I Got Married a Year Ago. Here’s What I’d Do Differently Now

Fashion Editor Bianca Alleyne shares some reflections a year on from her intimiate London wedding.

Bianca Alleyne

A year ago, I got married in London in what I thought was the most “me” version of a wedding I could create at the time: small, intimate, beautifully minimal and stylish. It was held at Islington Town Hall, followed by dinner just a short walk away. I wore a designer dress bought from a sample sale that I had tailored to fit my shape, I got ready slowly on my own, and I leaned into a very stripped-back, sustainable approach to planning.

It was a day filled with love, emotion and in all honesty was pretty calm as far as wedding days go; something I still don’t take for granted. I was never the girl that dreamt about her wedding day being a huge affair and I know that every decision made at the time was perfect for that moment. But a year on, with the distance that only hindsight gives you, I can see the places where I slightly over-edited the experience. Where I confused “intentional” with “limited”. If I could do it again, there are a few things I would shift; not because the day wasn’t beautiful, but because it could have been more layered, more expressive, more alive.

I would have had more flowers. A lot more.

I went into planning very conscious of waste. I liked the idea of restraint: candlelight, subtle arrangements, a feeling of softness rather than excess. I worked with rented florals and kept everything intentionally minimal, which I genuinely loved at the time. It felt aligned with my values; considered, sustainable, unfussy.

But I completely underestimated what flowers actually do to a space. They’re not just decoration; they’re the atmosphere. They change the emotional temperature of a room. They add fullness as well as softness. They make a space feel like something important is about to happen.

Looking back now, I don’t think I got it wrong, I just think I held back. Not dramatically, just enough to notice in hindsight. A bit more fullness on the tables, slightly more abundance framing the room, something that felt less “edited”. I think I was worried about it tipping into too much. Now I think I could have comfortably gone further.

I would have hired someone to run the day

We planned the wedding ourselves: think notes app chaos, WhatsApp threads and spreadsheets galore. We were intentional about every supplier and wanted it to feel personal rather than overly produced.

And in a lot of ways, that worked beautifully. It felt like us. Nothing felt over-styled or fussy, but what I didn’t fully appreciate is that “simple” still requires orchestration.

On the day, there are a hundred tiny moving parts happening in the background. Timing, people arriving, cues, transitions. Even when nothing goes wrong, someone is still holding the invisible structure together.

We had friends and family helping, which was lovely, but it wasn’t the same as having a dedicated person whose only job is to protect the flow of the day and save me overthinking every moment. If I could do it again, I’d absolutely hire a proper on-the-day coordinator. Not to take control, but to remove the mental noise completely. So you can actually be in it, rather than lightly tracking every moment in the back of your mind.

We would have searched for more venues

This part surprised me the most during planning. We wanted something intimate, around 50 people; but in London that number sits in a strange in-between. Too big for private dining rooms, too small for most traditional wedding venues unless you commit to full hire, which is something we really wanted to avoid.

It felt like we were constantly negotiating compromise versus feeling. Either the space was perfect but didn’t quite fit the guest count, or it worked logistically but didn’t feel quite right emotionally.

We did find somewhere that worked, but if I could go back, I wouldn’t rush that decision. I’d explore more restaurants, more hybrid spaces, more “this isn’t technically a wedding venue but could be” places. The kind you only find if you give yourself more time and less pressure.

The room really does shape everything and I don’t think we gave that enough space to land.

What I would keep exactly as it was

There are things I wouldn’t touch. I would still choose intimacy over scale. I would still keep it visually simple. I would still wear the same dress; something completely aligned with how I actually dress, rather than how I thought a bride should look.

And I would still document it exactly the way we did. We booked an events photographer rather than a traditional wedding photographer and that decision changed everything. The images feel less posed, more observational; like someone was quietly catching the day as it unfolded rather than directing it. There’s an honesty in that approach that I still really love.

We also didn’t have a videographer. At the time, that felt like the right call (and it still does), I didn’t want anything too produced or performative. Just stillness, images, memory.

Afterwards, I created our wedding album online myself and had it printed. No big design process, no overthinking; just choosing the frames that actually felt like us and putting them somewhere tangible.

Those decisions still feel like some of the clearest ones I made.

But I’d layer all of that with a bit more support and a bit more abundance. Not to change the essence, but to let it breathe more fully. A year later, I don’t look back and think I got it wrong. I look back and think I made choices that made sense for who I was and who we were as a couple at that time.

But hindsight provides a very specific kind of clarity. And if there’s one thing I’ve realised, it’s this: the best weddings aren’t the ones where everything is perfectly planned to the last detail, they’re the ones where you can feel the people behind them allowed themselves just a little more than they thought they were allowed.