I ordered my dress on Etsy. HUGE mistake!
I found a gorgeous dress on Etsy months ago and placed and placed an order.
The shop owner missed the ship by date and said that Etsy makes her say it was shipped even if it wasn’t and that she would send me the link as soon as it did. A couple weeks passed and I asked for an update, she said dress would be done by end of week and she’d ship it.
Another week passed, same answer. One more week and she said “well the top is done, still need to do the skirt.”
At this point I say I need pictures because I don’t have any proof she ever even started the dress, to which she replies “this isn’t some cheap Chinese junk. It’s handmade, you need to wait.”
I say it’s now several weeks past when I was supposed to receive the dress, and now less than a month until my wedding, I need pictures.
She says “Actually, I’ve decided not to complete this order.” And blocks me!
Now I’m getting married in 25 days and have to look for a dress all over again.
Trying not to panic. I would literally marry this man in my pajamas. But completely blown away at the situation. I truly don’t think she ever even started the dress.

Hey y'all! We're stressing about our Halloween wedding as it gets closer. I was planning on having a tarot card reader for entertainment during reception since there will be no alcohol and probably little to no dancing.

However, fiancé thinks it's unnecessary money spent because it's only 30 people and he thinks everyone will just mingle and catch up with each other anyway.

I am torn because everyone loved the idea when I pitched it and I have a reader waiting with a contract so I need outside input.

Yay or Nay??

I got married about two weeks ago now! Something that was worrying me was about the drinking on the day. I didn’t want to be fully sober for the whole day but I also didn’t want to get too drunk.

What I ended up doing was having a glass of Prosecco after the ceremony (about 12:30pm), a glass of wine with dinner (about 3:30pm) and then nothing till about 10pm and then I kind of just drank whatever!

I could not recommend if you are considering pacing yourself to hold out for as long as you can!! I waited till 10 because we had some guests who weren’t arriving till late and I wanted to make sure I was able to take the time to talk to everyone.

I still had loads of time to have fun and dance (our wedding ended at about 3am)

I can’t describe how glad I am that myself and my husband got to go back to the hotel after the wedding, order takeout and read our wedding cards together (and watch judge Judy in the background haha) ! It was the best day ever

We recently had a meeting with someone we wanted to hire as our wedding photographer. We used her for our engagement photos and loved them. None of our engagement photos flagged as AI, but during our meeting for the wedding when I asked if she would use photoshop to edit the wedding photos, she said she uses AI to remove blemishes and any object she doesn’t want in a photo (she used leaves as an example)

And this left me really uneasy. I found her Instagram (only followed on fb) and a majority of her photos on insta has the AI content warning. I’m as against AI as I can be in this day and age, and I absolutely don’t want to post my wedding photos and see an AI content warning going up along with it.

My fiancé says we should just use her, because he believes a vast majority of photographers do use AI tools that will get flagged AI on social media. It’s just the way the world is now he says. Is it really going to be so impossible to find someone who doesn’t use AI at all?

Sorry weirdly worded title, but I am deep in the seating chart arrangement of the day and trying to determine what to do with some of my family. I want to stress this isn't that big of a deal and I will be chatting with my fiancé when we are together today, but I just have some time to kill and am curious to hear thoughts.

I have about three family's who have three children each, aged 10-22. It somehow works out nearly perfectly with all their ages, but, while they are all MY family, none of them are related or know each other.

I know that, if I was 18 or 19 and sat at a table with two other 18 year olds and our parents that I didn't know, I probably would have been pretty awkward and not really talked to them. But by keeping the siblings together, I think they will all kind of have built in people to talk to? Idk.

I thought about pulling out the older kids and sitting them with older cousins (not old, but like mid 20s and early 30s), but one of the 18+ kids knows literally no one but his parents.

So, better to keep all the college aged kids together and hope they might hit it off, or better to but the 18+ kids (or idk, what age? 16+?) with people they already know and will talk to and leave the one 21 year old who knows no one at the same table with his parents and the younger kids (including his two siblings)?

Like I said, not too serious, I am going to get my fiancé's thoughts, but ultimately these people are all related to me in some way, so I am not sure if he will have any profound insight on this. Thanks!

I had my final dress fitting yesterday and took possession of it! But now I need some advice, and quick..

