5 Things I Forgot To Do For My Wedding

Photo: Faye Gedik

Being as organized as I am, I just don’t know how some of these important tasks for my wedding day slipped through the cracks. Cough Cough * it probably was because I didn’t hire a wedding planner (which I would have if I had the extra funds, but I was really stretching our budget) and balancing planning the wedding on top of my full time job and side blog/social media hustles. So I wanted to share these details so you don’t miss them. Some of these items you can work with your venue to obtain and then you fill in the details and provide back to your venue or coordinator so they can execute on the wedding day.

1. Seating/Place Card Placement

   • So I had my actual seating chart which listed which table each guest was sitting at. But because I was doing assigned seating, I needed to provide a chart/map that listed exactly which seat the guest was sitting in at each table. I had a chart with seat placement that I created and printed from wedding wire, but the names were too small. So Scott create an enlarged template of each table so I could write in the names. I was writing in names through the night the evening before the wedding - thankfully I could do this electronically and email to my coordinators. It worked out because I had about 5 guests that notified me late the evening before that they could no longer attend so I was able to easily switch around seats and rearrange.

2. Shot List (Photography & Film)

   • I provided timelines that included some specific locations around the venue that I wanted to shoot at, but I actually did not create a shot list of all the actual shots to get. Even though you might not hit every shot on the list, I think it’s important to have as a guide and map, and as a reference point throughout the wedding day since there is so much going on. Thankfully I have a great team that got pretty much everything I would have wanted to shoot. I would have printed the shot list along with the timeline and posted the print out in the bride and groom suites so everyone involved in the wedding could reference as well (I had too many people asking me what time was this and that, where are we photographing, etc etc - rule of thumb should be just don’t ask the bride anything day of)

3. Property Floor Plan/Schematic

   • Would have been extremely helpful for the vendors so they could plan out and know where to place furniture, florals, etc and everyone else could have a reference point of where everything is on the property. The coordinators and my florist had a rough idea, but it would have created a more efficient process to have a visual aid and something down on paper to follow during set up.

4. DIYs - Wedding Crafts

   • Most of my crafts were finished in time with the exception of a few items that I wanted to cut vinyl designs for. I actually had to bring my vinyl cutting machine with me down to San Diego to the house I was staying at prior to the wedding so I could finish up some projects. One of the most important crafts I was working on down to to the wire was my seating chart - this was incredibly stressful for me since there were so many names and vinyls be cut at small sizes so I had to enlist the help of others to weed out the negative space on each name so I can transfer the names/letters onto the seating chart surface. I also had a few more tabletop signs that I needed to make, as well as a monogram for our corn hole lawn game (which I actually didn’t get around to).

5. Inventory Check List

   • My venue created an inventory checklist when I handed over all the decor items for the wedding. But I should have asked for a copy or made my own list beforehand. I simply just ran out of time by the time I realized that it would have been a good idea to have my own list to refer to (especially when needing to check things to see if anything was missed or left at the venue).

I’m sure there may have been a few other things I missed in the whole planning/coordination process but these are the big things that stuck out to me on/after my wedding day. If you have any wedding planning tips or questions, leave a comment!

Photo: Faye Gedik