How to start planning your wedding.

Congratulations if you are newly engaged or just starting on your wedding planning journey, this blog post is for you! Being able to start planning your wedding is such an exciting time, however can be overwhelming and scary once your get started and realise how many choices you need to make and just how many suppliers are out there! In this week’s blog post I’ll be listing out the most important things you need to do first when starting your wedding planning, and by doing these steps it should make things a little less scary!

Make sure you enjoy your engagement

Don't feel like you need to rush into the planning of your dream day, spend some time together during your engagement, take a date night with your now Fiancée and make it special, go on a weekend away just the two of you or just spend the night in whatever takes your fancy!

Work out your budget

The first step in planning your budget for your wedding is to have an honest conversation with each other. How much can you really afford to put towards the wedding without going into huge amounts of debt? What is a realistic figure that you are happy to spend? Be honest and make sure that you are both on the same page.

The next step is then to work out who is paying for the wedding, is it solely you, are parents contributing or are they just offering to pay for a part of the day? This is another conversation you need to have and make sure that everyone agrees and are all happy before progressing with venue viewings and securing a date!

View my blog post all about working out your wedding budget here

Priorities

What is the most important elements of the wedding to you both. Is it the flowers, location, music or food? What do you want your guests to remember from your day, what do you want your guests to feel when they walk into your reception? What would you want your guests to say about your wedding? Once you work this out, you then know what suppliers you would like to spend more money on. If food is really important to you, you then know you go with higher end caterer and offer more than one option or upgrade your wine choice? If its music that’s important you could go for a larger band or get a band and a DJ! This is an important step that will really help you know where you can allocate your budget the best, where to spend longer finding the best suppliers and where to focus your attention to get the wedding you dreamed of.

Civil or church

You have probably already know what type of ceremony you would like, whether it be in a church or a civil ceremony at a licensed venue. But if not its best to work this out before you even start any further planning, as you may need to look at additional suppliers depending on your choice ,such as transportation if the church you choose isn’t in walking distance to your reception venue.

However, do look into all options available, it’s now becoming more popular to have a celebrant led wedding service which enables you to have a more personal service. You could even have a blessing at home that would be conducted by a celebrant. However, celebrant led services are not currently legally binding so you would still be required to have a registrar conduct the legal ceremony but this can be done beforehand and your guests will never know!

Wedding party

This is probably something else you had already decided prior to get engaged! While its great fun to choose your wedding party and ask them to be in your wedding in an inventive way make sure you choose wisely so that you don’t have problems and concerns along the way. You want to be able to trust your wedding party and know that they will be able to do everything you need them to, and take some stress off of your shoulders.

Inspo and style

Working out your style and gaining inspiration is such a fun part of your early planning. Working out what kind of venue, florals, décor, stationery you would like can end up in hours on end of scrolling through Instagram and Pinterest but I promise you as soon as you narrow down your style your planning will become slightly easier, as you will know exactly what you are and aren’t looking for, meaning less time scrolling and more time booking those dream suppliers.

Find your key suppliers

You will want to find your key suppliers first, those suppliers who can only do one wedding a day such as venue, photographer, planner etc then move onto suppliers such as florist and cake makers that have limited availability. This will allow you to have your most important suppliers booked, confirmed and out of the way first so you know you have exactly who you want sorted early.

View my blog post on how to find your dream team of suppliers here.

Your wedding

Remember its your wedding! While its great to get recommendations from friends and family of suppliers they used for their weddings or parties, they may not be the right suppliers for you. You want to make sure you find suppliers that are in your budget, can provide a service that you want and matches your wedding style, and most of all that you like them! You will be working with these people in some cases for years so you want to be able to get on with them!

Relax!

Take a breath and relax! Wedding planning can be stressful, especially when you are trying to juggle work, family and social life. Its can take around 250 hours to plan a wedding so delegate tasks and ask for help. Look into hiring a planner or on the day coordinator to take away stress and handle the admin, build up and wedding day for you. You should be able to enjoy your wedding planning, this is such an exciting time and you should enjoy every moment!

Take a look at my services to see how I can help to make your wedding planning enjoyable and as stress free as possible!

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