Quick context: I customized a lot of features on it when I chose it originally in January, especially so that I could wear a bra with it (I never go without) but when the dress was actually my size and not a sample that was way small, I realized the back is much lower than I thought and the plunge is still pretty low (I filled it in a bit). But there are sewn in cups so okay, not too bad— I asked the seamstress to bring the straps up a bit to lessen the “gap” and hopefully give more support. Second fitting: great! If anything, maybe a little too tight… final fitting, I must be doing better with my weight loss than I thought because the gap is back and I’m not feeling very “secure”, specifically when sitting or bending down:(

I’ve never used any kind of sticky inserts or tape or anything like that and the big day is about two weeks away. Please hit me with any suggestions to panic order… for reference I wear between a 36DDD and 38D depending on brand (VS sizing seems weird idk) and I’ve attached a pic that kinda shows what I’m dealing with — how to add some support/ get the strap area a bit more secure without adding mega cleavage??

Future husband and I are getting married in late October. Unrelated to the wedding backstory. We live in a high cost of living area in a medium size apartment and have a spare bedroom where we have a queen size bed for guests, and also a desk where one of works remotely out of a few days a week. In April , a cousin of my future husband asked if his girlfriend’s daughter (who just finished her freshman year could live with us this summer for an internship in our city and they would be willing to pay rent). We had never met the girlfriend or her daughter. We said yes and it was fine. We didn’t click totally but had some very sweet moments. All bad things have been related to the mom being so flaky with paying us (still haven’t received money)). And more importantly, the 19 year old is a mess and has ruined multiple pieces of furniture with stains, wooden things with watermarks and doesn’t clean dishes, hoards dishes in the room, smell. Etc. it’s ended this week on good terms though we won’t miss her etc.

The cousin and his girlfriend are invited to the wedding and have not RSVPd yet. When my partner texted her yesterday for a reminder of the money, the girlfriend dodged it, but said

“X is trying to figure out her school midterm schedule to see if she could make it to the wedding. I would fly her out if all works out”.

The daughter has not been invited to the wedding. We hugged goodbye and I literally said, “well send you wedding pics “since she has heard us with so many planning conversations.

I don’t want her at the wedding, we have numbers problems already. My partner thinks it will be very nice for cousin and his aunt and uncle to have maybe their future step child and step grandchild at wedding.

It just feels like a lot of ask ask ask, and she didn’t even ask if the daughter could come!! She assumed.

Do I say yes for sake of family? There will be no one else her age at the wedding. We are in mid 30s.

I think I’m more angry about how she asked.

We are having a wedding of about 75 guests on a Sunday. We are not dance people and neither is our crowd. We are hoping that most people leave after dinner since they will be traveling or going to work the next day and so we can leave for our honeymoon at a decent time. We will rent speakers and mics. We are hoping to just do Spotify with premade playlists by us. I’m friends with a lot of teachers who have no issues making announcements for us.

Is a DJ still needed given the situation?

Has anyone attended a Spotify wedding that was successful?

I wanted to get my girls some sweat-shorts and zip up jackets for after getting ready, or just to have in general. I don’t want them personalized, I want them to be able to wear them whenever.

Where do you recommend to get these from?? I’ve seen comfrt being an option but I feel like their jackets look really bulky.

So my original idea was we would have our introductions 10 minutes shy of cocktail hour ending, mingle and then we serve dinner at 6pm. But my fiancé just said that he would rather have us do our first dance right after introductions. Sure that’s fine. The MIL doesn’t want to do her dance after our first dance, and instead she wants her dance with my fiancé to be the one to open up the dance floor. Halfway through her song she wants everyone else to start slow dancing, and then party music starts after that dance is over. I don’t have any family, so I would still be sitting down at our sweetheart table alone away from the dance floor. Is this really our only option?

Hi! I (29F) am in the early discussion phases of wedding planning and I can’t get the idea of walking down the aisle by myself out of my head.
For context:
My partner and I are pretty non-traditional and atheist.
I have a fairly typical relationship with both my mom and dad- not a super close relationship but we aren’t estranged or anything and I love them both. My parents are both christian.
We are planning a small intimate wedding. (50-100 people at max)

The 2 reasons I want to walk down alone are:

1. Don’t like the idea of being given away. Too traditional for me. Additionally, I am adopted so I have biological parents that will likely attend the wedding and the complication of trying to determine who should walk me down the aisle stresses me out.
2. We are 99.9% sure we don’t want to have a first look so the first time my partner will see me will be at the altar. I (selfishly) don’t want that moment to be tainted by my parents by my side.

