What’s better than wedding planning advice from couples who are actually planning their weddings?
One thing we learned first hand is the importance of having a third party set of eyes take a look at your invites & website. We both had spent so many late nights working on our invites that we completely missed a typo…even after getting them printed a second time! It ended up not being a huge deal, but I’m sure we would have caught it if we’d just had one other person, who hadn’t already been staring at them for hours, take a look. Learning from that, I had two friends take a look at our website & they both caught different errors. It definitely helped to have someone who uses iOS, as well as someone who uses Android check it out.
So I guess that would be my main piece of advice right now, having a third party help proof materials…the trick to combating the stress of planning a wedding, I’m still trying to figure that one out!
—Keri
How to Relax & Stay Organized During Wedding Planning
Lists, lists, lists and more lists! This seems ironic because to-do lists tend to not bring a “relaxing” feeling to mind, but organization is key to managing the entire process and not feeling overwhelmed.
Delegation is key for getting things done!
We have a list of everything that needs to be done each month, starting at the 12 month mark up until the day before the wedding. We broke up the tasks between each other, and delegated as much as we could to family and the wedding party (delegation is key for getting things done!). Wedding planning can be stressful and it’s easy to let it consume a lot of your time and conversations, so we also decided to only discuss wedding related topics on certain days of the week (unless of course something urgent comes up)!
Tips to Stay on Budget!
We decided on our budget early on, and vowed to stick to it no matter what! While there were vendors we fell in love with and wanted to book, they were out of our budget so we opted out. Our advice is to shop around for vendors, check out wedding magazines for the local area, and talk to your photographer for referrals of vendors they’ve worked with in the past.
Just like your marriage, don’t settle in finding what you want!
Also ask vendors what type of discounts they offer (i.e. military discounts, holiday specials, etc.). Negotiate as much as you can on the front-end! We talked to over 30 venues before we finally found one in our budget, and in the area we wanted. Just like your marriage, don’t settle in finding what you want! It always seems impossible until it’s done!
How to Manage the Wedding Party
Over-communicate! At first, we used group text messages, but we realized those don’t warrant many responses, and if the wedding party doesn’t know each other, it can inhibit conversations between everyone. Plus, we had a few people in our wedding party that didn’t respond to our group messages, but we realized they didn’t have group-text-messages enabled on their phone (whoops!). We also decided to use an email chain to pseudo-introduce everyone to each other and send out the schedule of events for the week-of (i.e. rehearsal dinner, welcome dinner, ceremony, reception, after-party, etc.). Also don’t be afraid to use your “bridal party of authority” or “groomsmen authority” to delegate and ask for help. The wedding party is there to help, not just show up on wedding day to stand there
—Luden
Find a way to get organized early. I love working with excel to create a list for everything wedding related. Most important would be a timeline, a budget of must haves and hope to haves, a document (or pinboard) for ideas and one document to organize vendor research.
Find a way to get organized early.
Buy a folder for all your receipts and paperwork so you can keep everything in one place. The more organized you are, the more in control you will feel!
—Megan
