Your wedding day is one of the best days of your life. It flashes by in a blur, and you want to make sure that you savour every moment with your loved one, your family and friends. Whether you have a big party with every person you’ve ever met or a smaller affair with just the closest of friends and family, when it comes time to look back on your wedding day, you’ll want to be sure that you’ve not missed anything.
What to do after the big day
You’ve partied hard, taken off the wedding attire, and you’ve done it, you’re married to the love of your life! What happens next? Obviously, take the time to sit in it for a while, to enjoy the celebration and the wave of love that you felt from each other and from your loved ones on the wedding day.
Putting together an after wedding checklist makes sure that you remember to send out thank you cards to everyone who came or sent cards and gifts, that you leave reviews for your great vendors who helped make the day special, that you change your personal details, put together a wedding photo album and something special like a card book for your wedding cards to be treasured forever.
Say thank you
This is an obvious one, and it might seem like a chore, especially if you’ve had a big wedding, but sending thank you cards to your wedding guests is a great thing to do. It is important though, as you want all your guests to know that it means a lot to you for them to share in your love and celebrations. This isn’t something you need to do immediately, as you might be going on your honeymoon and there are other things going on in life, but we would advise that you think about getting some simple thank you cards and messages to your guests within 90 days of the wedding.
If you are going on your honeymoon, maybe you can think about the message you want to send out, as you’re travelling, or hanging around in the departure lounge of the airport.
Create an album
Creating an album of photos, along with a ‘Save the date’ and a wedding invite, maybe some pressed flowers and other keepsakes from the wedding day is a fantastic way to transport you directly back to the day whenever you wish. This is a personal item for you and your partner to easily look back on.
Sell off your stuff
If you’re not that sentimental about keeping things from the wedding, such as your wedding dress you could choose to sell it online, along with other wedding day items, to make some money back. It is also a way to encourage future brides to make sustainable wedding choices. Facebook marketplace, eBay, and other online marketplaces offer an easy way for you to sell your unwanted wedding items.
Keep your bouquet
Your bouquet is a special part of the day, and you can create a beautiful keepsake from it with some of the leftover flowers. Press the flowers as soon as you can after your wedding day, and you can choose to include them in a wedding album or dry and press them to hang on the wall in a beautiful frame.
Repurpose your wedding flowers
If you’ve spent a fair bit of money on your other wedding flowers, for the tables at the reception and as centrepieces of the ceremony, you can repurpose them and help out others in the process. Donate your wedding flowers to a local hospital or maybe a care home so that others can enjoy them before they wilt.
Save the cake
When it comes to your first anniversary, it is the first time you’ve had to look back properly on the big day, but it doesn’t just have to be photos and memories. In the run-up to your wedding, you can ask your wedding caterer to wrap up a couple of slices or even a tier of your wedding cake for you to keep. As long as you are careful and wrap it up with plastic wrap and tin foil, you can freeze your wedding cake. Make sure it doesn’t get crushed in your freezer, and then come your anniversary you and your partner can share a slice of your wedding cake, a taste of the day alongside the memories and the photos.
Preserve your wedding cards
The wedding cards you receive on the day are very important, as it shows how much your guests love you. The day after your wedding, you’ll have the time to sit down and read through all the wedding cards and look at the lovely messages and gifts that guests have given you. Keeping your wedding cards provide a fantastic way to easily look back on your day and to soak up all the love you felt from friends and family.
MyCardBook is an example of a company that gets it. Whether you are looking back on your anniversary, going through your wedding treasures with your children and grandchildren in the future, our professional photography and editing gives you a custom, hardcover wedding card book that holds up to 200 cards. This transforms your wedding cards into a keepsake book!
Ensure you’ve paid and tipped all your vendors
Even with the greatest will and good planning in the world, you might still have some outstanding payments due for vendors. This is only natural, and when you are on a high in the days after the wedding it can be easy to let this slip your mind. The wedding vendors worked really hard to provide you with your dream day, so make sure you double check every expected payment and pay any outstanding amounts that are due.
Write vendor reviews
You’ve just had the best day, yeah? You want to scream about it from the rooftops about how great your wedding day is, and the best way to say thanks to your wedding vendors is to leave reviews online for them, so that future couples can benefit from the same experience as you just had! A personal review direct to the wedding vendor means a lot, and an online review with specifics about your experience goes a long way to helping a wedding business grow and for other couples to find their own dream wedding day!
Preserve your gown
If you are keeping your wedding gown and suit, get it dry cleaned and then store away in the correct way to keep it free from dust and in tip-top condition. Try to hang it up in a secure clothes bag if you can, especially if the dress is heavily embellished. For those who want to do this, it is important to think about the long-term quality of the gown, as in the future you may want to gift the dress to your daughters or just have it to look back on with your other wedding keepsakes.
Give everyone your updated address (if applicable)
For those couples who are not living together already and are moving in together after the honeymoon, it is important to update everyone on your new address as soon as you get back. It’s important to be organised and keep your friends and family updated. Send out change of address cards or update everyone through texts or phone calls.
Give your in-laws and parents a personalised gift
If your close family on both sides have been heavily involved with the planning of the wedding and played important roles on the big day itself, why not think about some personalised gifts to show them how grateful you are for their love and help around the wedding.
Gifts for the in-laws could be a personalised wedding photo album, maybe a mini version of the main book you have received from your wedding photographer, bespoke gifts and wedding favours for the bridesmaids and groomsmen, or a print of your favourite group family photo.
Merge your finances
For many couples, the first time they have a joint account is when saving up and paying for their wedding. This is normal. It’s important to have your own bank accounts and independent finances, but merging together with one account that takes care of wedding vendor costs and all household costs and bills in the future is the best way to start married life financially.
Properly store your china and silver
If you have received china or silver as wedding gifts it is important to store it properly to keep it in good condition. China should be packed up securely in fabric boxes, while silver items should be stored in silver bags ideally, to prevent tarnishing and to take away the chore of polishing everything up next time you have a dinner party and get the fancy plates and cutlery out!
Return or exchange unwanted gifts
This can feel awkward, but if there are wedding gifts you have received that you don’t need or don’t like, there is nothing wrong with returning them for cash or exchanging them for another item that you would like. You might also have received duplicates of items.
Take down your wedding website
Your wedding website provided much-needed information for guests about the wedding day, venue, and other details, as well as a backstory of your love. Now that you’re happily married, login and take down your wedding website, saving images or downloading a copy for your own personal memories in the future if you wish.
Share your wedding photo album with guests
Have you created a wedding hashtag or a place where your guests can upload photos from the wedding day? If you’ve got a wedding photographer, those professional shots will look fantastic, but there is also something special about the candid photos that your guests take throughout the day. They’ll take different types of snaps of you, but also of each other and the fun that is being had that you might not necessarily see.
You can choose to share both the professional shots and the personal, amateur shots with your guests if you have the possibility to. Share a link with your guests so they can view the wedding photo album digitally or create smaller versions of your wedding photo album for a select few special people from your wedding party as a gift.
Enjoy married life and your newlywed bliss!
This first part of the next chapter of your life is special. Enjoy married life and cherish the moments and memories of your wedding day. This checklist is just the beginning, all the things you should do after the big day, some of which can be incorporated into your life moving forward, such as MyCardBook, where you can look back at wedding cards from your guests.
This provides you with a high-quality, hardcover wedding card book to look back on forever. This checklist helps you to close out the wedding event in style and romance, marking the beginning of a new chapter of life, love, and happiness together as a couple.
