- Have Your Wedding Gown Cleaned
Even if you haven’t yet decided whether or not you want to preserve your wedding dress, you should get it cleaned as soon as possible. The sooner you have it cleaned, the better it will look when it is preserved and you’ll have a much better chance of getting out any stains.
Your local dry cleaners should be able to take care of this for you. However, if you don’t trust them to handle this job for you, get recommendations on where to take your wedding dress before your wedding.
- Send Out Your Thank You Notes
Before your guests start to forget that they even came to your wedding in the first place, it is time to get out those thank you notes. You should probably plan to make time for this in advance so that you don’t have to spend all day doing this after your wedding. Make sure to send them out within the first week after your wedding.
- Save Your Cake
If there is cake left over from your wedding, you should make sure that you have it readied for preservation by removing any decorative elements, chilling the cake before you wrap it up in plastic wrap. Then seal the cake in a freezer bag and label it.
Then, you’ll have a piece of your wedding cake to enjoy on your one-year anniversary. If you want your cake to taste fresh when you take it out again, consider ordering a new cake to serve as another tier to the leftover wedding cake.
- Preserve Your Wedding Photos
The majority of wedding photography packages don’t include prints and photo albums. Therefore, you’ll need to select the photos that you want to appear in the album and figure out how you will preserve them. If you want it professionally done, you should place the order as soon as possible so that you don’t forget or lose any of the photos that you want to include. You might also want to consider sending your wedding photos as a part of your thank you messages to your guests.
- Follow Up With Your Vendors
If there are any services that you did not prepay in full before the wedding, you should check with the vendors to make sure that any final invoices are settled. You should also make sure that you received all of the services that you paid for.
- Send a Wedding Announcement to the Newspaper
Having a wedding announcement appear in your local newspaper is a small keepsake from your wedding that you will enjoy for years to come. Send the announcement out to the newspaper so that it can appear in the very next edition of the wedding announcements after your wedding has taken place.
- Change Your Last Name
If you plan to change your last name to your spouse’s last name, you should start on this immediately after you return home from your honeymoon. After you update your name, you’ll also need to change your driver’s license, your bank accounts and any other accounts that still have your old name on them.
In addition, the change of your last name may also affect how you file your taxes. Therefore, you should make sure that you contact a tax professional to get advice on changing your last name and what to expect before tax season comes around.
- Return Gifts and Unused Items
It is likely that you’ll receive at least one gift from your wedding guests that is a duplicate. Return or exchange the gift for something that you want or need before the return policy expires. If there is wedding décor that is reusable or went unused, you can return these items to the store if they are still in the original packaging or try selling these items online. This will save you money and help reduce the number of wasted item from your wedding.
- Pack for Your Honeymoon
Find your bathing suit, sneakers, passport, tickets, credit cards, and any other essentials that you need to take with you on the trip. Make sure to give yourself a few days at least to pack so that you have time to take care of any last-minute travel changes or trips to the store. You’ll also want to make sure that you tackle some of the mess around your home so that you don’t have to come home and still deal with cleaning up after-wedding chaos.
- Plan Your Next Event
If you want avoid feeling down after the wedding is over, get started with planning a new event. You might want to invite your friends over for drinks in a few weeks after you unwrap all of your wedding gifts. Make it a small get together so that you don’t end up spending a lot of money after you’ve already blown a fortune on your wedding.
While this list of tasks may seem daunting, you can finish this all up in about a week if you plan ahead. After that, it’s finally time to relax! You can enjoy being married and start to forget about the months and months of wedding planning stress that you endured!
