Wedding Advice from 780+ Weddings

The week before

• Delegate the rings and license. Give the marriage license to the maid of honor. Give the rings to the best man. Never carry either yourself the morning of.
• Confirm every vendor by text. Arrival time, contact person on the day, and what door to enter.
• Write your vows and print them. Not on your phone. A small card in 14-point type.
• Break in the shoes. Wear them around the house for an hour a day. Blisters at hour three are almost guaranteed otherwise.
• Stop trying new skincare. Two weeks minimum on anything you'll wear on your wedding day face.

The morning of

• Eat breakfast. Real breakfast. Nerves eat calories. Low blood sugar plus champagne plus adrenaline is why couples faint.
• Hydrate before you drink. A full glass of water for every glass of champagne. This alone prevents 90% of wedding-day headaches.
• Read the letter. If you and your partner wrote each other morning-of letters, this is the moment. It resets everything.
• Silence your phone at 2 hours out. Whoever needs to reach you will reach your maid of honor.

During the wedding

• Take the ten minutes. Right after the ceremony, before the receiving line — go somewhere with a door. Sit. Say one thing to each other. Every couple who does this remembers it as the best moment.
• Eat dinner. The single most common regret. Ask the caterer to plate you first and to hold your plate hot if someone stops you.
• Skip the receiving line if it's over 100 guests. Table visits during dinner accomplish the same thing without the 45-minute line.
• Dance the first song for you. Not for the room, not for the photos. Look at each other.
• Say goodbye on purpose. A planned sparkler send-off, a private walk out, or a bear hug with parents before you disappear. Undefined endings hurt more than they should.

About the difficult family

Every wedding has one. Rules that hold across 780 of them:

• Assign a person — not your partner, not you — to buffer the difficult relative. Give them permission to redirect, to distract, to physically insert themselves.
• Do not have any difficult conversations on the wedding day. Nothing gets resolved. Everything gets remembered.
• Decide in advance what you'll do if X happens. "If my mother makes a scene, we'll…" Making the plan removes the day-of decision.

The week after

• Sleep. Actually sleep. Postpone every non-essential the Monday after.
• Write thank-you notes in small batches — 10 a day for a week beats 70 in one Sunday.
• Print one photo in the first month. Otherwise the gallery lives in a folder forever.
• Book a first-anniversary dinner now. It's the easiest tradition to skip and one of the best to keep.