From The Heart: Re-Living The Wedding Day Moments That Didn’t Exactly Go To Plan

wedding didnt go to plan

Happy Sunday! I hope you don’t mind me sharing this post with you today since rather than the splendour and beauty of the weddings which ordinarily grace your pages, I intend, instead, to share with you all the wonderful moments and things which for me went, well, a little array.

I got married a little under six weeks ago now, and frankly we had the greatest day of both our lives. I’m truly excited for all you yet to experience it, I really am. There was nothing catastrophic that occurred, it ran on time (except for a 10 minute over-run on the speeches) and we were complimented on how smoothly the day went.

That said, there were definite moments of ‘ooops!’, which make quite an interesting catalogue of memories and reflections, so I hope you’ll join me in a few giggles, and a cup of tea over the things you don’t often get to read about. The things that didn’t exactly go to plan.

Re-living the wedding day moments that didn't exactly go to plan.

  1. We invited everyone a year too late. I spent so long writing, designing, creating, cutting and sourcing our invites. They were a wonderful professionally printed woodland card in our wedding colours with self-made brown card inserts of carefully orchestrated information, with a menu choice and an eclectic RSVP listing the following. (a) Will be there with bells on (b) Will be there free of bells (c) Will be there undecided on bells (d) Will not be there, heard there would be people with bells (e) Will not be there, regardless of the bell controversy. I felt smug, and hilarious, and so very unique. The additions took hours of formatting and printing, the professional ones had 4 proof reads with amendments by us both (as we spotted small errors), and it took I-don’t-even-know-how-long to carefully fold, belly-band with twine, address and send. I even felt smug sending them at Christmas time and thus combining with standard postal costs – hello saved £50! I was a budget Queen! My Gran rang me a few evenings later. “I got your invite, it’s lovely. It’s just a shame I’ve missed it since it happened last year” *open mouthed shock and horror* She was right! Every single invite said May 21st 2015! 2015! We’d missed it 4 times on a proof copy and sent every single invite out with the wrong date on! and not only that, I was truthfully inundated with questions about what type of bells people were supposed to bring! “My husband has found some Morris dancing bells on Amazon that attach to his sleeves, but I thought you’d want the kind that came on a stick. Could you let us know please?” *groan* At this rate, if people were actually going to turn up at all, they’re now probably all coming with random bells! So far, this was not going to plan. Cue an entertaining speech story and a lot of calls to confirm that no, bells were not mandatory. Nor necessary. In fact, please don’t bring bells!
  2. The chef broke down and the stripper arrived to a onesie party. My hen was a wonderfully created and planned surprise by my bridesmaids. It was a stunning mansion house in Wales just outside Cheshire. Unbeknown to me the girls had hired a private chef to cook for us on the Friday night. Lovely. Except on the wiggly country lanes in the back of beyond he’d driven in a ditch, written off his car, wandered to a nearby farmhouse in order to access a phone signal and then had to be rescued with all his food by my 2 bridesmaids, and was consequently 2 hours late. The stripper, which I hasten to add I did not sanction, and whom annihilated the tranquillity of the rolling Welsh hills, got equally lost. He was booked for 11pm, we’d all been ‘treated’ to a ‘butler in the buff’ already and so had peaked and troughed on alcohol and excitement, changed into our fluffy onesies, got a cup of tea, and were near collapse when Mr Stripper rocked up at 2am. 2 girls were in bed, my maid of honour was collapsed asleep in a chair through the entire duration, and the rest of us looked far too childlike for such a scene… hmmm… thankfully both Mr Stripper and Mr Chef made it home alive, the latter being dragged out by a friendly farmer plus heavy duty tractor, and both meaning that we didn’t have any unwelcome over-night guests!
  3. The best man might not be coming. 10 days to go, stress levels at a premium and a text: “Hi so, just to let you know I might not be able to secure the work swap needed to actually attend your wedding”. Excuse me, what?! This was news to the both of us and said best man was also acting as Master of Ceremonies at my venue which lacked permanent staff. What do you even do with that! We found out with 5 days to go that he would be able to grace us with his presence, and when he tried to joke with me about wearing hot-pink socks with his beige chino wedding outfit, he was duly reminded that after that bombshell, he could die his trousers pink and I still wouldn’t be shocked. Nor care.
  4. Rule 1 of superstition was officially broken. The weather wasn’t especially kind to us. Despite many weeks of glorious sun the forecast let us know to expect arctic winds and rain. Goodbye summery festival feel. With a week of notice we got a games marquee. Incidentally this transpired to be a frankly awesome idea regardless of the weather as it created another area, and full of games, it looked pretty good. So we decided the night before to set up the ‘bar’ in there and arranged a gorgeous hay bale Pinterest-inspired rustic affair. We both, together with our ushers and bridesmaids, stayed at the venue albeit separately, and after a surprisingly o.k. sleep I woke at 6:30am to peer out at sideways torrential rain. With visions of freezing guests with wet hair and several images of an infamous Mariyln Monroe moment: the bar could not be outside. Therefore, contrary to all advice to not get involved on the morning, and not speak to each other for fear of some terrible pending divorce, there was an ensuing early morning, un-romantic phone call to move the bar, where to put it, what it should look like and when to do it. Well…. I’d planned every detail until then so I wasn’t about to give up now, and he’d have never moved it otherwise. Additionally, we’re not divorced yet, so I’m amusing that’s all fiddle-sticks. I think we’d more likely be divorced if he’d left the bar outside….
  5. The dress narrowly escaped disaster. The pouring of the speeches champagne saw 5 full glasses topple over, directly opposite on the trestle table and hurtle their way towards me and more importantly, the most precious and expensive thing I’d ever worn. After a lightning fast reaction and a fortuitous empty space besides me to jump into, disaster was averted. But I did have a decidedly soggy place setting through the speeches, and I definitely think I stopped breathing for a good five minutes.
  6. Dad pulled some corkers out of the bag. Ok, so, strictly speaking, you can’t class speeches as going wrong since you can’t control them, but I do feel this deserves a special mention. My Dad, God love him, clearly has no idea about speeches and managed to offend every vegetarian, recounted the story of watching me pulled from the womb by c-section (!), and a wonderful toilet based childhood classic. After dinner. Way to go Dad!
  7. People look like ants if you let them. We decided to give our centre pieces away randomly to one person on each table since we couldn’t possibly transport nine 60cm vases back with us. We did this by leaving a gold envelope on each table, as part of party bags, for ‘1 guest’. My vision was for 9 happy guests to potter off with their prize at the end of the night. The reality, was whilst leaving the venue for couples’ photos in the photographers’ Land Rover, we saw our guests walking down the ramp, 1 by 1, carrying with them the centrepieces. They were huge foliage affairs and they most certainly resembled a row of ants carrying giant leaves back to their nest. Completely bewildering. I felt like I was palm to the Land Rover glass, nose pressed, watching aghast as my wedding disappeared before my eyes. It was a 30-minute photography escape and I did wonder if by the time we came back the entire wedding would be stripped bare. Thankfully it wasn’t. But I did have to tell my evening guests that it did look prettier than this once!
  8. Confetti canons take skill and instruction. Having seen a wedding on the lovely Love My Dress Facebook group of a gold confetti cannon explosion mid-first dance, I decided to order some as a surprise. This is a fab idea if you have a plan. Or you’ve practiced your dance. Or other sensible things. I handed the cannons moments before to my 2 cousins and 2 bridesmaids with instructions to set them off at the break in Mumford and Sons. This is all very well and good if they know the song. But there was no “cue”, no plan and no rehearsal. “Do it when he lifts me up” I said. So it approached the part of the song, that we hadn’t practised, “lift me up!” I told him, to a puzzled exchange of what, why, when, how, “just do it!”. So up I went, off went one cannon, down I nearly tumbled from the shock of ‘what on earth was that noise and is there a terrorist?’ thoughts which clearly went through my husbands’ mind. Then the final 3 went off, a fair way after having got stuck and suffering delayed reaction. I pulled confetti off various items for weeks after!
  9. Hair cacti = fuzz. I had a beautiful half flower crown at the back of my hair. It was pretty secure but post first dance there was jumping-dancing galore. As it slowly bounced from the back of my barnet the lovely cactus got twisted up in it and out came the whole lot in a fuzzy ball that your pregnant cousin who hasn’t been drinking spends a good 5 minutes trying to get you out of. FYI – a cactus takes no prisoners.
  10. If you order something, turn it on. We spent £100 on a few strings of festoon lights for outside our barn entrance. At 23:45 and 15 minutes before the end of the night, I realised they weren’t turned on. That’s a really expensive 15 minutes! If you have dependant décor, have a carefully curated plan!

