After all the wedding planning and prep, your wedding day should (hopefully) be a little less hectic than the days prior. To ensure smooth sailing when your day arrives, there are a few tasks you should either, a, already have checked off your list, or b, delegated to a family or wedding party member. For your own sanity, here’s what not to do on the day of your wedding:
1. Stress About the Weather
While you’ll want to be aware of what’s going on (you’ll need to know whether or not you’ll need your weather plan B and so on), tearing your hair out over the forecast will do nothing but bum you out. Let your wedding planner deal with setting up the backup weather venue and your hairstylist find anti-humidity serum for your half-up do. All you need to worry about is marrying your partner and partying all night. And, hey, weather reports are only accurate, like, half the time anyway, right?
2. Start (or Finish) Big DIY Projects
Baking mini muffins and tying ribbons around 200 packages for reception favors sounds nice in theory when you’re seven months out—not so much when the morning-of arrives. The only DIY projects you should assign yourself are the ones you can complete with enough time to spare before you wedding day without going crazy.
3. Get a Massage, Wax, Facial or Other Intense Beauty Treatment
Indulging in some of these luxurious spa treatments? Schedule them a few days before your wedding day. You never know if you’ll have a funny reaction to a facial or brow wax, or if your masseuse will go all deep-tissue on you (aka make you too sore to get down on the dance floor). Finally, mani-pedis are best done either one or two days before your wedding. That way, all you’ll need to do is get hair and makeup done on the day of.
4. Wear New Shoes for the First Time
Take the time to break in new shoes several weeks before your day. Even if you're planning to wear flats, you'll want to make sure you're not setting yourself up for blisters. Break them in by putting them on and walking around for an hour or two several times until they feel good. And it never hurts to bring a backup pair of sandals or flats in case.
5. Exercise Too Hard
If exercise is part of your daily routine and helps you unwind before your vows, definitely get a workout in—but don’t push so hard that you risk pulling a muscle or expending every last ounce of energy. You have a long night ahead of you!
6. Forget to Eat
We cannot stress enough how important it is to stay fueled on your wedding day. A good breakfast and lunch won't affect how your wedding attire fits—but it'll keep your mood and energy level up. Plus, you'll need a little something in your stomach if you plan to indulge in a getting-ready cocktail or two.
7. Write Your Vows
Please don’t wait until the last minute to begin writing your wedding vows. If you want to make a few tweaks here and there to your handwritten vows, go for it. But that feeling of, “Oh my god, I haven’t even started,” is not something you want to wake up to the morning of your wedding.
8. Pack for Your Honeymoon
In a perfect world, you’ll have packed for your honeymoon a few days in advance. But if you're not quite finished and leaving right after the reception, it’s okay to delegate this task to a close friend. If you're not leaving until the next day, put it out of your mind for now and do it after the wedding.
9. Spend the Entire Day on Your Phone
You might consider your phone another one of your limbs, but do yourself a favor and answer as few texts, emails, Snapchats and DMs as possible. That can wait until tomorrow, but today is all about soaking in every moment.
10. Try to Control Everything
Just breathe. You have an amazing family, wedding party, planner and squad of vendors who can take care of any issues that pop up. If you’re a self avowed control freak, make your day-of timeline ahead of time and share it so everyone knows where to be and when. Otherwise, try to go with the flow and delegate as much as much as possible.