The Best Advice I Got Before Our Wedding (And What I'd Do Differently)

0:11What is up? I'm Grace Beverley and welcome back to Working Harder. the podcast shape guidebook on how to improve your own life and achieve what you actually dreamed of doing because life's too short for boring podcasts and bad advice.

0:25What is up guys and welcome back to Working Hard. I hope you're having a lovely week. This is less on topic, just going to be perfectly honest. Like this is not something I thought I'd be talking about on the podcast. However, there have been so many questions about the wedding and so many like more in-depth things that I wanted to be able to actually have a chat about because it was the fucking best weekend of my entire life. And there were so many amazing parts, there were so many things that I'm like so glad I knew and so glad I had made happen and all of these different things. So I thought I'd spend a little bonus episode kind of rounding off the wedding content, especially given we had Kate Halfpenny on this week talking about the wedding dress and wedding dresses and everything in general.

1:00I also feel like right before I was getting married, I was consuming all the wedding content. Like I was loving listening to podcasts, I was loving listening to even things about planning when all of my planning was done, just because it really gets you in the zone. I hope it will be good for anyone who's getting married soon, generally, or anyone who likes to be nosy like I do, who saw all the wedding content, but wants the BTS. So this is very much like the unfiltered wedding BTS. So I've written all the questions that came through on Instagram down. When we decided to do this episode, we got the questions on the Working Hard Pod Instagram.

1:29So shameless plug, but do make sure you are over there because the whole idea of that Instagram is that we don't just share clips. In fact, clips of the podcast is probably the least of what we share. It's like so many extra interesting things and articles and resources and everything around the podcast and around certain things that we might learn in an episode, for example, which I personally find really interesting. And I'm always trying to be a more interesting person in terms of reading things that aren't just like brain rot type stuff all the time. I love a good TikTok scroll. Don't get me wrong.

1:56But the whole idea of that Instagram is to make it more interesting. Anyway, that was a longer plug than I actually intended it to be. But I'm just going to go through the questions and answer them and hopefully we'll all have a nice fun time. and then I'll never speak about the wedding again. So you can actually put up with me again. Okay. So first question is what was your favorite moment of the whole day? And in my mind, I think of the wedding as like the entire weekend, because my one thing I wanted from the wedding was I didn't want it to feel too short. And I feel like the reason I didn't get such bad wedding blues, like I definitely got wedding blues, but I didn't get them too badly was because the wedding felt long enough.

2:30Like if you told me on the Sunday night you could have a whole extra day of this wedding for free, would you like it? I would be like, I'm on my knees, please let me go to sleep. And I feel like that and really understanding what like we wanted out of the wedding, which was like a long enough celebration, that led to less wedding blues. So that being said, obviously favourite moment of the whole day, I'm going to count the ceremony day. I would say obviously the whole ceremony was absolutely magical. It felt so surreal walking down the aisle. I cannot even describe it. Like I've thought about my wedding a lot, but I definitely wasn't the type of person growing up who thought about my wedding a lot.

3:05It wasn't something that was really in my orbit in terms of something that was like a huge exciting thing. It only became particularly exciting, the concept of a wedding, when I was like an anxious, attached teenager, kind of being like, oh my god, how would anyone not have their wedding as the best day of their life because they've been like chosen? So that was my like more toxic relationship with weddings. Whereas actually since kind of growing up and doing therapy and being in a better place where I'm like not thinking in that way I hadn't necessarily planned my whole wedding or what I wanted it to feel like or look like or anything but that walking down the aisle did feel really surreal and there is something that has felt symbolic about the whole wedding and being married after that point like I don't know it does feel really magical for the relationship even though I know it changes basically nothing at all um although legally it does so make sure you know make sure you know that if you're going into getting married I would say that was magical but I don't think that was like my favorite kind of like most elation moment I'm going to give you a top few because I can't actually decide on one the rave cave so like 12 till 3 a.m in the little converted barn where we just had like a big old party i have never had it was the best i heard someone say your wedding isn't the best day of your life but it's definitely the best party of your life and i actually would very much agree with that but i also think it was the best day of my life i think that in future it will be usurped though like i hope that like when i have kids like all of this there will be lots more excitement like i don't think my life has peaked um but that was definitely a big one.

