5 Things To Do After Your Wedding

When you’re planning a wedding, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed, but when the celebration is over you’ll get to take a break, right? Not exactly. As it turns out, even after you celebrate your nuptials, there’s still a lot to do. 

As you prepare to say goodbye to wedding tasks, be sure you first finish up these important to-do list items.

Write Your Thank You Cards

Writing thank you cards is probably one of the more involved things you’ll have to do after your wedding, but if you’re prepared, it won’t be too difficult. That’s because guests rely on your wedding gift registry to choose their gifts and the registry typically includes a helpful list of who purchased what gift. 

From there, you can easily pair the gifted items with the proper guests, writing a kind note of appreciation for their presence and their present.

Submit Your License

Before your wedding, you applied for a license that needs to be completed by your officiant and then submitted to the proper authorities in order to finalize your marriage. Well, there’s often a timeline on this paperwork, so make sure you submit your marriage license promptly. If you don’t complete this task, your marriage won’t be legal and you may even wind up needing to have a second city hall wedding to deal with any documentation discrepancies.

Assess Your Wedding Dress

Picking out a wedding dress is a huge milestone for the bride-to-be, but once your wedding is over, your dress becomes little more than a frilly storage problem. Shortly after your wedding then, it’s worth deciding what you really want to do with your dress in the long term. Will you have it preserved to hold onto as a keepsake, upcycled into functional items, or something else entirely? A growing number of brides today are actually choosing to sell their wedding dresses and other wedding items, which can be a practical and remunerative option.

Review Your Vendors

Did you hire caterers, a photographer, or a band for your wedding? These service providers rely on reviews to build their profiles and increase business. After your celebration is over, make sure to write and post reviews of your vendors. They’ll be grateful you did.

Navigate Your Name Change

Obviously not every bride (or groom!) changes her name when she gets married, but many do, and a growing number of couples choose to hyphenate their last names. However, while the name change itself is often quite simple and can be legally completed as part of your marriage license, you also have to do a lot of other paperwork. This includes changing your name with the Social Security Administration, on your license, credit cards, and bank accounts, and with your employer, among other authorities. You’ll likely be working on this for months, but as long as you get the important ones taken care of right off the bat, you’ll be fine.

After your wedding, you’ll have earned some serious relaxation, and it’s a good idea to take a breather before you dive into all of these other tasks – just don’t put it off for too long. As many couples can attest, before you know it, you’ll have been married for nine months and still writing thank you notes. 

Better you get it all done promptly than let your responsibilities hang over your head for months.