How To Have Fun At Your Own Wedding
One of our biggest priorities in planning our wedding was to make sure that we had a lot of fun. We felt like it wasn’t worth all the stress, planning, time, and money if we didn’t enjoy ourselves. Well, WE HAD A BLAST!! We still talk about how much fun we had that day and night and wish we could do it all over again. In speaking with many of our married friends, we learned that most people we know actually didn’t have fun at their weddings. We want to make sure you do, which is why we put together this list of how to have fun at your wedding.
Wake up refreshed
Weddings are stressful and emotional. The better rested you are, the more you will be able to handle the emotional roller coaster the day can be. So relax the day before. Get to bed early. Do everything you can to make sure you wake up feeling refreshed. We had our bachelor/bachelorette parties a month before the wedding and our rehearsal dinner two nights before the wedding so that we could have a CHILL wedding eve.
Give yourself more time than you think you need to get ready
Figure out how much time you think you need to get ready and give yourself at least double that amount of time. Wedding hair and makeup takes FOREVER. You don’t want to feel rushed and hectic because that will set the tone for the whole day. If you have a big time cushion, you’ll be able to take pictures, have fun with your bridal party as you get ready, eat something, and set a relaxed tone to the day. This will be the chillest and slowest time of the day. Savor it. And whether you’re hungry or not, please eat something!
Plan everything that’s important to you ahead of time
Lots of things are going to go wrong the day of wedding no matter how perfectly you plan everything. There’s really nothing you can do about that. What you can do is make sure the things that are the MOST important to you go right. If there is anything that you know will ruin your day if it goes wrong, make sure you put extra effort into planning it well.
Get a coordinator, or at least a day-of-coordinator
There’s nothing worse than having to coordinate all the details of the day, put out fires, coordinate timelines, etc on your wedding day. And you don’t want to put that on a family member or friend either. First of all, most likely it’s not their job and they have no idea what to do. Second, they should be able to have fun at your wedding too! If there’s no room in the budget for a full coordinator, at least hire someone for the day of. I can’t tell you how much peace of mind it will give you. We hired a coordinator because we were planning an at home wedding and had heard that those were harder to execute. We feel like it’s the best money we spent as our coordinator was the biggest reason we were able to let go and have fun at the wedding. We knew that she would take care of anything that happened and we didn’t have to worry about a thing. That peace of mind was priceless. (By the way, our coordinator was Jen Bergmark of First Pick Planning. If you’re in California, we cannot more highly recommend her!)
Work some alone time into the day’s timeline
Once the wedding starts, you will be busy NONSTOP. There won’t be time to eat, breathe, much less have some alone time with your new wife or hubby. We highly recommend planning some downtime into the day’s timeline. We actually planned TWO spots for downtime. One after our first look and pictures and one right before the reception. The one after the first look was both of our favorite parts of the day. We had a moment alone to dance to one of our favorite songs {see photo above}. It was such an amazing feeling to get to spend that time together and revel in the love and joy of the day. During our break before the reception, our coordinator prepared some food for us and we had a full dinner. It was the energy boost we needed to have fun for the rest of the night!
Say your greetings at the cocktail hour so you don’t have to do it during the reception
One thing we were dreading was to spend time at the reception walking around to every table and saying “hi”. It sounded exhausting and like it would take up from the time we wanted to spend dancing. Instead, we joined our guests at the cocktail hour and said hi to everyone there. This way were were able to enjoy the entire reception!
Ask someone to make you a plate of food for after
We always hear that brides and grooms don’t actually eat at their weddings, but we were determined to! We spent so much time picking out the food and it was all food we loved. Beforehand, we asked our caterer and coordinator to put aside food for us. Even though we ended up having time to eat before the reception, we also had a plate saved for afterwards. After the reception, still on a high from the fun and festivities, we stayed up all night talking about the wedding, drinking our signature cocktails, and eating that food we worked so hard to pick.
Take a few minutes to soak it all in
We were shocked at how FAST the day went! Even though we had a pretty long wedding, 2pm-2am, it still felt like it went by in the blink of an eye. At each portion of the day, try to take a few minutes to just look around you and enjoy for a second! It’s great to just soak it all in and actually observe the results of all your hard work!