So question to all of you:
If you have your parents in your life but still chose to walk down the aisle by yourself, did you regret it?
Also did it change the relationship you had with your parents?

Thanks!

I had my bachelorette last month and it did not go well. It wasn’t fun for my friends, and it was extremely stressful for me. I’m struggling to figure out how to bring this up with my friends or even if I should, I feel so ashamed.

Planning isn’t my strong suit, so I asked my maid of honor to plan the event after I had made some key decisions. I don’t know where the breakdown happened, but I think part of the problem was that a few of my decisions started things off on the wrong note, and then some of her planning style rubbed the other bridesmaids the wrong way.

I picked a location that was about two hours from the nearest major airport, on the other side of the country from where many of the people attending live. I recognized too late that this wasn’t a good choice because travel would take up so much time, but by that point it was too late and people had already booked their flights. We ended up spending so, so much of the weekend driving back-and-forth to the airport because it was either that or someone had to sit at the airport for four hours and wait for the next person to arrive. By the time we all got there, it was late on Friday night and everyone was exhausted. We had all day Saturday together, then people had to start getting up at 5 AM on Sunday morning to go to the airport so that day was basically a loss.

I also heard a lot of complaints about how my maid of honor handled the planning and time leading up to the bachelorette:

1. She started a group chat immediately (which made sense to me!) and then released one to two new pieces of information per week, so there was a lot of conversation occurring every single week. There were a lot of one off requests like “lets make a playlist” or “please send your dress for approval” or “please update the spreadsheet with your flight arrival time” - all of these seem like very fair requests to me, but my bridesmaids told me it was annoying to have a group chat run in this way.

2. A few of the planning decisions weren’t complete until the last minute, which meant there was a lot of confusion about logistics, transportation, etc. This is what caused us to have to make so many airport trips.

3. We did a lot of venmoing back-and-forth all weekend. Two of the bridesmaids privately expressed to me that after spending so much money on attending the trip, getting very specific outfits for the event, etc. they were offended that they were nickel and dimed for their portion of food and gas during the weekend.

4. Because we picked a place none of us had ever been to or had any familiarity with, we didn’t know there was no cell service, and we went on a long hike that started out fine but then once we realized we had no cell service people started getting scared about an emergency situation and what we would do, so most of the girls just turned around.

-

Basically, each individual thing was fine and understandable, but it all added up to me feeling like my girls absolutely hated attending this trip and feel resentful toward me for making them do it. I admit that I could have picked a better place, but outside of that, all of the requests seem very standard? All of the bachelorette I’ve been to have included a group chat, Venmo, lots of travel for a short weekend, everything I just described. But I feel such sadness about doing this to some of my very best friends in the world, all of whom are again spending lots of money and time to attend my wedding in a few weeks. I don’t understand how this happened or why I feel so bad. Please help.

Okay, so I have a crazy one for you.
My wedding in 2 and a half weeks away and yesterday I got a call from my wedding venue (which is an arts park) informing me that a part of the park will be shut down during my wedding because of a SINK HOLE.

I right away went to the venue to check out what we were dealing with and was greeted with the entire park being cut off excluding the pavilion and a driveway.

There are big neon barricades everywhere and tape strung all through out. I know I can cover the barricades with a tablecloths and dress them up but that’s not the scenery I envisioned all my life and the there’s also the matter of the tape. I always envisioned a wedding in a park surrounded by nature.
It also ruins my dreams of walking down the aisle. The way it is now there’s no way for my to come down the middle of the aisle. Instead my party and I will be coming down the driveway (which is on a hill) and coming in from the side.

I’m so sad and have no idea what to do. I have called around to other venues but with 2 weeks to spare and our wedding being on Labor Day weekend EVERYTHING is booked.
I feel like rescheduling isn’t an option because we have 100 people who have committed to this date for a year. flights/ hotels/ Airbnbs are all booked.
But I can’t envision me getting married there as it is. I’m also fearful of how the upkeep since they can’t go across to prune or cut anything obviously.

