hardest decision during wedding planning?

MuppetOverlord · August 2013

Venue. I wanted to have it at my uncle's amazing lake house. It would've cost me at least 5k more to have it there and I would've been frazzled. It took me 3 or 4 months to make the decision against it.

harper0813 · August 2013

Late night food. I waffled for MONTHS. I knew we were ordering French macarons, our favorite sweet thing in the whole wide world, so originally I thought cookies and milk would be fun. Then I started to think that, after dancing and drinking, people would want something salty. Pizzas and sliders are really common but just not what we wanted. FI actually suggested Croques Monsieur because he's a genius and the macarons reminded him of Paris. And we ate Croques Monsieur there too. I think we'll be adding frites now too, since we came in way under on our food budget.

I also had a lot of difficulty choosing accessories. Shoes and veil were no problem - I'm talking hair pins/flowers and jewelry. I literally have 5 different hair pins and I'll choose on the day of. Same with jewelry.

southernbelle0915 · August 2013

MuppetOverlord said:

Venue. I wanted to have it at my uncle's amazing lake house. It would've cost me at least 5k more to have it there and I would've been frazzled. It took me 3 or 4 months to make the decision against it.

I think I remember this. It was something with the grass and chairs right? It sounded awesome, but if I'm recalling right, way too much hassle.

grumbledore · August 2013

Reception venue is definitely kicking my ass. I've been in research mode for awhile and I just do not want to spend a ton on the venue - I also want to be able to choose our own caterer, which eliminates a ton of venues. I am not enjoying all of the number crunching and lead chasing. It doesn't help that we're a little quirky so I'd rather have something a little off the beaten path, which is proving harder to find.

Dreamergirl8812 · August 2013

I feel so much better that others said hair. Every other decision has been so easy but I have no idea what I want to do with my hair. Which makes me feel ridiculous...

Also, @zobird, when I glanced at your post I saw "late night food" and "waffles" and thought:

[Deleted User] · August 2013

trying to figure out the budget from my parents. my dad wants to help but doesn't want to give me a number so its difficult to know what to look at.

LakeR2014 · August 2013

Whether to or not to invite kids. We have large families and adding kids to our guest list would up it by 40. Which would've been fine and doable with our budget....but when the thought of having 40 kids at my wedding (many of who's parents aren't so good at parenting) turned me picturing my wedding as a Chuck E Cheese party, it was pretty easy to make a decision.

glbelou · August 2013

Mine have definitely been the guest list and, once again, the Catholic thing. My fiance and I are both Catholic, but we are not very involved in the church. We decided on our date very early on because having a Spring wedding was a priority for me, and we did not want to have it too late in the Spring because it gets very hot where we live on the Gulf Coast. Unfortunatly, our date fell during lent, which means additional restrictions in addition to the already strict rules you have to follow for a Catholic ceremony. Because of this, we decided to go crazy and have the ceremony we really want and then have our marriage blessed in the church later on (my aunt and uncle did this as well, and say they were very happy with their decision because they got the best of both worlds).

The guest list is difficult because we both have large Catholic families, so even though we are inviting 180 guests, more than half are family! This has really limited inviting any co-workers and even some of our friends.

SapphireCounselor · August 2013

melbelleup said:

Just curious, what was the hardest thing for you to decide on while planning your wedding? Why?

Mine: our flowers!!! Since I worked at Lowe's as a cashier for 3 1/2 years I've been around flowers the majority of the time there. Because of the background knowledge I have of flowers, I knew which ones I wanted....of course, they were out of my budget for flowers ($1,300). She and I then had to think of flowers that would look good with my color scheme of blue and purple... to alas come up with the moon series mini carnations! They work perfectly and look great and only $820... much better than the $1,300.... needless to say, if my flowers are my only issues, I'm going to have an awesome wedding come June!

I have to admit that my planning process went rather smoothly. Everything just seemed to come together. What wasn't so easy about the experience was that I was in grad school at the time, so finding the time/money to coordinate the wedding was a challenge. I gave myself lots of time though because I knew it would be stressful. (We were engaged for about 18 months.) I will also say that the month leading up to the wedding was extremely hectic not only because we were finalizing plans, but because I just started a new job and moved to a completely new city - a complete life change.

