10 Things to have in your “Wedding Day Emergency Bag”
Most of the time your wedding day starts fairly early. Maybe you wake up at a Hotel or Air B and B to start getting ready, or maybe you head to a salon and then to your wedding venue to finish the final touches on your makeup before putting on your dress. The fact is, most of us on the morning of our wedding day aren’t in our own homes with access to all the things you may not know you need to be fully prepared for a wedding day!
Packing a little “Emergency Bag” with all the things you might need pre-wedding is a FANTASTIC idea and one that many brides use. But what exactly should go in a Wedding Day Emergency Bag? Well, after many years of photographing hundreds of weddings, here are the top ten things I’ve seen come in handy!
#1
Travel-Sized Mouth Wash
The reason I say mouthwash instead of gum, or mints, or even a toothbrush and toothpaste is that mouthwash is the fastest, cleanest way to immediately freshen your breath. Think about it, the morning of your wedding day you’ll probably be chilling with the girls, maybe sipping on a mimosa or champaign or even enjoying a bit or two of some chocolates. You’ll just have completed your beautiful makeup which 99% of the time includes some type of lip coloring and the last thing you want is to mess up your look by a messy tooth brushing. Using a quick swish of mouthwash right before the first look or right before your ceremony, or even right before sunset photos after you’ve eaten dinner makes you fresh for kissing your love! Packing a little travel sized bottle doesn’t take much room and will give you that extra bit of freshness when you need it!
#2
Fashion Tape
Fashion Tape is a literal miracle. It’s double-sided tape that is meant to hold dresses and fabric to the body exactly where you need it. Even if your wedding dress is perfectly altered to fit you, your bridesmaids might be experiencing a slightly different story. I’ve seen a TON of stress occur on the morning of a wedding when a bridesmaids finds out her tailoring went terribly wrong and now the chest of her dress is… well…. let’s say a bit “revealing". Now, of course bridesmaids are there to ultimately support and make things easier but if you end up with a major dress issue even the most supportive of bridesmaids can start to freak out, if only just because they want everything perfect for you, including how they look as part of your wedding crew. Packing a roll of Fashion Tape is a simple insurance policy to know that no matter what, you can keep the stress out of your wedding morning!
#3
Strong, White Thread with a Needle
I think most blogs about wedding-day emergency kits say to pack a small sewing kit, but the real problem with these small sewing kits is that, frankly, they are crap. Most travel-sized sewing kits come with thread which is SUPER thin and breaks easily. The needles are also usually TINY and sometimes the eye of the needle isn’t even big enough for the thread to fit through! I think an easier, more reliable, and in most cases cheaper alternative is just to pick up a good spool of white thread and a decent needle. You can stick the needle into the spool so it doesn’t get lost and won’t poke your fingers as you reach in your kit to find something and having a needle and decent durable thread will, should you actually have to use it, be strong enough to hold whatever it is which ripped together.
9 times out of 10 the need for a sewing kit is because the top hook of a wedding dress (the hook right above the zipper) has popped off, leaving the dress liable to unzip as you move throughout the day, so to fix this you really do need strong thread and a decent needle, which small sewing kits just don’t have.
#4
A Small Pair of Scissors
Most of the time, brides and bridesmaids do not cut off the tags of their dresses until the wedding day. Without scissors what can happen is you just try to pull the tag off which can lead to runs or holes in delicate fabrics. Having just a small pair of scissors in your emergency kit handles this totally. Another reason to have scissors is to trim off any errant strings from lacework on your veil, dress of shoes that your seamstress might have missed!
#5
Safety Pins
Is there anything a Safety Pin can’t do? I mean, it can fix a dress issue, attach tokens to a bouquet, fix a broken boutonnière… the list goes on and on! Having a few safety pins of various sizes popped into your emergency bag is another one of those insurance policies that will keep your wedding day stress-free!
#6
Lip Color/Gloss
Lip Color is usually the first thing about your wedding day look that comes off or gets messed up on a wedding day. You take one sip of water and you can leave half your lip color on the glass! Now, a lot of brides who use professional makeup services won’t have the specific lip color the Makeup Artist used, but try out a few colors you like and pop one in your emergency bag for touch ups pre-ceremony, pre-grand entrance, or pre-sunset portraits. Lip color, even just a gloss makes a wedding look really pop in portraits so if having colorful lips is part of your dream look, make sure to have a way to touch it up throughout the day!
#7
Electrolytes or Salt and Potassium
Your wedding day will most likely be filled with lots of activity, a fair amount of heat, and a bit (or a lot!) of alcohol. Those things are a pretty sure-fire recipe for a headache so to avoid this, pop into your emergency bag an electrolyte packet or just some salt and potassium supplements that you can add to the water you can drink during the morning of your wedding before all the toasting and celebrations begin. Setting yourself up to be fully hydrated in the morning can go a LONG way towards enjoying your wedding day all the way through the night!
#8
A Mini-Stick of Deodorant
Look, I’m going to be super honest and lay it out for you- I’m a sweaty person. When I start running around, or if I spend any amount of time in the hot sun, my pits are going to be stinky unless I re-apply deodorant at least once. Maybe this dosen’t sound like you and you’re more of a “glistener” than a sweater, and if so, you might not have to add this item to your emergency bag, but for those of you who are more on the Kate side of things when it comes to sweating and being hot, tossing in a mini deodorant to touch up on post wedding portraits in the sun, or just before the formal dances is a good thing!
#9
Eyelash Glue
As a photographer, I think false eyelashes are one of the most spectacular ways to up your wedding look to the next level. Nothing photographs quite like false lashes, so many of my brides opt for this when putting together their full wedding look. Many professional makeup artists will offer lashes as an add-on and will even apply them for you which is great… until they leave and you realize the corner of your left lash has popped free! Having an extra tube of lash glue will help you be able to reattach any small part of your lashes that detach and keeps your wedding look as styled and perfect as it started out!
#10
Bobby Pins
Bobby Pins are amazing. They can help secure any loose hair that comes untucked from your updo, or they can be added into your veil to keep it extra secure. You can use them to help out with various wardrobe malfunctions, or to help you open cans or pull up sippers without damaging your manicure. basically, they are awesome, and no emergency kit would be complete without them!
I hope you've enjoyed this little list of items to have in your wedding-day emergency bag! You can of course add in lots of other items (I’ve seen blogs which list out 100 things to have!) but wth the above you’ll be set with solutions for 99.9% of the crazy unexpected things that can crop up during a wedding day! So the week before your wedding go to your favorite all-in-one shop with the above blog pulled up on your phone and gather these things together in a cute wedding-worthy bag and relax, knowing your wedding day can be stress-free!
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