Are you about to get married and don't know how to start planning? Feeling lost in all the details? You don't even know where your head is and you haven't started anything? Relax, I'm here to help you plan your Big Day with this blog post.
When you’re planning your wedding, there are a number of decisions you'll need to make so you can ensure everything is as perfect as possible. In this post I give you tips on how to plan your wedding.
Choosing the date and venue
The first step is to fix the date and choose the venue. These two key elements of the wedding planning will define your big day.
Think about it: the venue itself will already outline the kind of atmosphere and type of wedding you want. Would you rather go farmhouse style with lots of wood and white flowers? Or would you prefer to get married outdoors next to a beautiful lake? Or maybe you prefer a simple, uncluttered setting and would go with a modern restaurant?
It's worth checking out more venues and asking friends and acquaintances who are already married what they would recommend.
Booking the location will of course depend a lot on how far in advance you need to book. That's why you need to decide when choosing a date whether to adapt to the venue's calendar or to look for a location where your chosen date is not already taken.
Let's talk about money: setting a wedding budget
What kind of wedding did you dream of when you were little? Are there things you don't want to give up no matter what?
Unfortunately or fortunately, these desires are largely influenced by the wedding budget you're trying to manage. If you're planning a small wedding, you can make your big day extremely cosy by using DIY decor. By involving your friends and family in organising and helping, you don't have to worry about high costs.
But what happens when you want to throw the party of the year with 150 guests? Well, be prepared for the fact, if you want it all, it won’t be a cheap wedding.
It's worth asking for quotes and references from several wedding vendors in the first place. Visit a couple of venues and ask about wedding packages. It is possible that the location may have its own decorator or wedding planner included in the wedding package. It can help you organise and determine the costs.
Dreaming of the STYLE of your wedding
You've probably been reading a lot of wedding-themed blogs lately and you've got almost eight hundred pins on your wedding board on Pinterest. Of course, you've even got yourself a wedding planner. With all the pictures and information you've gathered, you're probably starting to get an idea of the vibe and style you want for your wedding.
The venue, the decor, the mood of the photos you're taking, the location of the themed shoot, the colour of your partner's suit and even the design on the seating cards can all create a sense of unity throughout your wedding. And let's not even talk about your beautiful wedding dress. Speaking of which, what will your wedding ring look like?
Once you've got the style you want to get on your wedding, it's much easier to find service suppliers to match.
What's the first thing that strikes a chord with you? For me, for example, it was the sunflowers. Specifically, I installed sunflowers everywhere with my decorator, even though it was long past its season: sunflowers were in my bouquet, on the greeting card, on the table decoration, on the menu card... really everywhere. And I loved them.
Wedding vendors, where are you?
When I was planning my own wedding back in 2021, the biggest help was definitely the various Facebook groups and the people I knew.
I asked around in my circle of friends who would they recommend as a wedding vendor. I gathered an immense amount of information (and flyers and other contact details, of course). One after another I wrote emails and messages asking for references and price lists.
When we booked our wedding officiant, he was able to recommend a few people for photography and videography, as we were still in need of a team of photographers. In any case, the networking is not negligible and you can be sure that they won't try to harm you financially. Unfortunately, you hear a lot of horror stories about wedding scams.
As well as people you know, another big help has been Facebook groups on wedding-related topics. Practically all counties and big cities now have their own wedding groups, where you can ask around for local wedding vendors and look at portfolios. If you are one of the brave ones, you can even ask questions in these groups.
The key is to avoid stress
Speaking from personal experience, stress is virtually inevitable. I think the worst was definitely the week before the wedding, where I was literally swimming with the tide. Ont he big day our wedding officiant made me have a few shots and everything was nice again. 😊
But of course sometimes it's not that simple. Unexpected things can happen and you have to react immediately and act on the spot. This can happen when it rains during an outdoor ceremony. Unfortunately, we cannot control the weather, so one thing I would say is to have a plan B and C for everything. And D and E.
But jokes aside, careful planning can be the biggest help in making your Big Day as stress-free as possible. Obviously, you can't plan for everything, but you can minimise the bad experiences you'll have if you have several different plans in place. As they say, it's better to be safe than sorry.
Take your time and enjoy the process!
The point of this blog post was to help you somewhat set your wedding schedule, to give you peace of mind in terms of planning. Of course, if you're still feeling overwhelmed, it's definitely worth seeking the help of a wedding organizer. Even if you've never organised an event of this calibre with so many people before, it's easy to get lost in the details. And no one wants something to go wrong because of a lack of planning.
But if you're a master organiser, you'll love the process. I wonder if you're one of those people who wanted to be a wedding planner when you were younger? I'm guilty, because I had those kinds of ideas. Although I probably am not so off-track with designing wedding invitations either.
Thank you for joining me in this blog post. You can follow me on my social media platforms and find out what an illustrator's life is like:
Image source: copyright by adriennekoehazi©, photos by Bildmann Média