- A TikToker shared the three biggest regrets she had about her wedding.
- Ida Giancola said she wished she'd had a smaller guest list and chosen a different hairstyle.
- "There's a lot of pressure on brides that everything just needs to be so perfect," she told Insider.
A newlywed shared her biggest wedding regrets on TikTok in the hopes of helping brides-to-be feel less pressured about having the perfect wedding.
Ida Giancola, who goes by @dionysian.girl on TikTok and has over 30,000 followers, posted her wedding advice video on April 1. In the clip, which has amassed over 30,000 views at the time of writing, she discusses why she would've preferred a smaller wedding, a different hairstyle, and hired photographers who took more staged pictures.
"There is this weird myth around weddings where everything is just perfect," Giancola says in the TikTok. "It is so normal to have regrets about your wedding and wish you'd done things differently, as long as that regret isn't the person that you married."
Having hundreds of guests felt 'overwhelming,' Giancola says
Giancola told Insider she and her husband Charlie Fritschner got married in Chicago in October and had over 200 guests in attendance. That number of people did have some perks like "tons of dancing," but it also meant she missed important moments on the day.
"I lost my parents. I didn't see my husband after our first dance," Giancola, 29, said. "I didn't see the dessert spread. I never saw that just because I was caught up with whatever. Never got a drink at the center bar."
Knowing her parents and her family background, Giancola said she anticipated having a big guest list for her wedding early on. "It just was going to snowball," she said.
And while she loved her wedding reception at the Drake Hotel in Chicago, the massive ballroom felt very easy to get lost in, she added. A friend told her she felt like "a doll in a dollhouse," she said.
Her hair extensions weren't worth a sore neck
Next up on Giancola's list of wedding regrets was choosing a wedding hairstyle that looked good in photos, but ended up causing neck pain.
She brought a picture of Brigitte Bardot to her wedding hairstylist, and was told she needed clip-in extensions and a sock bun to make it work, she said.
The result was a super-heavy look, and while adrenaline kept her feeling the strain during the day, she ended up having difficulty moving her neck in the evening, she added.
"My neck was sore for a week after all the way down to my shoulders," Giancola said.
Giancola thought there were too many candid photos
The biggest wedding regret Giancola had was her choice of wedding photographer, she said.
"When I got the wedding photos back, I was crying," she said, because there were far too many "unflattering" in-the-moment shots of her and the guests.
Giancola also said she only had one proper bridal portrait, which was "really upsetting."
"I know you want to capture emotions but it was totally unflattering angles of my face," she said. "A good photographer should be able to spot those moments and then know when to interject if you don't think you got the shot in a flattering way."
When looking for a photographer, Giancola said couples should ask to look over weddings they'd recently shot because they tend to only showcase their best work on their websites.
"You're not seeing where's the bride with her dad or where's the bride and her sister or where's the family shots," she said.
Ultimately, by sharing her wedding regrets, Giancola said she hopes to help brides-to-be take at least some of the pressure off their big day.
"A lot of girls think that their wedding is proving who they are to the world, " she said. "But you're more than your wedding day."