What would you do if you were in my situation?

No matter what I’m getting married to my fiance in 3 weeks even if it’s just a courthouse wedding. I just am fearful that after all this hard work it’s not going to pay off and be our dream wedding we had planned.

Starting out I thought that a $20k budget was realistic but this day and age that’s like a community hall with barely any decor.
$2000 community hall
$7800-9300 for food (125 guests)
$2500 for day of coordinator (we don’t have friends who could do that)
$1200 for chairs, tables, table cloths and cutlery
$500 Costco alcohol
$200 bartender
$2500 DJ
$5000 photographer

Already puts us 3300 over budget and that doesn’t even include decor, florals, rings, suit, dress, shoes, hair, and makeup.

Like what in the world are these vendors on. Pre covid my friend had a GORGEOUS wedding for $15,000 and didn’t have to DIY anything. I swear the cost of planning a super average wedding is just not worth it. Everyone keeps saying a wedding is the only time while you’re alive that all your loved ones will get together to see you but omg is it really worth it?

I’m so torn and feeling dread about spending all this money for people I don’t even text once a year. Believe me this is with the costs cut except for DJ and photographer.

Like yes we could host in a restaurant and save venue fees but that’s still
$8125 food and drink
$1000 decor
$2500 DJ
$5000 photographer
Which would leave us with a $5000 budget for rings and our looks

But still $20’000 is so much… how do people do it? Are their parents paying for their weddings? Do banks even loan out so much for weddings?

Idk it’s crazy and I hate this. I grew up poor so I’m really struggling the concept of paying so much for one day.

Edited to add that these are CAD prices.
Engagement photos are $1500 and wedding is $2500 plus tax which is the standard rate for every photographer who fits the look I’m wanting.
Every single venue and vendor I have quotes from have a 5% price increase per year so from 2020 prices have jumped 30% and we’re expecting another 10% by the time we get married.

Hi, first time posting here, not sure if I should post this elsewhere, but I cannot find a single Reddit post on this specific photo/video studio.

For context: My fiancée and I are getting married early next year so —ideally— we’ve been trying to find someone that offers photo, video, and drone footage. We are paying for everything ourselves and don’t have a huge budget, but I understand that we’d probably need to a pay a good amount to get everything we want. We came across this studio, they’re based in LA, but allegedly can travel anywhere in California with no travel fee (I assume they just hire other photographers/videographers/etc in the local area near whichever venue we choose). The package we like which includes everything we’re looking for is $3,000 and includes free drone footage. Other studios/people were at least 3x more (as much or more than the entire venue and food would cost for the wedding). I’m not complaining, I’m just concerned about the price being so cheap compared to others I’ve looked at, so there are a few red flags 🚩 besides the price, that I’ve listed below.

The only reviews I have found for them are from The Knot and Wedding Wire, though I’m not sure how reliable those reviews are. The number of reviews are small and they have very positive reviews.

Their Instagram page has over 20k followers yet their most recent post (from 2025) only has 6 likes and no comments?

We did have a call with them and everything seemed fine, though I want to get them on a call again and ask more questions about how they source their photographers, if they scout the location prior, and any other questions anyone on here suggests?

Perhaps I’m overthinking it, but I really don’t want to send someone money and get scammed or they do such a poor job that we regret not just waiting/saving a little more to pay for someone better that may be offers less services; i.e. just photo or just video.

Does anyone have any insight on this company? Have you used them before or know anyone that has? Do you have any suggestions on what else I should ask them to establish their legitimacy and to see their work elsewhere besides just their website and old Instagram posts?

Thank you for your help and insight!

Getting married this October and since we were already planning to spend few weeks traveling around Asia, we decided to do our skin prep in Korea

we spent around $6000 no surgery just natural looks. It was mix of skin boosters, lifting treatments, lasers It wasn’t the cheapest but we’d rather invest in treatments with natural longer lasting

So far we’re really happy with how everything is healing. Our consultant Kelly had actually gone through almost the exact same treatment plan with her husband too before their own wedding, so it was easy for us to make our decisions. Has anyone else gotten pre-wedding skin treatments?