So as I said, nothing to call the wedding insurance over, but a catalogue of moments I can entertain myself with for several years. Hope it entertained you for 15 minutes too. What things went wrong for you that you’re now laughing about? I’d love to hear! An imperfectly perfect wedding is possibly the most perfect wedding of all.

 

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The writer of this piece would prefer to remain anonymous.  ‘From The Heart’  is an occasional Sunday spot where we hand Love My Dress back over to our readers to write about all matters of love and life. 

If you would like to contribute a From The Heart piece, we would dearly love to hear from you. It doesn’t matter what it’s about and it doesn’t have to be related to weddings at all – we’re looking for honest, authentic, personal, sad, happy, family, relationship, marriage, health, light-hearted, serious, baby, trying for baby, children, career, simple, complicated – real life issues.  We just need you to write from your heart. Keep it upbeat and witty, or share your thoughts anonymously on a more challenging or emotional subject. Please drop me a line at [email protected]. Love Annabel x

8 thoughts on “From The Heart: Re-Living The Wedding Day Moments That Didn’t Exactly Go To Plan

  1. What a lovely read over a Sunday morning brew! Much needed too, as I’ve just woken from my first wedding ‘nightmare’ (no one turned up, we hadn’t booked a band, my hair was awful….) and this post puts its all in prospective! As long as you end the day a Mrs, nothing really matters does it! X

  2. Love these posts! Good to remember to take everything in your stride and accept things won’t all go to plan x

    1. I’m so pleased you love these posts Alex – they were always intended on offering a fresh and honest perspective of wedding planning, life and love!
      Hope you’re having a beautiful Sunday,
      Love Annabel xx

  3. This was just what I needed! We have 2 months to go and I’m forever panicking about things going perfectly, but at the end of the day if you are married then it has gone perfectly, hasn’t it?!

    1. Lindsay, I think that there is always something that goes wrong, however it generally does not affect your love or enjoyment of your day. Do what you can in the run up and then on the day itself just go with the flow. Good luck and enjoy xx

  4. I was at a wedding this weekend and one of the funniest moments was when the groom looked at us all mid ceremony and said “we’ve kind of fucked this up” about some tiny thing they hadn’t rehearsed! Bless them. We all responded with loving laughter – and I can’t even remember what the supposed hiccup was now. I’m still wedding planning so looking for all the reassurance I can get!

    1. Helen, the main thing to remember is that most of your guests haven’t got a clue of how things ‘should’ look or what ‘should’ be happening – only you and maybe your partner (although mine had no idea!). Most guests just want to see you enjoying yourself and they will too, totally oblivious to the missing bunting still neatly folded in its box (or whatever thing you could be flapping about) Enjoy and don’t worry much xx

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