4:40That was, it was absolutely the best party of me entire life. And it was so much fun and having like everyone that you love there. It was just incredible. I literally, every single time I went to the toilet, I sprinted. Like when I say I ran to go to the toilet because I did not want to miss a single moment. I also loved Amar's speech, like watching Amar do a speech in front of all of the people we love. And also he did that, if you haven't seen, I posted it on TikTok, but he basically got a groom's journal made from the productivity method and it was like actually a fully made productivity planner but for a groom's one and it was like so cute and just the whole thing was just so amazing and magical I thought that was really yeah that was really special that was really incredible but I'd say those were my highest ranking ones like walking down the aisle slash seeing him at the end of the aisle his speech and the party and the band was so good.

5:36Like the band was on for hours and I feel like it was half an hour because I was just having the absolute time of my life. Anyway, onto the next question. Fellow perfectionist business owner over here, how did you balance wanting everything to be perfect with actually enjoying the day? So I actually kind of let go of this notion, which is a lot for me because I am a control freak and a perfectionist with certain things. I wouldn't consider myself a perfectionist with everything. I'm actually very much like a done is better than perfect person, but I do have very high standards for things for work for Myself for all of this.

6:09So I would want it to be not perfect, but to a very high standard I think one of the first things I And me and amara, I think we got really clear on is we were like this is our weekend Like the whole idea of this weekend. Is it being for us? Like we are not hosting we are not hosts We are not here to make sure everyone has a good time we hope they have a good time and it will make our time so much better if they are having a good time but we are not here to like curate this big performance it was like a video that i posted which was basically our cake cutting song we'd written we belong together down but we hadn't written any details of the artist and we belong together by mariah carey is a lot more popular than we belong together from toy story which is what we had in mind and so we had this like sexy sultry little breakup song playing while we were cutting our cake and like there were people commenting being like oh I'd go over to the DJ and tell them to like turn it off and all this I was like first of all this was our fault second of all it's funny like if you can't laugh at that then I feel like marriage is probably gonna be quite hard but also like this isn't a western performance like it's not us trying to put on this big thing for everyone this is about us having a great day celebrating our love so I think that for me was really important I also spent a lot of time thinking like how do I want to feel on this day and my one thing I said over and over and over was I do not want to feel like I am working I do I have very different brains like I'm very good at being relaxed and partying and you know doing whatever and I'm also very uptight and control freaky and you know like my work brain and I was like I do not want to be in that work brain so I made sure that everything that would put me in that work brain was not something I'd be doing on the day.

7:49So we were very lucky to have a fantastic planner. So she was in control of everything that I would normally want to be in control of. I guess she was like running the whole event, but also things like I wanted to get content and get videos and photos and all of that, but I did not want to feel like I was working and that comes into my job a little bit. So I literally did not have my phone in my hand for the entire weekend. The one time I had my phone in my hand was when I was behind the decks on the Sunday because I wanted to have a video from my perspective of seeing like everyone right in front of the decks and it just being so much fun.

8:22So there was a lot of stuff that I was just like, I by force will not care about this today. I will not care about what I look like. I will not care about whether I'm getting enough content. Like, fuck that. Like, that is not the point of a wedding. I will not care about if everyone else is having fun. Like, I know that sounds selfish, but it's like, it's so, like, whenever I host at my house, I'm like, I've realized it zaps so much energy from me because I'm constantly trying to make sure everyone else is having a good time and I just basically spent some time thinking about these things and being like it is your choice to have a good day on this day and of course nothing big went wrong for us so I can say that um and I'm sure you know it that's harder to say elsewhere but I just kind of made the decision that I was like nothing is going to ruin this day and I'm not going to ruin my own day by being in the wrong mindset or trying to control everything I'm actually I asked like my bridesmaids and maids of honour and kind of like the people around me I was like please try not to ask me any details on the day because I will go into like planning and work mode and my closest friends like understand that so well and they would never ask me they would never be like at the wedding being like oh what time am I doing this like there is something about weddings where our planner said this to us where like everyone around weddings for some reason forgets that they have a brain and has to be told what to do every single time and I just kind of like took that into account and was like things are gonna happen things are gonna go wrong it is by force going to be a fantastic day.

9:45Next question is, what traditions did you get rid of that you are glad you did? So I feel like parts of the wedding were quite traditional. Like we had a ceremony, I wore a white dress, like all of these different things. I didn't take his name, my surname is my surname. So yeah, that's that on that. I am still Grace Beverley and that does not mean that I love him any less. I just don't believe that that was something that I needed to do nor wanted to do and you know it's each to everyone's own decision but that was just yeah not really a consideration for me so I guess that is pretty traditional that we didn't do um we did spend the day together the day before we didn't spend the night together I quite liked that like I I'm not a hugely traditional person but I like ritual like I like fun things that get you into the mindset and get you into the headspace of being in something so there was that that we well We spent the day together the day before and then like after the welcome dinner, he went back to the other venue because we'd rented two venues and we had friends and family split across both.