Beachy5 · August 2013

The hardest for us was a so called "theme." Everyone kept asking us what our theme was - we didnt have one. Our theme is wedding!! It made me second guess if we should have one or not but its really not necessary. The details that go along with creating a theme can be cheesy and it takes away from the whole point of the day: getting married!!

melbelleup · August 2013

trying to figure out the budget from my parents. my dad wants to help but doesn't want to give me a number so its difficult to know what to look at.

my dad was like this too, but then I finally broke down and told him to tell me a number.. he then said 10-15k depending on what I need.. which is FANTASTIC as thats my whole reception he's basically paying for.

KateHooker2013 · August 2013

Guest list. Hands down. FI has essentially two GIANT families (divorced and remarried parents) and add to that the fact that they are close with second cousins and great aunts, etc it has been so stressful. We've ended up with a guest list much larger than I'd ever have hoped for, probably close to 240, (and our original budget is nearly long forgotten) but what can ya do? It wasn't worth having WW3 over and we'll end up with a great big party, which will be wonderful. Although, I'm still catching grief from his family for the cuts I made them make originally (each set of his parents originally gave me a list of 200+ people...EACH, um no). ha. I'm just glad the invites are out the door so those discussions are done. Whew! Bring on the RSVPs (and let's hope there are at least a handful of people who can't make it!

)

Xstatic3333 · August 2013

SENGLISH0410 said:
trying to figure out the budget from my parents. my dad wants to help but doesn't want to give me a number so its difficult to know what to look at.

I had this issue as well. I had to be very delicate, since they hate talking finances with me, but I just explained that I wanted to be respectful of their generous gift and be able to budget for overages.

Jequila · August 2013

I had 2 issues. Venue was the first one. Initially we wanted a destination wedding. But my family put up such a fuss we decided to get married closer to home. When I started looking in the area everywhere I went I was like "This is the one." The mister was over it by then because everywhere became the one. It was by chance that I found one of the locations and absolutely fell in love. Well turns out that the help we were going to get to pay for the wedding was no longer available. And we have to pay for the entire wedding by ourselves. So we had to scratch my dream venue and look elsewhere. No we've decided to do a cruise wedding. We'll get married before the boat sails. Our guest have the option of sailing with us or attending the ceremony and reception and then getting off the boat. A wedding and honeymoon for the price of 1!!

Now that we're doing the cruise, space is limited. So we're re-focusing on the guest list and whom to and whom not to invite. We had to cut our list almost in half. This is my new dilemma!

KHarding2B · August 2013

Mine so far has been the reception venue. Nowhere seemed right. Eventually I made up an excel spreadsheet comparing the costs and went with the cheapest option. Even then I still had to have my FI make the final choice. I said "there are too many options for me but we have to nail one down- you pick and I will go with your choice!".

ShesSoCold · August 2013

The dress. For sure. I've been dress shopping 7 times and all I've gotten is pissed off.

The venue was easy - I guess for me, it was like some women are with their dress. I KNEW that it was my venue the moment we got there. I half-assed the next venue appointment we had and blew off the last one.

But now that you ladies mention it, my hair will be an issue. I suppose it will depend on what kind of dress I get, but my hair is waist-long so I figure I might as well wear it down since I have so much. Problem is that it doesn't like to be styled and turns into one giant dreadlock. Hmmm...

thejucheidea · August 2013

Music, by far. I deliberated for weeks what songs I wanted to ask the organist to play during the ceremony.

lgiorno · August 2013

The guest list was a headache!

WonderRed · August 2013

LakeR2014 said:

Whether to or not to invite kids. We have large families and adding kids to our guest list would up it by 40. Which would've been fine and doable with our budget....but when the thought of having 40 kids at my wedding (many of who's parents aren't so good at parenting) turned me picturing my wedding as a Chuck E Cheese party, it was pretty easy to make a decision.

That was the exact language I used when FI and I were talking about it. We would have as many kids as adults if every single guest brought their children with them.

kp53114 · September 2013

The hardest part has not so much been about a single decision but distance. We currently live in Maryland but decided to get married in Texas, where we're both from. We got engaged just after moving here so a lot of decisions have required the help of our families or bridal party. For instance, our venue books up pretty quickly so I had to rely on my dad to be our eyes and give the okay before we lost the date (I still haven't seen the venue in person)! Needless to say I'm thankful for their efforts... and, of course, the internet.

