Planning Your Wedding

If anyone ever tells you that planning your wedding is not a difficult task, then they’ve either not been married before or had one of those Las Vegas style, drive through weddings.

There are so many things to consider and coordinate to plan for the perfect wedding.  We had no real idea apart from some vague notions on venue and theme.   We found a really good wedding planner book to help us cover all the bases and ensure we didn’t forget anything.

Here’s a few wedding plan tips that we found were important to us:

• Plan ahead as far as possible.  Even if your wedding date is 6 or even 12 months down the track, there are many things that get booked out a long way ahead.  For example, the church or wedding venue, reception hall, entertainment etc.
• Consider the season.  Most people don’t choose to get married in winter (if you live in a very cold area) or in the middle of summer (if you live in a very hot area) for obvious reasons.  However, if you don’t have a choice in the matter, make sure you take into account things like venues, clothing, and food that are appropriate for the season.
• For the bridesmaid dresses, you can save a lot of money by either hiring the dresses (most bridal places offer this service) or if you are going to buy the dresses, check out one of the main department stores like Sears, as they will generally have a great range of glamorous dresses suitable for all occasions and for a fraction of the price you’d pay in a boutique bridal salon.
• To be able to stick within your wedding budget, you need to keep track of all your expenses and quotes.  You’ll find there is a huge range in quotes for similar wedding products and services, so make sure you shop around.  One big tip we discovered was to not be too forthcoming with that you are getting married.  We found that some places will charge a premium once they know they are dealing with a wedding, so unless they specifically ask, just keep it quiet.  You may surprise yourself as to how much you can save.
• Keep the wedding theme in mind when booking venues and planning designs and decorations.  For example, if you are going for a traditional wedding, you don’t really want a night club atmosphere at the reception venue and you don’t want the bridesmaids to be dressed in different styles and colors.
• Make sure you meet all the people (eg: priest/marriage celebrant, photographer etc)  involved in the wedding beforehand, so that you are clear what their plans are and you can convey any particular details you want to include.
• While there is specific wedding organizer software available to track things like invitations and gift register, we found it was easy enough to just use a simple spreadsheet to keep track of things.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to planning a wedding, so I think you can see how important it is to be organized well ahead of time.