What to do When Things Don’t Go as Planned at your Wedding + A First Look At My Dress -

We had a small destination wedding in Florence, Italy so we assumed not everything would go as planned on our wedding day. Most of our planning occurred over e-mail and had a little bit of a language barrier. Our mindset was, we’ll be in Florence, so even if nothing else goes as planned, how bad can it be there?! A theme of Charles’s speech at our wedding was actually that it doesn’t matter if things don’t go exactly as we thought, because as long as we are together it would be perfect. This has proven true many times during our relationship whether we were traveling Internationally and got stuck at border control or had the smoke detector go off during a Valentines dinner we cooked at home one year. This was the perfect mindset to have during our wedding weekend and starting our lives together as a married couple. I know all brides worry leading up to their big day about things going wrong, so today I wanted to share what went wrong during our wedding weekend and what to do when things don’t go as planned at your wedding. Also, be sure to read all the way through because at the end of this post I am sharing the first photo from our wedding and yes.. THE dress is in the picture!!

WE WERE LIKE TRUE ITALIANS AND RAN A BIT BEHIND SCHEDULE ONE DAY

Our driver got a bit turned around going from one winery to another on our wine tour on the Thursday before our wedding, which put us at least an hour behind schedule. We ended up having to skip part of one tour and weren’t able to stop to take photos in a sunflower field as planned, but everyone was having a great time and we had plenty of wine on the bus to keep us happy. The entire day was so much fun and we forewarned everyone that Italians often run behind on schedules, so this just went along with that relaxed frame of mind. Plus, there isn’t much to complain about in Tuscany!

IT WAS WINDY DURING OUR CEREMONY

It was windy on the day of our wedding and my veil would not stay on during our ceremony. I kept grabbing for it whenever a bigger gust of wind came, but finally my sister-in-law just jumped up and took it off for me. Hopefully it looked pretty flowing in the wind while it was on, but it was distracting during the ceremony and I’m glad she took it off so I didn’t have to worry about it any more! We brought it with us to take pictures after our ceremony, but it was still too windy to put it back on. I maybe wore it for a total of 10 minutes that day, so I’m hoping one of my girlfriends who is getting married soon uses it as her ‘Something Borrowed’ so it gets some good use!

OUR FIRST DANCE

The DJ played the wrong song for our first dance. This actually is one of my favorite memories from our wedding day now. Charles wanted to dance to an older song that Barrett Baber redid when he was on The Voice a few years ago called “Lay you Down.” When we first heard his version of this song, Charles would sing it to me all the time. He really wanted this to be our first dane song, so since he wasn’t too opinionated about much else, I had no problem with it because it brought up so many sweet memories. The original version of the song is by Conway Twitty, which is about as honkey-tonk as you can get. Despite us singing the version of the song we wanted to our DJ, he played the old version when it was time for our first dance. Charles and I stood there unsure what to do because it was definitely not the right song, but then we decided to just go with it. We weren’t even sure how to dance to that kind of song together, but made it work and were dying laughing the whole time. Our friends and family were so confused at first because they knew I would never agree to honkey tonk as our first dance, but also found it hilarious and even started a slow clap. While I joked that my pick of something like Jason Mraz ‘I Won’t Give Up‘ wouldn’t have ended up with the wrong version being played, we also wouldn’t end up with such a funny memory. I know when a fight comes around one day that either of us can play the Conway Twitty version of our song and will end up laughing. I linked each version above and I’m sure you can’t help but laugh comparing the two. Fun fact: Before we decided on Florence when we were looking to get married in Austin, Texas I had been in talks with Barrett Baber’s manager to have him come out and surprise Charles during our first dance and was going to let that be his wedding gift!

Really, our Dj as a whole was a funny experience. I don’t think the one we originally thought we were getting was the one who the music company we worked with sent. He arrived wearing a shirt with the F-word on it while he set up. He luckily changed for the actual wedding, but somehow that shirt made an appearance later in the night. I think from the encouragement of some of our guests who thought it was funny. I can’t help but agree, although not totally what you expect at a nice destination wedding in Italy. His commentary before some songs he played (i.e. “I hear Florence is a funky town!” followed by playing ‘Funky Town.’) was hilarious, as was his smoke and light machines. Honestly, he kind of made the party funny the whole night through. We didn’t have super high expectations given the language barrier when planning and figured it couldn’t be too bad, especially if we sent in a playlist of a bunch of songs to play beforehand. Although not all the songs made an appearance and some others (like Funky Town) did, it was super fun and ended up being something everyone was laughing about all night and will be something we are probably laughing at for years.

A few other things came up during the weekend like some last minute cancellations which led to us rearranging room assignments in a hurry and just making what we could work. Everyone was happy being in Florence and every room ended up being amazing so it was no big deal! Our menus and place cards didn’t make it onto our table before the ceremony, but they were all able to be put out while we were gathered inside for a few minutes watching a video I had made for Charles with toasts from a lot of his friends who couldn’t make it to the wedding, so it all worked out.

Overall, my advice is to not freak out and just go with it. Anything that ‘goes wrong’ during your wedding weekend is only as big of a deal as you make it. While some things like a clear mistake for the first dance are obvious to your guests, so many other things aren’t. It’s inevitable that some things will get off track or little things won’t happen exactly as you plan, but that’s just life. Most people won’t even notice if you don’t mention it! If you let little things that come up ruin your day, then they will. But, if you keep your mind on the bigger picture that the whole day is about you getting married, then it will help keep it all in perspective and not be a huge deal. There will always be a picture that doesn’t get taken or a detail that didn’t quite play out as you envisioned, but that isn’t the point of your wedding day. The point is to say your vows and celebrate with those you love!

Andddd now as promised, I am sharing the first of many photos from our wedding. This is when I revealed my dress to my girlfriends who were at my wedding, because almost all of them had not seen even a photo of it prior. I’ll be sharing more images next week.. so stayed tuned.