Wedding day surprises

We know there will be a lot of really good and beautiful surprises on your wedding day, but the wedding day surprises we want to write about here are the, well, not so great ones. We’re hoping this can either help you to plan even better or to at least be prepared for the unexpected. Because the unexpected should be … expected during such a major event with so many moving parts (and so many imperfect humans involved).

If you want some more basic wedding planning tips, check out that link where you’ll find a bunch of our past blog posts that cover everything from budgeting to seasonal inspirations to traditions old and new.

Let’s start with a big one…

Wedding day surprises: Not remembering

No matter how much people are warned of this ahead of time; no matter how much mindfulness you try to bring to your day… there’s a reason you hire a photographer at a really basic human level: capturing memories.

Because your brain isn’t so great at this particular task or at least not as great as we all assume.

You can take a bunch of big deep breaths right before you walk down the aisle and you can say to yourself, “pay attention! Notice everything!” and it still will be so emotionally overwhelming that you’ll miss a lot. (Emotionally overwhelming in the best ways but overwhelm is still overwhelm and our brain can only do so much.)

You can easily get to the end of the ceremony and barely remember the details of what just happened. You will remember feelings and that’s important. You’ll remember feeling great, feeling elated, feeling so grateful but the details? Lost to all of those feelings.

And again, this is a pretty big wedding day surprise. You can’t really plan for it.

This is such a common issue that there’s a name for it — wedding day amnesia — and there are some things that might help a little bit.

The difficulty of your dress

Another top unexpected challenge is your dress. Yes, we said your dress. That dress that you spend hours, weeks, if not years dreaming of and finding? That dress that made you cry the first time you put it on. That dress that you worried over and had too many fittings in.

That dress. For sure.

Even if you simplify your wedding dress, moving around and doing things in it can be one of the biggest wedding day surprises. (And it’s very much why a lot of women are changing into party dresses after the ceremony.)

Simple things like walking can be impeded, but then trying using the bathroom! Or dancing! Some closer fitting dresses will even make getting into a car or sitting at your table a little bit of an unexpected challenge.

Besides wearing a second dress to your reception, you can also make sure to take some time to practice all these different tasks and see how you can work around your dress.

Different emotional responses

You know all those first look videos on TikTok? First looks with the dads walking in and seeing their daughters and they just burst into tears. Or the first look between the groom and bride and it’s so heavy with emotion.

Those videos create a lot of expectation culturally around weddings and emotions. But again, surprise! This might not be the case on your wedding day and it can be disappointing.

We have to remember that everyone has a different emotional life and everyone processes and expresses emotions differently.

Sometimes when people are really overwhelmed, they lock down. But sometimes, they laugh! They laugh when it might feel inappropriate, but it’s not about you or the situation — it’s about their overwhelm.

And well, sometimes, laughter is just a huge burst of joy and isn’t that wonderful?

So if your parent or your spouse to be doesn’t react quite like you anticipated, don’t let it become a thing. Don’t use it as some sort of grade or marker. It’s not.

Participation

Speaking of unexpected challenges when it comes to how people respond, don’t expect everyone to participate on the same level.

Another of the big wedding day surprises can be who shows up and who doesn’t. People have a lot going on in their lives and a lot of reasons for their actions. Don’t take any of this personally.

It can also be surprising who sits things out, who never gets up and dances even once, who leaves right after the ceremony, who doesn’t bother with the ceremony.

If you’re going to forget anything about your wedding day, this is the stuff. ((ha… really))

Random wedding day surprises

• Remember that things will go wrong. Use your helpers to kind of shield you from all of these details and think ahead about just letting things slide off your back.
• There will be, at least, minor changes to how you expect the day to go. No matter how good a plan is, it involves humans and humans will… be human.
• People will say things that might throw you off. You might hear comments about the decor or the food, but again, just let it go. People are weird (to say the least) and not everyone has the same taste or values. Further, no one knows why you made the choices you made (and they don’t need to know or understand).
• You might feel sad. Yep. It’s not at all uncommon. You might be missing people who are not there. You might be feeling the letdown of a big day come and gone. Lots of reasons.
• You will likely be way more exhausted than you could ever imagine. (This is one good reason not to immediately go on a honeymoon unless you’ve chosen a honeymoon full of laying around on a beach and taking random naps.)

We would love to hear from you all who have already gone through all of this. Were there things that happened that you could have never anticipated? What were your biggest wedding day surprises and how did you handle them?