What do you wish someone would have told you about not just the wedding day but also just married life in general?
One thing I did learn was that when your fiancée asks if you’re excited for the wedding the correct answer is not “meh.”
But as we get closer the excitement is starting to pick up
Go get your hair cut now. A lot of people make the mistake of getting it done the day before, or day of, the wedding and it can look funny. Giving it a few days lead time always helps.
I got my haircut about a week ago. My hair isn’t able to do anything, but it does look decent about 12 days after I shave it all off.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Inevitably, something with the ceremony or the reception will go wrong. Try to get your fiancee to understand that this is not, in fact, a catastrophe. While you’re at it, tell her that you’re getting her a pet whale. It’s at least theoretically possible that she might believe the latter.
Have you been living together already? If not, understand that it will be hard for a while. No one ever tells you about that, for some reason. But it’s fun, too.
After the first year, you’ll never look at your wedding album. Maybe not during the first year, either.
If you don’t get laid Saturday night, it means you’re going to be one of those guys who show up on News of the Weird for having unwittingly married a cross-dressing man.
Congratulations! Post photos when you get a chance.
Have somebody fix you a plate of food at the reception for later. You’ll be too busy to eat during it.
Ditto the wedding album, it’s infrequently looked at - don’t spend a ton on it. Disposable cameras are nice, though, you keep the prints and they’re cheap!
Receiving lines are a PITA.
You’ll probably be too tired for great, life-changing sex on your wedding night - it’s not a harbinger of things to come. You’re just tired.
But the “morning of the wedding” sex is pretty dang good.
How big is your wedding. Ours was pretty small, consisting of mostly our friends from all around the country, and it was good because we actually had a chance to talk to everyone. Too late to do anything about that, though.
Basically, don’t worry and have fun. You’ll be just as married if you slip going down the aisle as if you don’t.
When we went to pick up our wedding cake, it had a huge yellow frosting umbrella on it due to a mis-communication with the bakery. I took a few deep breaths and they busted their asses scraping that off and re-frosting the cake how it was supposed to be. To this day, Jim and I don’t know what we vowed to - we had given our officiant our vows, and we think she just used the Alberta standard vows instead. My point is that things WILL go wrong, and you need to retain your perspective - eight years later, these things are just funny stories for us (we like to tease each other about things that were included in the vows - “I think you vowed to rub my feet every night.”)
Married life in general - in some ways it’s really hard, and in some ways it’s the easiest thing ever. You have to keep working on your relationship so you don’t turn into strangers who sleep in the same bed, but on the other hand, your married home should be a place where you can be completely yourself and be so comfortable with each other.
Don’t buy into that, “The woman is always right” crap. Everyone in a marriage should be compromising sometimes, not just the man.
Make sure you have food waiting for you *after *the ceremony/reception. This was the single best advice I was given before my wedding. Before the ceremony, during the ceremony and at the reception we were so busy we hardly got a chance to eat. By the time everything was done we were about to pass out from hunger (and alcohol, but that’s different) and room service at our hotel was already closed. But we had sent a gift basket of snacks to ourselves in advance. It was the best choice we ever made.
My biggest regret was not getting all the photos I wanted. We were on a budget, we did have a professional photographer, but he mainly did the “getting ready, wedding photos, family at the altar shots.” I had a friend with a nice DSLR go around and take candids - but he missed a LOT of key people. My favorite Aunt - only one picture of the back of her head. No candids AT ALL of the groom’s mother.
The only thing I would do over would be to take 20 minutes, grab that camera and get some photos of my favorite people too!
If you’re already living together, be prepared to realize that the fact that you’re now married doesn’t really change anything. That annoying thing she does every morning? She’s still gonna do it. That thing she yells at you for every week? She’s still gonna yell at you for it. Getting married doesn’t change you, nor does it change your spouse. And that’s a good thing, but it seems a few people I know thought that getting married would make things “better” and they were surprised by the sameness of it.
You’re getting married for love, for a commitment, for the ability to spend long, happy lives together. But you’re also getting married because you can tolerate each other’s down sides!
I’ve told this to people and they thought it was a depressing thought. I just figure it’s realistic. I love my husband and I love being married to him, but the poor man still won’t listen the first time I say something and still won’t pick up his socks until the next day.
This is true, but our kids LOVE looking at our wedding pictures.
We had the same thing happen to us. Our officiant had my husband say he would “love, honor and obey” and then he skipped that whole section for me. I remind my husband of this often :D. We also had a hurricane hit during our outdoor wedding. I wore a raincoat over my dress and my dad and the guys in the wedding party got drenched while hooking up a generator so that we’d have some power. The guests sang an impromptu round of the theme song from Titanic. They evacuated the nearby island where we were supposed to stay that night and we ended up spending our wedding night on the floor of my mom’s living room surrounded by six guys who had flown in for the wedding and couldn’t leave because the airport was closed. It was fun!
Anyway, my advice for marriage (and life in general, actually) is that you should treat the people you love with just as much or even more politeness than you would have toward a stranger.
Marriage advice? Here’s the biggest piece for me:
When women are upset about something, they DON’T want solutions to their problems - at least, not immediately. What they want is sympathy. Men think that offering solutions is a way of showing they care, because the problem is making the woman sad, and the man doesn’t want her to be sad. WRONG. The immediate problem is that she’s sad, and wants to see that you sympathize with her. If your mind is focusing on the problem she’s complaining about, you’re not thinking of her feelings - you’re doing a problem-solving exercise. Just listen, make comforting noises, and let her know you’re on her side. Once she’s over the emotional side of her problem, THEN address the problem with a solution.
You can’t imagine how important this rule is when living with a woman.
There’s been some good advice so far in this thread. Here are my two cents, for better or for worse (as they say):
For day of: I don’t know if you’re doing the traditional reception with family, friends, cake cutting, father/daughter dance, etc, but force each other to pause a few times during the reception, take a deep breath, look around, and just absorb the moment. The day will fly by so quickly otherwise, you won’t remember anything.
For the lifetime after: marriage is tough. I say this as a very happily married man, coming up on 12 years. My wife is great, we love each other and our kids, and we have happy lives, but marriage is still sometime tough. It doesn’t mean either of you are necessarily failing at it, but just remember to be reasonable with each other. Don’t go to bed angry. Don’t look to start fights. And don’t forget- it’s “we” now. Your actions (and hers) don’t just affect you (or her), they affect both of you.
Enjoy your lives together, and good luck!
On the day of your wedding, there will be someone who has made it their mission to irritate you. At my wedding, it was the photographer (who took beautiful pictures that we look at all the time, four years later), but it could be the caterer, your great-aunt Eulalia, whomever. There is no way to know who it’ll be in advance, and you need to expect it so that it doesn’t throw you.
Don’t do it, brah!
Similar to what others have said, but it bears repeating: Enjoy your wedding!
By Saturday morning, all the planning that you and your fiance have done will be over. Your entire job description on your wedding day is as follows (this goes for both of you):
Other people will be there to handle all the minutiae for you. If everything isn’t exactly the way you expected, so what? It’s too late anyway. ENJOY. YOUR. WEDDING.
Ditto this, but I tell you it’s not always easy. We (men) are genetically wired to cut-to-the-chase.
One more thing. Ignore the people who say how horrible marriage is, and how once you get married you don’t get any. I speak from 32 years experience this Thursday.
I haven’t found marriage particularly hard. There are good days, and a few bad days. There are days when you are both irritable because the baby cried all night. There are days when one or the other of you is sick. You will both do things, unintentionally, that will piss off the other person. Just tell yourself it is temporary, and it will pass. The good days outweigh the bad 100 - 1.