Remember that Grandma will be there, the pictures will last forever and cover-up makeup "won't fool anybody," warns tattooed business professional, Allyson Whipple.

If all those things seem fine to you, feel free to spring for that half-sleeve. Otherwise, you might want to avoid getting tattooed on "the upper back, arms and any other areas that might make your ink visible in your dream dress," says self-proclaimed tattoo-addict Megan Ingenbrandt.

And they definitely don't come free. "One of the biggest problems I encounter, and something I see with a lot of women, is nightmare 'Free Ink' tattoos," says Jesse Zarate, tattooist at Sessions Tattoo Club in Las Vegas. In other words, bad tattoos people get for dirt-cheap. "A majority of these tattoos come from home tattoo artists who work out of their kitchens, something we jokingly refer to as 'kitchen magicians.'"

Taylor explains the phenomenon like this: "Because tattoos have reached mainstream society, it seems everyone is a tattoo artist these days. Make sure that you have done your research. And always remember — good artists and good tattoos will cost you [for good reason]."

Especially if your tattoo is very visible, colorful or both.

"People will use it as an icebreaker, or they'll touch you without asking -- like strangers touching a pregnant woman's belly," explains Mayorga. Having tattoos "dehumanizes you in a way," she says. "It turns you into a vessel for the art."

Mayorga, who collects antique keys as a hobby, says she got an ornate key tattooed on her wrist several years ago. "Strange guys started using it as a line, asking me if it was 'the key to my heart,'" she recounts. "It drove me insane." She says the last time she got that line, she snapped. "I told the guy, 'No, it's the key to your dungeon.' That shut him up pretty quick."

The moral of the story? Prepare for your body art to open up all kinds of conversations with strangers.

Words in foreign languages can look pretty and feminine, but for everyone's sake, do your homework. "Your tattoo artist probably doesn't speak Farsi," says Mayorga. It's your job to quadruple-check the spelling and meaning.

In fact, misspelled and poorly translated tattoos are so common that there are entire blogs dedicated to the matter. The Hanzi Smatter blog, run by a Chinese language expert named Tian, features hundreds of Asian language tattoos gone awry. Tian receives email inquiries from people with Asian language tattoos, asking him to do the translation they should have done before having their skin permanently penned. He says over 90 percent of the emails he receives are about tattoos with obvious mistakes.

You may be thinking "duh," on this one, but it still happens every day. "Ninety-eight percent of clients that get a significant other's name get it covered in six months or less," says Mayorga. Do yourself a favor, and avoid the emotional trauma and physical duress of having to get a big cover-up job by buying each other promise rings instead.