What I’ve Noticed About Couples Who Deeply Enjoyed Their Wedding Day

And it might surprise you…

I’ve photographed hundreds of weddings, and after a while you stop noticing the extravagant flowers, stunning views, and incredible designs first. You start noticing the people.

The way they move through the day. The way they manage their expectations. The way they respond when things don’t go according to plan. The way they look at each other when nobody else is paying attention. That’s what creates the experience.

The couples who enjoyed their wedding most don’t usually look back with tears because they missed it. They look back with tears because they can feel it all over again.

A Few Things I’ve Noticed…

1. The happiest couples cared more about people than schedules.

The “win” wasn’t sticking to a timeline down to the minute.

The win was running across the room to hug the college friend who flew across the country. Sitting with grandparents a little longer. Laughing with cousins they hadn’t seen in years. Actually being with the people who came to witness the start of their marriage.

On a wedding day well lived, time isn’t measured by minutes.

It’s measured by hugs, laughter, tears, and the feeling that you were fully there for it.

Bride bends down to hold her grandmothers hand and connect with her while waiting for the rain to subside on her wedding day in Tennessee.

2. They embraced imperfection before the wedding even started.

There was no frantic panic about the weather, no obsessive comparison to someone else’s wedding on Instagram, no illusion that “perfect” was even invited to the wedding.

Instead, they quietly redefined perfection. This couple enjoyed the rain as it fell across the lake at The Eden Estate and took advantage of every moment of togetherness.

Perfect became: “We experienced the day fully, and it reflected who we really are.”

Groom and his grandfather share an umbrella while walking through the rain at The Eden Estates in Tennessee on his wedding day.

3. They flipped a middle finger to the rules.

This is one of my favorite things to watch because the happiest couples knew their values, and then built the entire day around those values.

If a couple genuinely wants to spend cocktail hour with their guests, guess what we don’t do? We don’t spend 45 minutes photographing 60 combinations of 90 family members. If they want to dance until midnight, we don’t drag them off the dance floor for another round of portraits because “that’s what people usually do.”

Instead, we structure the photography around their priorities.

And suddenly their priorities become the wedding-day rules.

4. They trusted their vendors.

Here’s the thing about great vendors: they’re good at their jobs. Often much better at them than the people attending the event. The happiest couples didn’t spend their wedding day managing everyone else.

They let the planner plan, the photographer photograph, the DJ DJ, and the caterer cater.

They understood that their primary job was something else entirely.

5. They attended their own wedding.

This might be the biggest one.

The couples who enjoyed their wedding most remembered that they were getting married, not producing an event. They stayed present. They felt their feelings. They surrounded themselves with a few hundreds of their loved ones and soaked it in (Bourne Mansion on Long Island)/ They let themselves laugh loudly, cry openly, dance badly, hug people tightly, and disappear into little moments together.

They didn’t spend the day wondering how it looked.

They spent the day experiencing how it felt.

And years from now, that’s what they remember, not the perfectly folded napkin, not whether every detail matched, not whether the timeline ran exactly on schedule.

They remember the feeling of saying “I do” to their favorite person while surrounded by everyone they love.

Maximum joy.

Maximum fun.

Maximum emotion.

Maximum “I do.”

And most of all?

Maximum YOU.

Bride and groom kiss in the middle of a few hundred wedding guests as though they are the only two people in the world.

The goal of your wedding day is to experience it, whole-heartedly, to soak in the people around you and to know you can look back and feel it all over again for years to come.

Ready for more?

Don’t Take My Word For It…