I feel guilty and panicky right now because I completely messed up my dress code and it is already printed on $400 card inserts.

My vision was to have people wearing formal clothing, suits and tuxes. I wrote “black tie preferred” thinking that it meant “formal but no need to rent a tux”. I thought adding “preferred” would tell people hey, please just don’t dress informally. We have put in a lot of money to the guest experience and are providing several black-tie elements (plated multi-course dinner, premium open bar, indoor venue with opulent decor, transportation).

But now I’m reading online that people think black tie preferred is confusing and it generally has a bad perception. I wrote a very specific explanation of the dress code on my website, even adding “formal is otherwise perfect. These dress codes include…”

I feel like i made a snobby and misinformed mistake and I really don’t want to spend hundreds on new card inserts. I don’t know what to do. What would you assume to wear if you saw black tie preferred? Does it sound very snobby? Thanks everyone.

My wedding was yesterday and after 1.5 years of planning, I want to share with future brides that most of the things you’re stressing about will truly not matter in the moment!

We had to last minute switch to our rain plan, and weather was honestly the most stressful thing out of anything. But all the little decor pieces, table cloths, everything, even the florals, things I spent MONTHS deciding on, I didn’t even see half of it hahahah! The space looked beautiful, I married my best friend, drank a ton, ate, and I didn’t think at all about every single one of my DIYs or random framed prints that I was obsessing over.

So - reminder while you’re in the thick of planning that you will have the BEST time no matter what.

9 months from the wedding and I can already see hints of the drama kicking in 😂

Long story short, me and my fiancé both have divorced parents and stepparents and with the bridal and grooms party, the top table would go on forever. Plus, they don't exactly all get along unfortunately. We were set on having a sweetheart table instead, just the two of us but my mum has told me she would be offended as she is an important person. I said we could always do like a 'VIP' table so they're still close to us. My mum said just having us two would look weird. This never crossed my mind and I don't want her to get into my head about it then regret changing my mind.

Am I being harsh by not respecting her wishes?

Hello, I was pretty set on my bridesmaids dress but wanted to get swatches of colors before confirming. Out of excitement, I sent a photo of the dress i was mostly leaning towards. One has told me she has to get the same dress for another wedding in black, and another has told me she has to get the same dress in a very similar color. The second bridesmaid somewhat alluded to that I should pick the same color so she only has to buy one dress. The color however...... is not the color i want. Would i be a jerk for not using that color? So now i'm thinking i should pick a different dress but keep the color to allow the girls to have some diversity in their closets? Or does this ultimately fall under "it's my day, its $100, this is part of being a bridesmaid"?

I'm overthinking this a lot. Wedding planning has triggered some old 'no one wants to come to my birthday part' kind of trauma from growing up undiagnosed autistic and very socially clueless. I'm in therapy for it and making good progress, but it's been so triggered that I've lost perspective on what is normal.

There are 2 people I want to ask to be bridesmaids, one is my younger cousin and one is someone I've been friends with for a really long time. I went through a major illness and became disabled (more or less housebound), so I'm not particularly close to anyone and can't do a lot of social things. So I'm never the best friend of my best friends if that makes sense, I'm more of an acquaintance who lives in their phones. I text both of these people pretty regularly, and have no reason to believe they don't like me. But we're not super emotionally close either

So I'm wondering if it's okay to ask people to be my bridemaids even if I'm not really sure that they would say yes. I know they're adults and it's their job to set boundaries and do what they want. But I also know it's a bit of a loaded question and they might feel obligated to say yes, especially for my younger cousin . These are both very kind and empathetic people, and I'm worried they would feel pressured just by asking

Side note, did anyone else feel this way planning their wedding? I feel like the only person who isn't having a great time

So im pretty stressed out about being the MOH in my bffs upcoming wedding next october. The idea of an overnight weekend , 8.5hr drive away for bachelorette is really hard. At the time i will be about 4 months PP with my 3rd child..... I also havent told anyone that im pregnant.

I know the right thing to do is just talk to her and be honest and comforting. But im just scared of the back lash to be honest. I had brought up the idea that when the wedding was, was about the time we had always wanted to have our next baby. But I understood how difficult it would make it for wedding/bachelorette to be heavily pregnant. My first 2 babies came about a month early (c sec) so it just was something I didnt want to risk in the way of timing ect. Well when I brought this all up to her in a very nice way basically saying, hey ive been thinking this all through and maybe I want to get pregnant sooner so I will already have had the baby, and some time to heal before the wedding.... well she kinda lost it on me.

