I don’t want you reading this headline and think to yourself, “oh my gosh, Malia hated her wedding day,” because that is TOTALLY not the case. In my unbiased and totally objective opinion, my wedding was the best wedding I’ve ever been to. Luke and I loved every second of it and we wouldn’t change a thing about it!

BUT, in retrospect, there are a couple things we could have done to make the process go a little smoother…so, to help you out with your wedding planning, I give you the 4 mistakes I made while planning my wedding so you don’t have to.

1. We left some planning until the last minute.
Now, I’m notoriously laid back when it comes to all things planning, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that we didn’t really finish ironing out all the details of our wedding until the week before. We had most of it done, but we made one big mistake with the suits. We didn’t check on them until the week of the wedding and guess what… the WRONG SUITS were ordered. We ended up with shiny, grey suits, which was not exactly part of our plan. We didn’t have time to order new ones so all the guys ended up wearing metallic suits, which may have been a blessing in disguise, since they seemed to hide how much they were all sweating. But the point is, if we’d make sure that all of our planning was done well in advance, we could have just enjoyed being with all of our friends and family instead of having to worry about last minute details like putting together table markers and programs two nights before…

2. We didn’t have a timeline
On our wedding day, we knew when we had to arrive to get our hair and makeup done and what time the ceremony was supposed to start. Past that, we didn’t have much of a plan. Everything went fairly smoothly, but if we had put together a timeline beforehand, we probably wouldn’t have had a few pictures where important family members were missing. (In the picture below, Luke’s sister/one of my bridesmaids is MIA…) Timelines help everyone know where they need to be and when and just generally make the entire day run a whole lot smoother.

Courtesy of Lauren O. Photography

3.Skipping the first look.
When I dreamed of my wedding day, I’d always envisioned the groom seeing me for the first time as I was walking down the aisle, so that’s exactly what we did. But on our actual wedding day, things didn’t play out exactly how I imagined. Instead, Luke refused to make eye contact with me until I was standing right in front of him at the alter. He later told me he was trying to stop crying uncontrollably (which he’d never admit to anyone else, but there is photo evidence below). We also didn’t get a moment to ourselves until the entire wedding was over around 10:45 p.m. We had a great time with all of our friends and family, but in retrospect, it probably would have been nice to have a quiet moment with Luke before all the craziness of the day ensued. Plus, then we could have headed straight to the reception after the ceremony and not had to worry about getting a whole bunch of pictures done afterwards when all the guests are standing around trying to also get pictures of/with you.

Courtesy of Lauren O. Photography Courtesy of Lauren O. Photography

4. Not making an unplugged wedding more of a priority.
As a wedding photographer, I have to say, one of the most frustrating moments during a wedding is when a guest with an iPhone steps in front of you during an important shot. Nothing ruins a picture more than someone pulling out their phone (I have evidence of this from our wedding, but I’m not going to call anyone out…). During our wedding, we did have a sign that asked guests to refrain from pulling out their cell phones during the ceremony (hello, that’s what the photographer is there for), but we didn’t make the sign very prominent. A quick announcement at the beginning of the wedding to remind guests to remain unplugged probably would have gone a long way.

No matter what, you’re going to have a great wedding day, but I hope reading through these quick tips will make your wedding perfect! If you have any more tips for making wedding planning easier, feel free to share in the comments below!