Let it all go, at least the day before
We worked really hard planning our wedding. We obsessed over every minor little detail and planned it down to every last second. But two days before the wedding, we let it all go. Whatever wasn’t done, wasn’t done. We either delegated it to someone else or just let it go. If you can’t do this two days before the wedding, at least do it the day of. Resolve to just let things be that day. Whatever goes wrong, goes wrong. It’ll be a great story for later on! Plus, if you hire a coordinator they can take care of all those minor emergencies!
Give someone your phone
You’d be surprised at how thoughtless people can be. Your phone will guaranteed be blowing up that day with people asking what time the wedding starts, how to get there, what to wear, letting you know that they will be late, and so on. Remember the tip above, letting things go? It’s easier to do that if you just don’t know about them. Give someone your phone so they can deal with all the questions and you can focus on enjoying the moment! Plus, the few times we were holding our phones, it ruined the candid shots our photographer took.
Feature all things you love
We wanted our wedding to scream “Bassam and Lena”, we just wanted it to really reflect who we were as individuals and as a couple. This took a lot of hard work and planning, but it made such a difference in our enjoyment of the day because we were surrounded by things we loved. From the decorations, to the food, to the music, every single thing was our favorite thing. This is the biggest party of your life. Shouldn’t it also be your favorite party of your life? Plan it for yourselves, not for others, and it will be! Plus, we guarantee, that with the two of you having a blast, your guests will too. Your vibe sets the entire wedding tone.
Be comfortable
Wedding dresses and tuxes are not comfortable. You’re just going to have to suck that up for a majority of the day. But try to plan to be comfortable at least halfway through the reception so you can dance like crazy! Lena didn’t plan comfortable shoes to wear because she had grand expectations that she would make it through the night in her heels, but she just took off her shoes and danced barefoot. Such a relief! Plan comfortable shoes and maybe even an outfit change!
Give the DJ a list of music you love
We really wanted to dance all night at our wedding and a big part of that is having music that we loved. We gave the DJ a huge list of our “must-have” songs and also met with him to go over our music style. The music was very diverse at our wedding so that everyone would have something to dance to, but the common theme was that WE loved all of it.
Skip whatever part you don’t like!
It’s your wedding. You get to do whatever you want and make your own rules. Is there any part of a wedding that you really don’t like? Skip it! We really hate the bouquet toss, so we did an anniversary dance instead. Also, big ceremonies make us uncomfortable, so we limited that portion to just our family and closest friends. Play by your rules at your wedding so that you feel comfortable!
Remember that no matter what you do, someone will be unhappy
We are both people pleasers and wanted everyone to be happy. Eventually we learned no matter how hard we tried to please everyone with our wedding, people were still going to be unhappy. We decided we were the only ones who mattered and if we focused on our happiness, it would all be worth it.
Here are some ideas to make sure other people have fun at your wedding
Did you have fun at your wedding?
What did you do to make sure you had the time of your life?
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All photos are by: Jillian Rose Photography
Mayra says
Love this article. Weddings are to say the least extremely stressful. This article touches on every aspect of ways to make that magical day feel more relaxed, although it will never be totally relaxing. Planning a wedding can take years and then it’s all gone in just hours. Being able to enjoy as much of that special day as possible is a must. With these few topics you touched upon, it is definitely possible. Absolutely love your blog.
happilyeveradventures says
Thank you for your sweet comment! So glad to hear you liked the tips! Do you have any others to add?
Shayan says
Giving me such nostalgic feeling of my wedding. It was so much fun and people tell us it was one of the best wedding they been to. I had a great time but sometimes it was stressful especially saying hello to 800+ people. Yes our wedding had that many and we has 5 events.
Great tips here for people getting married.
happilyeveradventures says
Aww that’s awesome!! Weddings are so fun, we miss ours! WOW, 800 people sounds SO stressful!! How do you manage??
y_o_k_i says
Wow… Your wedding seems so dreamy!🌞🍃💕 I have a wedding coming up in two years. Still far away but your article definitely inspired me❤️ Your blog is awesome!! Hope you have a wonderful weekend💕
happilyeveradventures says
Aw thank you so much! Hope you have lots of fun planning your wedding! We hope you enjoy your planning process. We miss it so much!
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