As soon as you get engaged, your mind starts buzzing with ideas about the perfect wedding. Although the initial enthusiasm is naturally high, you might also feel anxiety when you realize that for your wedding ideas to take shape, you must rigorously go over thousands of details.
With so many important decisions to make before the big day and so many different wedding trends to follow, planning this special event can be a daunting experience.
To minimize the stress and maximize the chances of your wedding turning out exactly how you envision, read on to learn what you have to be mindful of when starting your preparations.
Your Vision Must Match Your Budget
When thinking about the ideal wedding, most of us give free rein to our imagination and allow ourselves to indulge in extravagant fantasies regarding the number of guests, the menu, the outfits, or the venue.
Unfortunately, planning your wedding is just as much a matter of vision as it is a matter of budget. Once you start writing down your ideas and researching the practical aspects, you might realize that you’ll have to compromise in some areas.
If your budget is not unlimited, make a list of absolute priorities, meaning things you won’t compromise on in any circumstance. Perhaps you dreamed about a special venue for years or you always pictured yourself surrounded by a large number of people on your wedding day.
Establish which things you’re not willing to forego and which you care less about. This will make it easier to tie your ideas to a realistic budget.
Time Management is Crucial
From the initial planning stages of the wedding up to the big event, you’ll run a race against time. If you have no experience in wedding planning, it’s difficult to tell how much a related task will take. Give each contractor ample time to work on the assignments.
Keep in mind that people in the wedding industry work against tight schedules too. Their services are sometimes booked weeks and months in advance.
When organizing your calendar, start with heavily time-dependent tasks. For example, if you want to hire a certain popular photographer, contacting him should be a high-priority task that you do as soon as you have your wedding date set.
Similarly, nobody can deliver a unique designer wedding dress if you contact them a week before the wedding.
Allot enough time for each task so that both you and your contractors can feel comfortable with the schedule. With good time management, everything will fall in place nicely during your special day.
The Venue Determines the Ambience of Your Wedding
When you think about your ideal wedding, you have a certain location in mind. Some people imagine a picturesque location in the countryside, others a luxurious venue. Of course, there are dozens of possibilities in between.
In addition to juggling your and your partner’s personal preferences, there are four main aspects to consider when deciding on a wedding venue: budget, number of guests, accessibility, and aesthetics.
After setting your budget and establishing how many people you want to invite, research venues that are within easy reach for a large majority of your guests. You should make it easy for almost everyone to attend your wedding and arrive on time for the event with as little inconvenience as possible.
Besides these important practical details, remember that your chosen venue must fulfill the aesthetic criteria too. Each venue is unique when it comes to the colour scheme, event furniture, lighting, spaciousness, or scenic potential.
Both the indoor and outdoor space of the venue will play a role in setting the ambiance and mood of your wedding. A wedding in a picturesque castle or a historic mansion will feel and look different than a wedding in a rooftop location with ample panoramic views like The View Venue.
Think thoroughly about your preferences. If you don’t have strong feelings about a specific place, research venues in your area. You’re bound to find locations as majestic, romantic, or scenic as the one you dream of.
Skimping on Quality Services Can Backfire
Your wedding should be one of the most memorable events of your life and should also leave a strong impression on your family and guests. However, weddings can be extremely expensive.
There’s always the temptation to dream big and have a fabulous celebration that you’ll remember fondly, but the fear of amassing huge debt just for a single-day event can crush your wedding dreams.
If budget is an issue, analyze thoroughly where you can cut costs without affecting the overall success of the event. Going for a cheap menu will leave your guests disappointed whereas choosing fewer decorations is a compromise that will have a much smaller impact on the quality of the event.
Hiring a cheap photographer will look good on the budget sheet, but bad wedding photography will fill you with immense regret later on. Don’t skimp on quality services just to save some bucks. Cheap alternatives can prove disastrous for a wedding.
Things as minute as chairs covers should be put into consideration when preferring quality over quantity.
It’s Fine to Skip Traditions
No matter your cultural or social background, each community has several traditions and rites associated with the wedding day. From hiding the bride from the groom before the ceremony to tossing the bouquet, there are many traditions that people feel compelled to partake in not to disappoint their guests.
If you don’t like certain wedding traditions or find them too time-consuming, don’t give in to social pressure. When preparing the schedule for your wedding day, prioritize activities that are important for you and for how you will remember this event.
Spending a longer time greeting the guests can have a greater emotional impact than following a cliché tradition.
Planning a wedding is an exhaustive process at the end of which you are rewarded with beautiful memories to last a lifetime. No matter how difficult it may seem to put your ideas into practice, you can thankfully find helpful resources so you won’t ignore anything essential.
Although your wedding will be a unique event, you can learn from the shared wisdom of people who’ve already passed this milestone.
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