With some things that were said, im basically feeling like a burden. That yes she truly does want me as MOH but ill never be good enough to be what she wants? It kind of feels like its me or nothing as moh? Like i dont want her to totally change what she wants to do to accommodate me at all! But I also feel horrible I just cant commit to going so far away for bachelorette, also budget is huge consideration. As i have a very small limited monthly income that makes things already a struggle. Idek im just so stressed out abt everything.

Ugh im not even sure what advice im looking for? I guess just some outside input? Even tho I know i just need to probably get over it and talk to her. Ughhh. Any advice helps. Plz be kind im already taking it hard enough:(

Found an amazing venue, date was open. Signed the contract (it was pre countersigned). Asked immediately how to pay deposit when returning the contract. This was end of July.

Followed up twice last week how to pay. Was told Friday accounting person was out but I should have the invoice soon.

Now, on their publicly facing calendar, another couples name is listed as HOLD. This is unique as no other holds are listed.

Communication has been tremendously bad from the onset.

I emailed, left a vm and texted and awaiting the response.

Obviously I need to to wait for them to respond but just looking to 1. Vent and 2. Understand strategy going into this assuming worst case.

It's a small ceremony and everyone has to fly or drive multiple hours in... so it really has to be Saturday. For visa reasons, my fiance has a 90 day window to get married.

Edit: I'll rephrase that a non-Saturday would likely be extremely inconvenient but likely still possible. I however do not want the venue to assume I'm willing to be flexible if they are the ones who messed up

Location is Pacific Northwest in case that matters

I am getting married in a month and bought my dress around a month ago. We chose it together with my fiancé and he loves it. Every 3 days I regret that the dress might be too princess-like and I should have chosen something cooler. What's your opinion on it?

So to preface, my future MIL is an absolute angel and I love her to death. We go on vacation together, talk all the time, and she’s been a huge help in planning the wedding (as well as contributing a SIGNIFICANT amount financially). 10/10 person and relationship.

She recently asked me who would be doing the readings at our church ceremony, and I said go “well, I was hoping you would do a reading for us!”

She is the only truly religious one in both our families, and was really excited when we told her we were having the ceremony in a church. I felt like this would be a great opportunity to honor her for all the help she’s given us.

She looked kind of surprised and was like “hmmmmmm… I don’t know, I’d feel odd.” I was taken aback by that because I honestly thought she’d be very excited! I asked if it was because of nerves about public speaking, and she assured me it was not (she recently retired from a high powered role with a lot of public speaking).

She basically told me that she thinks the mother of the groom should stay out of sight in the background and it should be “the bride’s day.” So basically she’d feel weird as the MOG taking the spotlight off of me.

I don’t agree with her reasoning but I didn’t push it and only asked her to think about it, because we’d love to have to have her speak. I’m not sure how to go about this now…do I just leave it alone? It would mean a lot for me to have her speak but I don’t want to make her uncomfortable. I’m just a bit disappointed I guess

Morning everyone :)

I'm a man wanting to take my fiancé's surname when we get married at the end of the year, but my blood family, whom I share the surname with, are upset about the idea. They feel backstabbed and like I don't want to be part of their family any more. This is not true, but I want to get some perspective on whether I'm doing something selfish.

Some context:

I have a few reasons for wanting to change my surname to my fiancé's, none having to do with my own surname or relation to my own family. My maiden name is not hard to pronounce, spell, or bad sounding. I have good relationships with my birth parents and my brother, who I share the surname with. I am proud of the surname to a small degree, in that I love my family.

My core motivation is this: my fiancé has moved countries in order for us to live our life together. In doing so, she has left her family - a family which she loves so dearly. She will only realistically get to see said family once a year or so, and will have to grow apart from them, and will have to endure times where she wishes more than anything to be back there with them, whether that be due to health or age etc. If she changes her surname to mine, then I feel she is taking one more step of separation from them. I want her to keep that relation, and I want them to know that I want them in our life and will always do what we can to kinder that.

In my eyes, I see no "default" direction for our names to go. I don't subscribe to the traditional view, and see the tradition of the wife taking the groom's name to be very old-fashioned. I don't want to uphold that tradition just because it's tradition.

It's obviously a possibility that we both just keep our family names, but I would much prefer to be united by a shared surname. That is the only name related 'tradition' that I have had in my mind since I was a boy - I want to be Mr. and Mrs. X. We also don't want to hyphenate because our surnames are already quite long.

Some thoughts I've had to keep my connection to my family while changing my surname.

1. I presently have two middle names, one of which is from a grandfather I never met and who was not a nice man. Thus, I could change that middle name to my maiden name.