10:45And so we actually split it where like most of my friends and family were staying at one and most of his friends and family were staying at another. And that made it really great because also like we had a 5pm ceremony the next day so we didn't have to like hide to make sure we weren't seen on the morning of. I reckon if that was the case, then I would have just seen him on the morning of. but it was really magical like walking down the aisle and I like hadn't seen him for 24 hours and it was just like oh this is so nice oh another thing which I didn't really mention in the previous question but was relevant there and relevant here we did not spend a lot of time doing photos at all and I obviously wanted to make sure that I like had photos from the wedding but we literally did not spend time doing photos so every time we got a photo it would be like less than five minutes like a genuinely hand on heart probably less than even two minutes it'd be like stand here five shots walk away five shots done and our photographer knew that he was fucking amazing he's called jack henry he's from australia and like i just said to him i was like i really don't want to be in work mode so just we were not and we did that really kind of fast every single time and yeah they were absolutely fantastic in that way also we did not do photos with friends and family in terms of like everyone standing together and doing all of that.

11:57Now I'm not sure about that decision being totally honest like I am glad we didn't do it because I think if I had done it it ends up taking hours no one's in the right place at the right time and it's all like you know it's very slow and all of this and I think I really would have got into like bored work mode and it would have just like taken the magic a little bit out of the day so I'm really glad we didn't in a way but there are some I think we should have taken more precautions to make sure we were definitely getting photos with like all the people we wanted to get photos with because there were like loads of people that I didn't and I do regret that a little bit not because I don't know I feel better that we had a really good time but at the same time like I should have just made sure that I was doing that so I think that that if I were to do it again I would probably make sure that almost like maybe at cocktail hour we would go around and make sure we'd give a list of people and we'd tell those people to be in one place at cocktail hour and we just make sure we got cute little photos with them, not like staged photos, but just we walked around getting those photos.

12:56So that's one thing that I would change. Then the next question is, were you really nervous? I don't want to spend my whole day super stressed, but even thinking about it is making me stressed. So I wasn't nervous until it felt kind of so surreal driving there, but I also like, I did get a bit worked up right when my makeup was done and I was about to get in my dress, just because I didn't feel relaxed and I wanted to really feel relaxed. And so that is when I decided to go and do some sillies, which was basically that I'd just been sat in my makeup chair all morning and I felt, well actually no, we'd done morning yoga, which was so lovely, my sister taught it and then, you know, everyone was kind of like chilling by the pool and everything and I just felt like I'd spent a lot of time in one place and I'm not very good at that anyway, like I'm fine spending a lot of time on my laptop, I'm not very fine like just sitting there.

13:43I was kind of like scrolling on my phone, which I shouldn't have really been doing, I should have just been reading my book and I was copying my vows out and I just then got stressed because they were really long so I just like couldn't copy them down in time so I was more like a little bit uptight and stressed I think what's really important is like knowing yourself and knowing what you need any one time and I know if I'm in that mode I need something to drag me out of it completely like I don't need to go and sit in a corner and just like have a quiet time I need to be like completely distracted by it so I texted my like hen group chat and I I was like, anyone who wants to do a silly TikTok, please meet me downstairs in five minutes.

14:21And I like briefed them this whole thing. And we were like ran around the whole venue making this hilarious TikTok. And that was so much fun. And so silly. And I just felt like it got rid of the nerves. But I also think that I'm not a very nervous person when it comes to things like this. So I do get that, like, I don't understand the full implication of like having nerves on the day. I don't know. It just wasn't that nerve wracking to me. I was like, I've already decided to marry this man that's probably more nerve-wracking than like and like a bigger decision than actually deciding to walk down the aisle you know or being in front of people or whatever it might be I think also we had quite a small wedding we were only 70 people which was like 35 people on each side which meant that it was just so it was really intimate and I felt like it was only my closest people there so it felt again like less of a performance and I think I just kept telling myself over and over like this is a party of a lifetime it's not like it's not a performance um what's one thing you tell someone currently planning a wedding from the instant you get engaged and you know what you want to have a wedding I would just start saving things on all different platforms like I think that there were a few things that I saw early on that I didn't save that I should have just saved and would have meant that I would have had a lot more thought about doing things my own way um so I wish I'd kind of done a bit more of that but I did save like a lot, I saved a lot of outfits.

