After Marriage Checklist: 8 Things to Do After Getting Married
Married, Now What? 8 Things to Do After I Do
After spending months planning your wedding with Pinterest co-planning your wedding, having your wedding day fly by and living through your Instagram feed and hashtag photos of other weddings, there are still a few things left to be checked off after the wedding. I know, I know the lists never end. But we promise that you’re in the home stretch and you just have a few more things left before you hang those wedding photos up. Don’t worry though, we’ve got your back with this after marriage checklist. Bookmark now, and revisit after your I-Dos!
After Marriage Checklist:
1. Send Thank You Cards
Life happens, you go back to work, you quickly start to forget who gave-you-what and then all of a sudden you’re scrambling to get out your thank you cards in the mail. Give yourself a deadline, mark your calendar and make a date night out of it! As a do-it-together task, you can cross this one off of your list super fast.
Photo by Davy Whitener from this Backyard Wedding
2. Order Your Album and Frame Prints
Take it from me: order your wedding album the moment you get your images from your photographer. Order prints and frame them as soon as you have your photos back. Trust us on this one, most of us end up not ordering a wedding album and will be much less inclined to sift through all photos to design one from scratch do-it-yourself style if it’s not done while you’re still in wedding planning mode. Analysis paralysis is real when it comes to choosing your own wedding photos.
While you’re at it, you can order smaller album version using the same album design for your parents + in-laws in one fell swoop, whether that’s through your photographer or through a DIY album source!
3. Update Your Emergency Contact
Each time you go to your next doctors’ appointments post-wedding, remember to update your emergency contact for their records as well as your insurance information.
photo Lindsay Hackney from this Vermont Wedding
4. Create a Will
As you start planning for the rest of your lives together, creating a will not only gives you peace of mind, but it is also a good opportunity to have an important conversation should a difficult time arise. Should you decide to have children down the line, having a will in place makes updating it much easier too!
Photo by Daniel Lopez Perez from this Destination Wedding in Guatemala
5. Add Spouse’s Name to Your Insurance Policy
Once you’ve updated your name with your insurance companies, you’ll also want to add your spouse as a beneficiary to life insurance, add her or his name to your car insurance as well as health insurance. Retirement accounts usually ask for a beneficiary name as well, so be sure to do some housekeeping with your finance-related accounts.
6. Review Your Wedding Vendors
Re-live the most glorious day of your life while also shouting out your wedding vendors. Many of them rely on word-of-mouth to continue to grow their business and it will help out other brides! Plus who knows, maybe we will have the opportunity to write about your wedding thanks to one of your wedding vendors. This is kinda like the circle of life for weddings.
Photo by Danyelle Dee Photography in this Joshua Tree Micro Wedding
7. Complete Wedding Registry
So you’re in the works of making your place feel cozy and like the two of you so go ahead and exchange or return those gifts that you don’t want or got duplicates of while also purchasing some items you didn’t receive. Many wedding registries offer a completion discount for a specific period of time after your wedding is over so get out there and take advantage of it!
8. Change Your Last Name (if you’re changing it)
Lastly, if changing your name is something you decided to do, there are a few places you’ll need to update your information. Once you’ve received your marriage license in the mail the first stop is the social security office. After you have your new card, pop on over to the DMV and then you can change your name at work for your payroll, at the bank, your passport, insurance records, the post office and your email address.
Phew, need a celebratory happy hour after tackling this after marriage checklist like champions? Here are 9 date night ideas you can start this week!