Happy Thursday! I’m so excited to introduce to you, officially, my dear friend Kristen!  If you know us personally or follow us on Instagram then she is a familiar face. She is sweet, positive, pug mom and boy do I get organization envy when I go to her home, seriously. This one’s for all you brides out there still planning, she is sharing  5 things she would have done differently at her wedding.

Bride and Groom Portraits at McClay Gardens

My husband Blake and I have a private joke when we attend a friend or family member’s wedding. After every wedding we’ve been to for the past 7 years that we’ve been married, we always look at each other and say “Our wedding was better.”

Sometimes it really was, and other times we are just being sentimental about our big day. Of course, ours was better, it was ours! I planned every detail. (Without Pinterest!) Not just picking out the cake or the flowers, but even smaller matters like printing out maps to the reception and writing a list containing the pronunciation of the bridal party’s names for the DJ. I thought of everything!

Our wedding was exactly what I had hoped and planned for. And people still talk about that Mashed Potato Bar! I’d say I wouldn’t change a thing. But, the reality is, I kinda would. There are actually a couple of things I wish I could go back and do a little differently:

I would have done my own makeup.

A friend of my moms sold Mary Kay and offered to do my makeup. I didn’t really wear a lot of makeup then, and I was relieved to give that job to someone else. My face really did look flawless. But, I didn’t really look like myself! I wish I would have just watched some YouTube tutorials and practiced a little and done it myself. I did feel beautiful on that day, but looking at the pictures now I almost don’t recognize myself.

I would have hired a Videographer.

As your wedding approaches, you start to see expenses adding up – and they add up quickly! I knew most of our budget was going toward the caterers and the venue, so we tried to trim off some of the other vendors. I truly didn’t think we needed a Videographer since we hired a Photographer. I thought the photos would be sufficient. Every time I see a wedding highlight video, I get a twinge of regret! One of our friends did manage to film the ceremony on her digital camera but it makes me so seasick to watch it. I wish we had a cute wedding video to watch on our anniversary.

I would have invited fewer people.

The guest list is always a huge stressor leading up to your wedding. My husband and I both have HUGE families. Many, many, many cousins on both sides. Not only did we feel obligated to invite them, but we also felt pressure to invite everyone from our Congregation and anyone who had known us our whole lives. That included our parent’s friends! Our guest list totaled well over 300 people, and while only about 250 RSVPed, it was still a ton of people. We weren’t able to greet and speak to everyone there, and that made me sad. I wish I didn’t feel the pressure to invite people we weren’t truly close to. If we did it all over again our guest list would be very different.

I would have asked the photographer to photograph our guests.

Instead of buying prints through our Photographer, we bought the copyright to the images and a disc with all of them on it. (That may be standard practice now, but it wasn’t in 2010.) Our disc(s) had literally thousands of images. There were tons of pictures of Blake and me, the Bridal party, the food….but only a handful of our guests. This kind of goes along with my last do-over, in that I didn’t get to speak to everyone, so having a photo of who was there would have been so nice. Our photographer did manage to take some pictures of our guests, and I really cherish those! It’s like a moment in time. Some of the babies in the pictures are now big kids, and some of our older relatives are no longer with us. It’s those pictures I love looking at, not the close up of my rings.

I wouldn’t sweat the small stuff.

As I mentioned, I took every detail into consideration! My goal was to have everything run perfectly and I didn’t want a single thing to go overlooked. The reality is twofold. One, no one is going to notice if something isn’t just right. When I arrived at our reception, I immediately noticed the floral centerpieces weren’t what I had designed. But, no one knew but me. They were still vases of gorgeous hydrangeas! Secondly, the wedding isn’t what matters. It’s a very special day that you and your spouse will treasure, but it’s only the beginning of your story. While Blake and I love that people still talk about how good those mashed potatoes were, the thing we are most happy about is that we got married.

Thanks so much to Chabeli for hosting me today! You can see her photography all over my blog. She makes me feel like such a movie star when she shoots my outfit photos. In fact, she also re-took our wedding photos! I wasn’t thrilled with my original photos 7 years ago, and it was really fun to fit back into that dress!

If you’d like to read more about me or my pugs, please head on over to Pugs & Pearls and follow along!

Thank you, Kristen! Is there is something you could do over leave a comment and let us know? I loved my dress but for me its a wedding dress do-over for sure.

In the past, Kristen had mentioned to me that one of her regrets was forgoing a videographer, as she also mentioned in her post. I’ve never forgotten that. What Kristen doesn’t know, or recall, is that Austin was filming a little bit during their anniversary session. I never told them why, or if I did I gave some weirdo reason. Because my plan was to present them with a full video of their wedding photo redo for their 7th anniversary this year. I had some pretty big ideas, as usual, that well wasn’t feasible for their session,  I always dream big! We were having so much fun on their session that we didn’t film a whole lot. But! Surprise! We did get a few cute clips of behind the scenes. I’ve combined them in a slideshow with their photos from their session last year.  Happy 7th Anniversary to two of the biggest sweethearts I know. Enjoy!