Your wedding day can be one of the happiest, most memorable days of your life. But everyone who's planned one knows it can also bring its fair share of stress, chaos, and regrets (did you really need to invite Aunt Edna?). Thankfully for the rest of us who haven't yet tied the knot, other people's mistakes are ours to learn from. In an insightful Reddit thread about wedding regrets, people divulged lots of real-life examples of things they wished they'd done differently, and hearing their honest thoughts will save you from postwedding remorse.
With so much time spent planning months before the day itself, there might be things you forget about once the main event arrives — like eating a good breakfast! If you're just beginning to explore the world of wedding planning or you're curious to see whether you share some of the same frustrations from your experience, read on to see what 18 people shared.
1. Inviting People You Didn't Really Want to Invite 
"They just cost you money, you don't interact with them at all, and they usually don't bring a nice gift to make up for it."
2. Not Hiring a Photographer 
"We thought we'd save money and just ask friends to take lots of pictures. They took some, but I have maybe five pictures worth looking at. No pictures of the cake or table settings. I kind of remember what they look like. The only decent pic of my husband and me has our flower girl in it. She's sweet and I love her, but it looks like she's our kid. Every time people see the photo they're like, 'I didn't know you had an older child.' Hire a photographer, people!"
3. Wearing Your Hair in a Way That's Not "You" 
"This will sound petty, but I regret wearing my hair up. It felt so unlike me and the sticky layers of hairspray wouldn't brush out when I got undressed that night."
4. Not Preparing a Speech 
"I thought I'd just go up, thank everyone for coming, and sit back down. Short and sweet, get it out the way. That's exactly what I did, without mentioning my parents or my wife."
5. Not Paying Attention to the Photographer More 
"We gave him a list of things he needed to shoot for portraits, and he forgot to get a picture of me, my wife, and my parents . . ."
6. And on the Flip Side . . . 
"For me it was not telling the photographer to chill out a bit. It felt like every 30 to 45 minutes they were pulling us out of the reception to take more photos."
7. Feeling Too Rushed 
"My biggest regret is that it all felt so rushed — we were engaged on New Year's Eve and got married at the end of August (having settled on a date in May). The Summer was a whirlwind of planning while both of us worked full-time jobs. We got married on a Sunday, in a city (Montreal) six hours from where we lived (Toronto). We both worked the previous Friday and were back home on Monday to leave for our honeymoon on Tuesday, which involved a lot of driving around and then jumping back into the grind pretty much the day after we returned.
In short, I would have taken a few days off work to relax and get into the holy-sh*t-I'm-about-to-get-married headspace, and I would have opted for a more relaxing honeymoon."
8. Not Taking a Picture 
"We just did a quick wedding for legal purposes with my friend presiding and aunt and uncle as witnesses. It was a nice little sweet ceremony that lasted about 10 minutes over a nice area with a view before we went to dinner. Didn't realize we hadn't taken any pictures until like a week later when we wanted to show someone. Whoops."
9. Having an Outdoor Wedding When It's Too Hot 
"Having an outdoor wedding in August in South Carolina. Timing necessitated it. Otherwise I loved my wedding."
10. Letting Other People Make Important Decisions 
"Letting my mother in law have any say in anything. She ruined the food. She refused to let this chef do our wedding because [the chef] called back to see if we wanted to use her and that bugged the mother-in-law. Instead we had a grocery store do it. It was awful. We ran out and my wife and I didn't get any food."
11. Paper Invitations and RSVPs 
"Set up a wedding site and have people RSVP there. The amount of stress I put myself through trying to get paper mailed back to me in an era when no one uses mail anymore was so unnecessary. At one point we'd gotten very few RSVPs back and I had a total crying meltdown about how no one was going to come. Of course they were going to come; it's just no one uses mail anymore. Save yourself the headache and the money. It's my biggest wedding regret."
12. Not Hiring a Cleaning Service 
"The company allowed us to either pay a $400 cleaning deposit or a $200-or-something cleaning fee. The deposit was refunded depending on the how well you cleaned up after. To save more money for the honeymoon, we chose deposit and we and the wedding party stayed two hours later to clean up the venue."
13. Renting a Nice Room in a Fancy Hotel 
"And then expecting to have sex when we were both just absolutely exhausted. Don't get me wrong, my wedding day was possibly the best day of my entire life, but it would have been just the teensiest bit better if we'd gotten some charming bed and breakfast and not forced ourselves to have tired, tired sex at like one in the morning."
14. Keeping the Bouquet-Toss Tradition 
"Not huge, but if I did it all again, I wouldn't waste time on a garter or bouquet toss. I think they're pretty antiquated traditions and they weren't at all necessary."
15. Not Having a Good Breakfast 
"We got married early in the day on a beach and all I could think about was how much I wanted a breakfast sandwich with eggs, cheese, and bacon on a toasted english muffin with just a touch of hot sauce!"
16. Not Hiring a Videographer 
"We have pictures, but it would be nice to watch a video even of just the ceremony on our anniversary."
17. Forgetting to Take Time to Enjoy the Food 
"Both my hubby and I were too tired/pumped/busy to enjoy our food properly, but it looked really delicious. And I even got a bigger dress just to allow my tummy to expand a bit. Oh well."
18. Not Delegating Enough 
"I planned/organized our wedding, handmade all my invites, bought supercheap materials and handcrafted decorations, even went to flower markets the day before and put together all my bouquets and flowers for reception. All that was fine, but on the day, I wish I had delegated some more jobs to the bridal party."
