Wedding Recap: Things I Learned

I’ve written almost all the wedding recaps. In fact, this post will be my last recap.

There are still some posts to come with DIY tutorials, vendor reviews, and some other things but the recaps are basically over! If you’ve missed any posts here they are:

What a long list, right? Obviously after digesting everything from the wedding and writing about it I’ve learned a few things.

Here are the ones I think are the most important:

1. Weddings are awesome but they are over in a minute. Weddings are super fun. All your favorite people together to celebrate you are your partner’s love? It’s amazing. Life affirming. Generally a very happy experience. But weddings don’t last that long. Even if it’s a weekend wedding it’s over in a weekend. I learned that the time FLIES when the wedding week begins so enjoy every second of it. This lesson could apply to every event but I found it to be so true with the wedding.

2. The marriage is more important than the wedding. Duh! The wedding is short (see #1) but the marriage should last forever. That means it needs just as much if not more attention before and after the wedding. It’s easy to get caught up in the stress of planning a wedding, I know I did a few times, but keeping your focus on what is important (the marriage!) will serve you well. I’m glad I did this and kept my relationship as a priority.

3. DIY Projects are fun and cute but not always worth the time. I actually knew this before going into the wedding and doing all my DIY projects. Despite knowing this I still went all out and did as many DIY projects as I could. I did this for one reason: I LOVE MAKING THINGS. And this is really and truly the only reason why you should DIY things for your wedding. Saving money? It sometimes happens and sometimes doesn’t. Saving time? That’s a laugh because it takes so much time for most projects. DIY can be time consuming, frustrating, expensive. It’s worth it when you love what you are doing but if you hate making stuff and aren’t crafty then it’s not worth it because you can buy anything you would possibly need for a wedding (cute or not).

4. Conflicts will arise at major events – just let it go. My family is a pretty laidback and so are my friends. So am I for that matter. But with a wedding tensions run pretty high and little conflicts arise among even the most laidback people. Everyone has an idea of how they think things should go which sometimes results in little (or big) arguments. This can happen at lots of major events with gatherings of big, diverse groups of people so it’s important to know it might happen and then react accordingly: break it up and get everyone to calmly move on if possible…. and/or just let it go.

5. Things will go wrong. Let them. Weddings and major life events involve a lot of letting it go (see #4) because even with the most perfect plan a team to execute it things can still go wrong. So many elements could tweak your perfect plan – it could rain, guest could get sick, you could break a leg a week before. It’s impossible to plan for the things that will go wrong so just know that inevitably something WILL go wrong and you will NEED to let it go. Chances are it’s not important anyway.

6. It’s cool to know how to make cool things! This is my favorite thing(s) I learned from the wedding. I know how to make some really cool stuff including kick-ass sangria and pretty paper flowers. These things might not be very practical but they will help me continue throwing awesome parties.

I learned a lot of other things too like how much people care and how lucky I am. Apparently weddings can be educational too!