15:40I saved a lot of like fashion refs and that made it a lot easier when coming to actually like planning all the outfits and everything. But I do think like pull as wide a variety of references as possible. And also look at what a wedding usually looks like and take out things that you don't like. It does not need to look any certain way, especially, and I know some people obviously will have family paying for their wedding or whatever it might be. Me and Emma split this wedding and so we kind of felt a sense of freedom of the way of like, Like this is our wedding. We're paying for it. It is for us.

16:11We have no obligations to actually do anything any sort of way. And that made it feel really special because it made it feel like us throwing a party for us in a way that we wanted to. And I think that that really helped us kind of pick and choose the things that we wanted included rather than necessarily feeling like we had to please everyone. So I would say that for sure. And I would just say over and over and over again, like, remember, this is for you and this is to celebrate your love. like this is not for loads of other people this is not a performance and so anything you don't want you don't need to do you've likely spent a lot of your money on this um and you're maybe never gonna have a wedding again so like trying to enjoy it as much as possible and not trying to have everyone else's opinions kind of get in the way I think at the beginning I was really excited so I was sending my friends kind of everything but then I was just like I got more and more insular and was like also I wanted to surprise people with lots of details and everything so I just switched to kind of you know it being like our inside circle and actually just planning everything that way and that felt really magical too what was your favorite part of the wedding build-up okay the hen was fucking incredible again very up there for best weekend of my life it was absolutely incredible I had the time of my life honestly could not have been better so that was incredible I also the drive so we drove to France um and that was just so exciting because I don't know it just like felt really magical we just couldn't believe we were off to go to our wedding and we had everything in the car and we stayed at Versailles overnight and it was just really magical so I think that was incredible obviously I had a really amazing experience with the dress and like that dress was made from scratch with basically like I had a really clear view of what I wanted it to look like and it just seeing that come together was so magical and felt like a project in itself but yeah I would say those are most of the things I love having something to work towards like I don't think you need to look or be or act any certain way for your wedding but I love having something to work towards like I loved the idea of like having a wedding where I wanted to look the best I ever have and like I wanted to feel the best I ever have and I like I loved having that to look forward to and work for um so that generally was a big fun for me what was your favorite song of the whole wedding that's a good question we ended our party with don't want to miss a thing which was gorgeous that was just yeah that was great it was obviously a big throwback and um it was just the perfect like party ending song also we did a giant conga which isn't really a song but was due to a song we did a giant conga with literally every single wedding guest at the pool parties that was very very fun what else gabriel's oboe which i walked down the aisle to love that piece so yeah absolutely loved that oh and la la land the strings played at one point and we'd asked for them to play it and me and amara were at the top of the we were like above the cocktail garden it's like terraced gardens so we were on the terrace above and we just like looked down at all our guests and it was playing La La Land and it was just so beautiful and so magical.

19:20Then the last one is I'm going to throw your own question back at you. What's the best piece of advice you received in the lead up to the wedding? I think I've already talked about it in this episode but it's very much around like letting go and focusing on being present, understanding that this is for you and if you live this day for everyone else, like it sounds really selfish when I'm saying it on this and I'm being conscious about not sounding selfish but genuinely this is your day there is no reason for you to be doing this for anyone else and like you will want to please other people and you will want to make sure certain things happen for other people and they feel happy and all this but like just remember first and foremost this is your day you do not want to live it for anyone else you do not want to look back the next day and be like oh my god if only i'd been more present or if only i'd focused on less or whatever and another piece of advice is to make sure you eat the cake because I, that cake was the nicest cake I've ever had in my life.

20:11We weren't expecting it to have a giant heart on it, but it did have a giant heart on it and that's, it was a gorgeous little French touch and it was the most delicious cake that I've ever had and I wish I'd had more of it, to be honest. I wish I could have more of it every single day. And with that, I declare all the wedding content officially over. You're never gonna see it ever again until obviously every single month anniversary when I want to talk about it again and every single time I see a TikTok trend that I want to jump on and probably just multiple times a week actually when I want to post about my own wedding on TikTok so I wish you the best with that I really I mean I did say right before the wedding please mute me because I'm going to be posting like it's 2007 and I've just come out of a club and uploaded three albums of one night out and I intend to continue to do so so I hope that's all right with you and I hope anyone who's planning for a wedding has the most fantastic magical time and just remember to do it for yourself but we are back to normal programming on Monday but as always if you did have any dilemmas that you want me to answer just send them over to at working hard pod on Instagram I also spend time answering one specific dilemma every single week in my newsletter and then obviously sometime answer them on episodes like this too and I would love to chat to you um but I hope you have a wonderful week and that's really all I have to say.

21:30Have a wonderful wedding if you're having one. If you're not, have a wonderful week and throw yourself a party. Be soon.