Planning your wedding is an exciting and stressful time, and a lot of factors indeed go into the big day. Many of the decisions you make for your wedding won’t materialize until that day when you see all your hard work come together in a beautiful celebration. But there are a few things you can and should see before the big day because waiting until your wedding could be disastrous.

While deciding your venue, dress, flowers, and music, you have to remember that you are the center of attention on that day. How you look and feel about yourself will forever live in photos, videos, and the hearts and minds of everyone who attends. Practicing a few things before your wedding will take the pressure off of the day you’ve been planning for.

Play With Your Makeup

Whether you hire a professional to do your makeup or you plan to do it yourself, you want to play with the look. Your wedding day makeup will probably differ from your everyday makeup, and you need to know how it’s going to look.

Try different looks and combinations to see what you want to use on your wedding day. Brands like Lime Crime are vegan and cruelty-free, and they also have a wide variety of unique cosmetics to help you pull your bridal look together. Work with your makeup artist or in the mirror yourself to personalize your makeup choices, and don’t forget to pair your finished look with your wedding hairstyle. Doing so will show you how you will look on the big day.

Figure Out Your Hair

Practicing hairstyles is another important thing to experiment with before your wedding day. You not only want to know what you’ll wear in your hair, but if you’ll have it up, down, straight, or curly. It’s important to pair your makeup with your hairstyle choice, and you also want to be sure your hair goes well with your wedding dress.

Talk to your stylist and show them a picture of your gown, so they can make expert suggestions about what would look best. Once you choose how to style your hair, have your hairstylist complete your look beforehand, so there are no surprises on your wedding day. If you’re wearing a veil, bring it to the hairdressing salon to make sure it fits well with your style.

Practice Your Ceremony

One of the biggest things you should do before your wedding day is to have a rehearsal ceremony. That’s when everyone in the bridal party, plus anyone else taking part in the ceremony, meets on location to practice the actual wedding ceremony. You’ll practice timing, staging, and the order of the wedding, so you know where to stand, where to come in, and how everything will play out.

Practicing your ceremony before your wedding day gives you a chance to make adjustments and practice to iron out any problems or glitches ahead of time.

Ready for the Big Day

You’ve chosen your hair and makeup, and you know how they’ll look together. You looked at the venue and practiced the ceremony from beginning to end, and now you’re ready. One important thing to keep in mind is that just because you’ve prepared and practiced, that doesn’t mean your wedding day will be perfect.

Glitches will happen, hairpins will fall out, people will trip, but it’s those very things that make your day unique. Those are the things you’ll laugh about when retelling the story to your kids and grandkids because your wedding day isn’t about perfection. Your wedding day is about starting on a journey with another person that will hopefully last a lifetime.