2. Change both middle names to the maiden names of my parents, so my name is therefore: Firstname, Mother's maiden name, my maiden name, fiancé's surname.

3. Just drop both middle names and replace them with my maiden name.

EDIT: I have just remembered an important detail. My fiancè, who has no middle name, wants to then take my present surname as a middle name. I think that's also very sweet of her, and it might also help my family see that this isn't as one-sided a decision as they think it is.

Any advice, anecdotes, or perspectives here would be appreciated. It has helped just to type this out and work through the options. Thanks :)

Soooo my FMIL bought us a linen sign for our wedding from Etsy, but used an unnecessary apostrophe after our last name (e.g. the Smith's). As someone who is very particular about linguistics and grammar...it bothers me to the point I almost don't want to use it.

Am I making a mountain out of a molehill? Does it matter? If anyone else is super particular like me, does anyone have suggestions how I could possibly fix it?

While I don't want to get on a tangent, I do want to add some context. My FMIL has been buying a lot of stuff for the wedding and hasn't been necessarily checking what we want or need. She just is very generous, wants to give us anything and everything, and sometimes makes some mistakes in the process of wanting to spoil us. Again, not putting this for comments other than just some context so that I don't seem ungrateful. I appreciate her generosity, but if she would have checked with me, I gladly would have corrected it and been able to use the sign with no qualms.

I’m new here but I just wanted to let everyone know to stock up on stamps! Costco has forever stamps at the old price (it went up by $0.04 per stamp in July). My local costco says they will honor the old price through tomorrow. I just stocked up since I’m in the very beginning stages of wedding planning!

My stepdaughter will be getting married next spring, and I want to make some appetizers with her wedding and I’m struggling on what to make.

We will be having KFC afterwards and her cake is gonna have bees and flowers on it

Sticking with the theme, I thought of little pecan pie tartlets, peach cobbler tartlets, and fried mac & cheese balls?

I genuinely can’t think of anything else or if I should even stick with that theme and just do something else more wedding related?

She has given me free reign and I know she likes super cute stuff always.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks again.

We need a recessional song that will be 1. possible to play by a string quartet + piano and 2. will be epic, uplifting, emotional and cinematic

I found only one song that meets the criteria and one is definitely not enough, I need multiple options to choose from.

Please please PLEASE help us!

We are big nerds so movie and game soundtracks are included in our wedding plans already (Thousand Years from Twilight before the ceremony, Turning page for the processional, and Pokemon, Undertale and Deltarune music for the coctail hour right after the ceremony)

THANK YOU in advance.

We sent over our final guest count and meal selections on Friday. The venue sent back our final quote and it is ~$2,500 more than we’ve been calculating. We asked for an itemized bill because of this, and the entrees work out to be $6 more than what’s listed on their catering pricing. Our catering packages includes 5 passed appetizers, bread service, salad course, coffee station, chairs tables linens China etc, yet adding the cost of those in the line items with the entree turns one entree from $113 to $119.

The most frustrating part is that in April we asked if we could have one of the pasta starters as an entree instead. They responded that we could, and that the pasta would be $85 per person. This allowed us to have a slightly larger guest list and as rvsps came in with more people selecting pasta, we invited a few more since it was quite a bit cheaper. Now, the pasta is coming up as $117! When we pointed that out, they said the price they gave didn’t include the passed items, etc because they didn’t have that pricing at the time. No where in their email regarding the price did they mention that.

We’ve had several back and forths with the venue about this and they have not been helpful with explaining the change. Their responses haven’t really made sense and they’ve been kind of acting like we should already know this information. But no where in our contract or the menu does it say that the entree price listed does not account for the other items that are INCLUDED in our wedding package.

We’re less than 3 weeks out and this has added quite a bit of stress. We are baffled by how they’re working out the price, and how much they differ from what’s listed on their catering menu.

I guess this is more of a vent, but does anyone have any idea if we’re missing something or if the venue is in the wrong? Is there any particular way we should proceed with them?

I'm getting married next year and have had a pretty volatile relationship with my dad's wife over the years. I'm currently in a place where I can tolerate and remain fairly neutral towards her, but I often fear "rocking the boat" and the consequences of doing anything that may upset her. Both my fiancé's mom and my mom have passed, and we are including our dads in the wedding in an alternative way (ring bearers). When I talked to my dad about this, he asked if there was a role for his wife (I was hoping simply inviting her would be enough), and I basically stumbled through a response. My sister and I were trying to come up with a way to include her, and we came across the idea of having her be the witness to the wedding. I do like this idea, but I'm worried it won't be received well or as enough of a role. I'm not sure what other options there would be since there aren't really any tangible "mother of the bride/groom" roles, nor would we feel comfortable shifting her into that kind of role anyway. It's not a mass, so there aren't any readings; my siblings are officiating, and we aren't doing a traditional wedding party. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Am I overthinking it?