[Deleted User] · September 2013

The Caterer! We have been looking for about 7 months and JUST settled on one. A lot of them wouldn't vary from their set menus, or were too expensive or flat our wouldn't respond to emails. One of them even wanted to charge us $100 per person for a tasting. Thankfully we have now settled on one and my anxiety dreams are shifting to other things.

KytchynWitche · September 2013

so far - letting go of my "big" wedding dreams, and scaling back

we had previously talked about a guest list of about 60 people and an evening wedding, but we've had some financial issues and it came down to either selling a kidney or changing the venue, cutting the guest list, going less formal etc... i am NOT going to beg for money or have my guests host themselves

so now it'll be immediate family and our two best friends only, for a mid-morning ceremony and lunch at our favourite restaurant afterwards. not exactly what we had in mind, but it'll do. after all, isn't the important thing that we're marrying each other?

CheleLyn · September 2013

The hardest for me thus far has been the ring shopping...I got so overwhelmed because they all started to look the same. I have decided on one, but he's still waiting to purchase it to be sure I don't change my mind again LOL

Also, deciding on what the men will wear. We had it figured out until we changed the color scheme of the wedding. After bridesmaid dress shopping we changed it again because the girls look so amazing in their dresses (they're all wearing completely dresses) that they and I decided the men really do need to take it up a notch. Fortunately, FH is totally on board and the groomsmen are happy (they're only request was no jacket because the wedding will be outside on June 21).

Oh, nailing down a ceremony site was frustrating. We knew we want it outside, but I'm terrified of the weather going wonky. Thankfully, our reception venue has an outside space that is perfect for us, so once we decided on the reception site it was a no brainer.

CheleLyn · September 2013

Deleted bc I forgot to quote

CheleLyn · September 2013

Grabows14 said:

Invitations... I've been back and forth on matching everything or diy.. I think the most frustrating thing is that I don't want to spend more money than I need to.

Jason actually picked ours. He found them on zazzle.com the same day he decided he wanted to wear something other than what we had planned for our wedding therefore changing our whole color scheme LOL

I actually really like what he chose and it's totally us. We had also looked at vistaprint.com.

Invitations set the tone of the event for the guests, but they aren't something I'm willing to spend a ton of money on (been there done that!) because they ultimately just get thrown away.

WonderRed · September 2013

CheleLyn said:

Grabows14 said:

Invitations... I've been back and forth on matching everything or diy.. I think the most frustrating thing is that I don't want to spend more money than I need to.

Jason actually picked ours. He found them on zazzle.com the same day he decided he wanted to wear something other than what we had planned for our wedding therefore changing our whole color scheme LOL

I actually really like what he chose and it's totally us. We had also looked at vistaprint.com.

Invitations set the tone of the event for the guests, but they aren't something I'm willing to spend a ton of money on (been there done that!) because they ultimately just get thrown away.

We got ours on www.basicinvite.com They had a ton to choose from and you can customize anyone of their designs with your own colors and font. With or without pocket folds. Easy peasy! The customer service was fantastic too.

kissyourself · September 2013

Making the decision of having to exclude some people from the guest list. Not fun but what it comes down to is it's our wedding and we need to make ourselves happy.

tlc35 · September 2013

For some reason I had a really hard time deciding on ceremony music. It took me forever to settle on those songs. The guest list was hard as well.

FiancB · September 2013

I'm pretty early in the process but I'm having a hard time with color. I don't want anything super luxe looking, I want it to look nice outside, I like bright colors, I want it to be something the bridal party will be happy wearing... yeah. No idea.

That and finances. My parents will probably offer to help as they paid for my sister's, but then I will feel obligated to do things their way, which is quite different from my way. One one hand I feel like we're big kids and should just pay for everything. OTOH, holy crap this ish is expensive.

scully13 · September 2013

The guest list! Almost all of my guests are from out of town since FI and are from two different states ( our hometowns are 20 hours away, to be exact-we met in college) and we are getting married where we live now. So the guest list is tough. I'm Irish Catholic and he is from the deep south...so there will be an interesting mix of people. It is giving me so much anxiety I have nightmares that no one attends are big day!

hardest decision during wedding planning?

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