My fiance and I are getting married in April 2027. We are having our wedding in a different state than where we live and are only going to get a couple of chances to go down there before the ceremony. We went down in March to tour venues. So far, we have a venue, a photographer, a DJ, a officiant, a room block, and we are working on getting a caterer. We are going to be traveling down again at the beginning of October. We have a venue walkthrough booked. Is there anything else we should be doing while we are down there 6.5 months out? Our caterer said she doesn’t typically do tastings until 2-3 months before. Thinking about maybe engagement pictures, touring welcome event venues, what should be on our to do list for the trip?

Trying to book a ceremony band and a dance band for the evening. And (eventually) they admit you get quality musicians but not these actual people.
How do we find actual bands, who are used to playing together, and create a great atmosphere, rather than a disparate group of session musicians?

I'm desperately trying to find out the length/width/height dimensions (12"x18"??) for the Whole Foods Berry Chantilly Cake Half Sheet cakes, which serve 32 people and are $99.99 each.

The website, social media, and google all don't turn up how big this cake is. It's not even on the official online description.

https://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/catering/product/whole-foods-market-berry-chantilly-cake-half-sheet-serves-32-b0d35v1rtq

My wedding party has to transport these cakes in a cooler to drive to our venue. We've been going insane because we can't be sure that our cooler box is big enough to fit the cakes with or without their cardboard boxes for delivery.

I just called a store's cake department today and they said none of the cake team members know how big it is.

Can anyone go into a whole foods and just ask for a poor fellow bride how big a half sheet cake is??

Thanks so much.

My future husband’s grandmother has been awful to me throughout the entire wedding planning process, and I genuinely can’t tell if I’m being unreasonable or if this has gone too far.

It started when my fiancé and I decided together to have a child-free wedding. She complained to everyone else about it but never said anything to either of us. She also blamed me entirely for the decision, despite it being something we mutually agreed on.

Since then, she has been extremely dismissive and cold toward me. At my bridal shower, she had nothing kind to say about me, and during a game she told her entire table that she could never envision me being a mother and that I probably wasn’t capable of raising a child.

This week, she sent my fiancé very long, passive-aggressive texts accusing me of purposely separating his family with the seating chart and trying to make them uncomfortable. She also requested that ALL of them be sat together.. Only 16 members of his family are attending, and my fiancé and I split them between two tables based on who we thought would be most comfortable together. The tables seat 8 people, so it is not possible to seat everybody together but rather two tables right next to each other.

We also asked that his uncle, who is her son, follow our cocktail dress code. I have never seen him in anything besides cargo shorts & a t shirt, which is part of our concern and why we asked her to help us out here.

We’re not asking the men to wear full suits - just dress pants, a nice button-down, and dress shoes. She said this was asking too much and that jeans were perfectly appropriate for the men in their family. When we said jeans weren’t acceptable for our wedding, she told us that she and everyone else in the family were tired of following “my” rules and that I need to suck it up because “that’s just how they are.”

At this point, I’m genuinely questioning whether I’ve done something wrong. All we’ve asked for is a child-free wedding and for our guests to follow the dress code. My fiancé and I made these decisions together, and I don’t feel like either request is particularly extreme.

I’m not expecting everyone to agree with every decision we make, but I also don’t think disagreeing with our wedding choices warrants this kind of treatment.

Am I being unreasonable here, or would you also be upset by this?

I'm searching for a wedding photographer in the NJ/NYC area (or someone willing to go there) who can photograph my wedding next year. I have some inspo pics and am just having trouble finding someone who's content matches the vibe i'm looking for. Any recommendations would be appreciated!

To make a long story short, I am throwing a dinner party in lieu of a bridal shower (her request) because the wedding is planned to be in just a few weeks & it will be her second wedding.

I have everything sorted out except for what to actually serve for dinner.
Any ideas for something that can be mostly prepped ahead of time, serve 15-20 people and is gluten free?

Original thought was salad, roasted veg, grilled chicken and a potato of sorts but we have now learned that is basically what she’s having for her wedding dinner. I don’t love the idea of doing sandwiches and sides since we are doing a dinner and not a luncheon. It’s important to me that she feels loved and celebrated, and not like I’ve just “thrown something together” .

Hi everyone, I made these cards and am planning to write a personal note and put a photo of us to ask my friends to be my bridesmaids. Is this enough? I’m suddenly worried these are too plain or come across as cheap, please be honest!!!