Wedding Mishaps that Never Happened

It’s common knowledge that wedding days never go as planned. No matter how much work you put into preparing, planning, & preventing – something always goes amiss. The perfect example is my sister’s wedding: she is a wedding photographer & so am I, so you’d think that we’d have thought of (and prevented) every single mishap you could think of, right? Wrong. We still missed a few things and the result was that formal introductions & dinner ran about 30 minutes late.

But you know what? It’s okay.

As a wedding photographer, I do absolutely everything within my power to help my brides & grooms out – from helping to plan their day, to creating a timeline, to doing my best to keep the day on track.

However, certain things always happen that are out of our control.

But, I’m here to tell you that no matter what goes wrong, it has still always worked out. And here’s the best part: more than likely, the only people who will realize that anything went “wrong” is the bride & groom.

Don’t believe me? Let me show you a few examples. We can even make it into a game – look at each image below & see if you can figure out the “mistake” before you read my explanation below!

This is one of my favorite cake photos ever. I just love the tiers & the soft flowers, the backlighting, the gorgeous antique cake-stand, the romantic cake-topper, and the guests fading into the background.
There’s just one small problem: this is not the cake that the bride ordered. In fact, it’s not even close. The cake flavor inside isn’t even correct. I guarantee that you’d never be able to tell from this photo though, would you?

I didn’t even know this story until about 6 months after the wedding, but the cake the bride originally ordered, was covered in an intricate stenciling of an elegant pattern. She had also ordered the cake to be 2 different flavors: she wanted the layer that they would cut as husband & wife to be her new husband’s favorite flavor and the rest of the cake was to be another. When the cake arrived, it was as plain as could be with no stenciling at all. Thankfully, the florist had sent a whole box of extra blooms and they were able to “doctor” up the cake to be a bit more sophisticated. Further, when they cut into the cake, the flavors had been baked backward.

Rain is unfortunate, especially when a bride & groom have grand plans for outdoor photos. However, it is completely out of anyone’s control. I promise, I do absolutely everything I can to get around rain. I have umbrellas, I’ve found alternative locations for my brides & grooms, we watch the radar, I will literally do anything (including getting soaking wet, while everyone else is dry under umbrellas).

I try to do my best to avoid putting everyone under umbrellas for every single photo if I can. Umbrellas are fantastic and a wonderful tool, but they’re a dead giveaway that it’s raining. For a portion of the photos, they can be fun, but I really try my best to give variety on a wedding day and avoid taking every photo under an umbrella. Can you tell that it’s raining in the above photo? No? Well good! That’s the goal!

Can you tell which of the bridesmaids’ dresses had to be repaired the morning of the wedding?

The maid of honor’s dress (the red one) needed steamed. However, time was short and someone came up with the brilliant idea of tossing it in the dryer, on low heat, with a wet washcloth. In theory, it’s a great plan. However – when they opened the dryer to take the dress out, all of the flower embellishments had fallen off. Thankfully, some equally quick thinking got them all back attached in time for the wedding!

One of my favorite pieces of advice to give brides is to make sure that someone knows how to fasten her dress. No matter if it’s a simple zipper, a corset back that ties, or buttons, someone needs to be familiar & have practice so that it’s easy the morning of the wedding. The perfect place for this to happen is a bride’s final fitting – and having several people present to watch the seamstress & practice with her is ideal (usually the Mother of the Bride & her Maid of Honor).

There is a reason that this is my favorite piece of advice though: and it’s because once, Ellen & I arrived to photograph a wedding & no one knew how to help the bride into her dress. Thankfully, we knew, and we could easily step in & help! In this case, I let Ellen lace her up while I continued taking photos.

Sometimes, really tough calls have to be made quickly on a wedding day. And the trickiest part of it, is that those calls usually come at the beginning of the day, before the bride & groom can see each other to discuss their options.

In this case, the last shuttle bus from the hotel to the ceremony site got lost/waylaid/abducted by aliens. No one could get in touch with it and the groom made the decision to wait on those guests before beginning the ceremony (assuming it would be arriving any moment, maybe 5-10 minutes late at most). Well, it was way longer than 5-10 minutes, and even though the guests did get a little antsy, everything turned out alright.

You’ll never believe this. So, while the maid of honor was zipping up the back of this bride’s dress, she caught her finger in the zipper and it got cut. Before she realized what had happened, her finger bled onto the bow of the dress.

Mom flew to the rescue with a Tide-To-Go pen. That, paired with some very skilled bow tying, and no one knew that it had ever happened (see below).

Those are just a few of the many many mishaps that can & will happen on a wedding day. I’ve been a part of days where the bride forgot her earrings at the salon, where the Father of the Bride’s tux was missing buttons, and where the marriage certificate the bride & groom were given was not theirs (that’s a whole other crazy story that I’ll tell one day).

And as crazy as some of these examples are, they all have one thing in common:

The wedding day continues to go on & the bride and groom still get married.

I’ve yet to be at a wedding where the entire day stopped rolling forward & the wedding just didn’t happen. Yes, things happen & sometimes major things go wrong, but the key to remember is that it’s okay. It will just add some flavor to your day & give you something to laugh at in the years to come. As long as you can walk into your wedding day, knowing that things will go wrong but being 100% okay with whatever happens, you will have the perfect wedding day.