The morning of your wedding day will be one of the most exciting days of your life. For me, I wanted it to be perfect and I planned the morning down to the minute! I had my wedding planners input on my schedule and printed copies to make sure we stuck to the plan. Here's the thing, no matter how hard you plan, you can't fully prepare for it. Before we got married, I looked at a few blog posts that had some real life experiences from recent brides. I remember thinking that blog posts like this were just other peoples experiences and that I would be able to avoid making the same mistakes. Now that I have gotten married and I am on the other side, I should have paid more attention to posts like these much more than I did at the time. "Wedding brain" is REAL. With all that being said, I've written a couple tips and personal experiences of my own from the morning of our wedding day to hopefully help future brides.
One: Leave extra time in your schedule
Originally, I planned to wake up at 7:00 am the morning of our wedding. I was so excited that I figured I would be up earlier despite setting my alarm. Turns out I stayed up the night before until 2:30 am to finish my speech, wash & blow dry my hair and of course put on a face mask (I am a total skincare junkie). I would have put fake tan on as well, but I was SO TIRED.
Ok, back story. We planned a whiskey tasting for all of our guests at our hotel the evening before our wedding. We had planned on an early night, but after the tasting we decided to have a late dinner with family & a few friends. Because of this, we didn't get back to our respectable hotel rooms until 11:30 pm. By the time I had organized everything meticulously for the next morning and sat down to go over my wedding speech... it was 1:00 am.
In the morning, after just a few hours of sleep, I woke up early around 6:30 am just as I suspected. I was way too excited to sleep! The moments you have alone on the morning of your wedding should be cherished. It is truly a surreal felling, because for the rest of the day you will be surrounded by people. Room service arrived just before 8:00 am and I sat down on our balcony to eat breakfast (which I hardly touched) and to write the in the card I would be sending to my future husbands room along with his wedding gift. Before I knew it, people started arriving. In a blink of an eye it was time to get into my dress, open the card Kel wrote for me and my wedding gift, then head down to get in the car to drive to our ceremony. I had left myself 4 hours to get ready....... it was NOT enough time. We arrived in the hotel lobby so late, we had to sneak past some wedding guests waiting for the pre-arranged shuttle and entered the ceremony through a back service entrance to avoid being seen. I arrived to our ceremony 15 minutes before I was supposed to walk down the isle - thank goodness I left myself an extra hour in there or I would have been late to my wedding!
Two: Give your photographer a list of photos you want
This includes "get ready" photos. The morning of can get a little chaotic, make sure you have a list of photos you want taken while you are getting ready so your photographer knows your expectations. In addition to this, give your photographer photos of the photos you want! My good friend and professional photographer Cassidy, did all of our wedding photos. Because we are friends, I think it was easy for me to share some of my get ready photo inspiration. These included some risqué shots of me getting dressed. Given the limited time we had, I was so thankful that I had these. If you want shots of you getting your makeup done, specific detail shots of your dress, shoes, the room, your bridal party etc.. make sure you communicate this! You are going to be so busy with other things, time is going to fly by. Even though I only had about 15 minutes with my photographer for personal photos, we still got some amazing shots.
Three: Make sure you eat more than just breakfast
This is SO important. As I mentioned earlier, even though I ordered room service in the morning, I didn't really eat much of it. I also had the hotel deliver a fruit tray for the girls getting ready and I am so glad I did. The best advice I can give, is to designate one of your bridesmaids or someone getting ready with you to make sure you eat something. One of my close friends, Catherine, literally followed me around with a plate of fruit and finally forced me to take a few minutes to sit down and eat a few bites. I was so incredibly thankful for her. I didn't end up eating again until dinner (with the exception of Menchies frozen yogurt in Whistler village), which in our case was at 7:15 pm. Another tip - for dinner, we had passed canapés while our guests arrived. Because we were set to arrive to our reception 30 minutes after our guests, we asked our caterer to leave some of the canapés on our king & queen table so we had something to nibble on as soon as we sat down. It was so nice to sit down and see our welcome cocktails and nibbles waiting for us.
Four: Set aside a few minutes for yourself
I think it is so important to plan a few moments for yourself to take everything in. I know a lot of will tell you this, but, your wedding day might end up being a little unpredictable. Even if you plan to take the time, anything can happen. The morning of our wedding, I planned to have about 45 minutes to myself before everyone arrived at my room. I planned to take this time to eat breakfast, write a card for my man, put on my cute robe and start getting ready on my own. During that time, two people called me, the room service attendant who brought me breakfast wouldn't stop raving about our whiskey event the night before and I had to politely ask him to leave after he'd been talking for 10 minutes.. Out of the 45 minutes I set aside, I had maybe 15 minutes that I was truly alone to take it all in.
Five: Something can and will go wrong, it's ok to delegate
On the morning of, I realized I had forgotten to pack my something old & something blue. I panicked, but then ultimately realized that there was nothing I could do about it. When a friend got married, she shared with me later that she forgot her veil in the room and only realized it when she was about to walk down the isle. Things are bound to get a little crazy.
Someone once told me, that at least one thing will go wrong on your wedding day. I shrugged it off at the time, but she couldn't have been more right. Keep this in the back of your mind so that when it does happen (girl, it will), you can easily shrug it off and carry on enjoying your special day. Finally, its ok to delegate! I am the type of person that is very hands on and this was a tough one for me. At some point, as hard as it might be, you need to delegate tasks to the people helping you. If something goes wrong, give the task to someone else to handle!
This is the morning of one of the best days of your entire life. Even if things go wrong, too fast for your liking or if you end up late to your venue.. just stop, breathe and remember that everything will be ok.
xx,
A
Photo credit: Nunn Other Photography | Venues: Four Seasons Whistler, Audain Art Museum
Dress: Rosa Clara Adela | Floral: Celsia Floral | Robe: Dynamite | Garter: Blush Bridal Boutique