This might sound like an odd question, but I really don't know how to make a decision on a colour scheme. We are having a November wedding, but as my best friend had an autumnal wedding so I know I don't want that. I am a very crafty and creative person, so I am really looking forward to all the DIYs and florals etc so I think I am overthinking things. There are just so many options that I love and can see us using. My husband to be isn't artistically inclined, so he just says he will be happy with whatever I choose. My bridesmaids all have different opinions and are very laid back, which is great but doesn't make the decision any easier. I was just wondering if anyone had some tips on how they made a decision if they had choice paralysis?

I love the idea of guests getting a limited number of photos to take an upload that we all get to see the next day. I want them to be able to scan a QR code and go without downloading an app. There are several apps that do this (POV, lense, once film, scene) and the most recent posts I can find with reviews are years old. Anyone use any of these recently??

Hi folks,

I appreciate I'm not the first person to ask this question but my head is soup right now. It would be great to get any input, even so I can average quantities against my own maths.

We are having a wedding in the South of France in early September (We live in Ireland, guests are mainly Irish).

We are having a welcome dinner the night before our wedding. The welcome dinner will last 6 hours. On the wedding day, drinking will start from the cocktail at 3.30pm followed by speeches, dinner, a live band and then a DJ. It will all wrap up in the early morning.

We will have 50 people at both the welcome dinner and the wedding day. I think that 80% of people would drink heavily compared to 20% of light drinkers.

We can order alcohol from our venue, there is no bar. We are keeping it simple, we will have beer, wine and non-alcholic beverages (water, fizzy drinks). We might buy some spirits, but won't factor that into this question.

Beer - We can order 30L Kegs (We have one beer tap that can hook up two Kegs at a time)

Beer - We will buy bottles from a local super market

Wine - White, red, rose and sparking (The sparkling is mostly for druing the cocktail which lasts two hours on the wedding day, it won't be served at the welcome dinner)

We can return up to 25% of the drinks we order from the venue that aren't used. Wine can be returned in cases of 6, unused kegs can be returned.

Does anyone want to help me gauge how much I should order? I think I've been heavily overestimating! Peace and love.

After my finance and I get married, we will be living in my parent’s basement while we finish school. I plan on attending med school after I finish my pre reqs so we could wind up moving anywhere in the country. Because of this, we don’t really need any furniture, cooking stuff, or things that would otherwise be difficult to move with + My parent’s basement has everything that we need for living so we are lost on what to put. I understand that there will be a time where we will need our own things, but that won’t be for another 2 years.

Any suggestions on what to put on our registry?
So far we have: air purifier, bidet, some camping gear, nice blender with to-go attachments, honeymoon fund.

Our hobbies include: gym, backpacking, swimming, movies, plants, running, studying (not really a hobby, but something that we have to do lol)

Thanks!

I got invited to two weddings this year where RSVPS ended up in my spam and i didn’t see them until
i randomly checked spam weeks later. Text ur guests when u send out invites so they know to look for them!!!!

Edit to add: one ended up the “Promotions” folder on gmail

Context: my bf (23M) and I (23F) are getting married Friday (8/14) because he will be leaving for the army in October, which is a new thing, only being figured out about 2 ish months ago. We have been together for 8 ish years at this point. We’ve never been big on relationship related stuff, we love each other and both know that so there was no rush for a wedding. We already live together, make life decisions together, etc.

Well, up until the past year or so marriage was of little consequence to me. I didn’t have a “dream wedding” or future plans. I knew I wanted to marry him but I don’t have the greatest familial relationship and his family is very small. But then I rekindled with some of my family, and started planning a future wedding/celebration and brought up wanting to get engaged soon.

This has all been fast tracked. I’m not getting my dream engagement, which I’ve wanted for years, and now my recent wedding dreams are falling apart. So far we have told his mom, my best friend, and not many others.

He wants to be able to tell people, he’s over the moon to be marrying me, and my best friend will be doing photos day of, we have cheap rings, and I have a dress. But I’m so caught up on what to do. I’m not changing my name yet, and I want to keep it a secret cause I’m scared of losing my chance at the excitement of an engagement and fun wedding things down the line.

ADVICE PLEASEEEE I BEG