'My wedding is in a week. I wish someone told me these five things when I started planning'

The thing about planning a wedding is that no one really teaches you how to do it, you just get thrown in the deep end and have to hope you can swim.

I'm now one week out from my wedding and after about 18 months of planning, there's so much I wish I had known at the start – and I have some planning regrets.

There's the obvious stuff, like 'everything costs more than you think' and 'pick a date in the cooler months to save money', but a lot of the advice I would give to myself if I could go back to the start of this whole crazy process goes beyond that.

So, as a 2026 bride getting ready to finally tie the knot, here's what I wish I knew when I started wedding planning.

1. Book early, make decisions later

Good wedding vendors like photographers and makeup artists can book out more than a year in advance, so I started looking for mine very early.

I got all my vendors locked in 12 months out from my wedding date and wanted to start planning things like hairstyles and floral arrangements right away ... and that was a terrible idea.

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Your taste can change a lot in a year so trying to lock in colour palettes and major wedding decisions 12 months out is a recipe for chaos.

I changed my mind about what flowers I wanted three times in nine months, and I didn't realise furniture I rented wouldn't fit in my venue until weeks before the wedding.

My amazing vendors helped me deal with those issues but in hindsight, I should have booked vendors early then left the decision-making until the wedding was closer.

2. Social media will make you insane – delete it if you can

As soon as I got engaged my TikTok, Instagram and Pinterest feeds were taken over by wedding content.

At first it was exciting and a great way to get inspiration.

Within three months, it had sent me out of my mind.

I was comparing every single wedding decision I made to what I had seen trending online and was convinced I had to pay for all these extra things I'd never need, like Prada wedding shoes (I'm not in a Prada tax bracket).

We all know social media can have negative mental health impacts and that was definitely true for me while wedding planning, especially because my algorithms just kept feeding me more.

If I could go back in time, I'd use TikTok and Pinterest to collect wedding inspo for a few weeks then delete them from my phone for the sake of my sanity.

3. You can't afford most of the weddings you see online

Another thing I learned too late about the weddings I saw all over social media is that a lot of them cost an absolute fortune.

I'm talking $20,000 spent on flowers, wedding dresses that cost upwards of $8000, venues that have a minimum spend of $60,000 – that kind of expensive.

The average Australian couple just can't afford that, myself included, and that's OK.

But looking at photos of weddings I could never afford made it hard to plan within my own budget because I'd get my heart set on the way something looked before realising it cost more than I make in three months.

I was also shocked to learn a lot of the wedding photos that go around online aren't from real weddings at all.

Many are actually from styled wedding photoshoots featuring models, a custom dress, and thousands of dollars of flowers strewn through venues that cost six figures.

They look great, but they're not exactly a realistic representation of the average wedding.

4. Your wedding isn't as important to your vendors as it is to you

This one was a tough pill to swallow because, like most brides, my wedding felt like the most important thing in my life while I was planning it.

I'm an overthinker and when my vendors (who were all amazing) didn't respond within an hour of me sending an email I'd often panic and assume something was wrong.

But the reality is that most vendors are doing multiple weddings every week, so yours is just one of many.

Your wedding is important to them and they care about making it special but they also have plenty of other couples they're working with and their own lives to manage.

So if they're slow to reply to a text or email, or if they don't have time to answer your questions right away, don't take it personally.

5. Don't bother with things that don't matter to you

Some of the things I worried about most while wedding planning were the things I didn't want to do but felt like couples were expected to do, like long vows in front of all the guests, a flashy reception entrance or a choreographed first dance.

I knew I had chosen the right person to marry when my soon-to-be husband turned to me and said, "then we just won't do those things".

He didn't want to do them either, so why force ourselves?

Some relatives were disappointed when I said we'd be skipping a few traditions, but ultimately your wedding is whatever you want to make it.

So if you want to skip the bouquet toss, wear a black wedding dress, or choose your witnesses with a door raffle, just do it.

There really are no rules and I would've avoided a lot of stress if I knew that sooner.

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