growing up I used to make posterboard-sized cards for my neighbors. They were almost like interactive game boards. And they were so. much. fun. to make. Those same neighbors showed up at the welcome party with a giant card for me and it was amazing. Inside there were about a dozen little gifts that we may need throughout the course of the weekend to execute the perfect wedding with everything from tissues to a little nip-sized Fireball whiskey. Receiving this and reading through it was probably the most emotional I got all weekend.
90s Boy Band Dancing: To play off of the last one, those same neighbors were the ones that I grew up listening to NSYNC and Backstreet Boys with. So when those songs were played, being able to dance with the people that I had heard those songs with for the first time two decades ago was super meaningful. This included the neighbor that would have been about 6 at that time. He and I ended up in the middle of a dance circle at some point. And usually I hate dance circles, so this was really something.
The Wobble: I love the wobble. I’m always one of the first out on the dance floor at other people’s weddings, and you’d best believe that I was one of the first out on the dance floor for my own wedding. The part that made this extra special is that my work friends and a church choir friend were the ones running towards the dance floor with me. Work folks always know how to party. So does church choir (but that’s a story for another time).
The Speeches: The Best Man’s speech was very well executed. He started by saying that he thought he was supposed to give a speech about (actual) toast and had 10 pages of research printed in his hands. He mentioned my overcommunication in the emails and everyone had a good laugh. He spoke very sincerely to John and his parents. It was a good speech. My Matron of Honor did an amazing job taking us on a journey of our friendship and you could hear the emotion in her voice as she addressed the crowd of people (in a touching way!). My dad also spoke. He made sure to mention the fact that it took me so long to find someone to marry and that he wanted grandchildren soon.
The Rehearsal Brunch: We did our rehearsal brunch at Talula’s Garden. This was admittedly a splurge, but man, it was worth it. We had the venue to ourselves. We started with a cocktail hour so that people could mingle and get to know each other. This also included an over-sized cheese plate, which is one of the things Talula’s is known for. The drinks were fantastic, too. Brunch itself (all three courses of it) was absolutely delicious and plentiful. We ate left overs from Talula’s for a week afterwards. Wouldn’t have changed a moment of this and the bridal party all said that they really enjoyed it.
The Wedding Morning Meditation: I had always heard people talk about how the day goes by so quickly, so I wanted to make sure to incorporate some mindfulness into the day. The morning of the wedding I had a friend come over who is an excellent meditation facilitator and my bridal party got to hang out and just be in the moment for about 20 minutes. Absolutely worth it. Carly did an amazing job with the meditation and I really felt like I had time to sit and think about what was happening and what was going to be happening soon.
Sunday Morning Mass: We got married on a Saturday at an Orthodox church, but I grew up Catholic so it was important to me that something Catholic happen during the course of the weekend. A few friends (three of whom I had sung with in church choir in college) woke up super early on Sunday morning and met outside the hotel at 7:00am so that we could be at the church at 7:30am in time to rehearse for the 8:00am mass. The church pianist was totally on board for however many people showed up and it was so good to sing with them again. It filled my heart and made me very happy. I took out my phone at one point and recorded a video of my feet while we were singing to add to the collection of videos that I used to take in college. I’ll cherish that video. My dad, John’s parents, grandmother, and John all came to mass, which I also really appreciated.
Changing out of my dress: Yes, my dress was pretty, but getting out of that thing felt amazing. In general, I prefer to be in jeans and the second I changed I was infinitely happier, felt much more like myself, and was able to have a lot more fun dancing. As I said before, I definitely should have done it earlier and I should have pre-planned the outfit better, but overall, 100% an excellent choice.
The communications: I realize this isn’t a moment, per say, but I absolutely loved making and sending my own wedding invitations. I understand this isn’t something that’s for everybody, but as scrapbooker turned content creator with an affinity for greeting cards, this was my Super Bowl. It was a 12-page packet that included the general information, detailed information, an FAQ section, get to know the bride and groom games, a timeline of how we met, and more.

Photo by Justin Johnson Photography, the Hallelujah Chorus

Overall, this was an amazing experience. I hope that it’s not my last 200+ guest event. (Everyone has a birthday every year so there are plenty of opportunities.) So while it might be my last 5-part 200-person event, I hope to use all of my lessons learned in the future.

And at the end of the day, I got to marry John. Which, after all, was the whole point of it. Right?