Planning your wedding day can be exciting and fun but it can also be stressful if you don’t have a spending plan. If you don’t know where to start, here’s 7 first steps to planning your dream wedding.
Preparation Is The Key
There’s a distinct difference between Designing your wedding and Planning your wedding, knowing the difference can save you time and money.
Designing your wedding is combining all the elements that create a beautiful experience in what your guests will see, hear and do at your wedding. Planning your wedding is coordinating the logistics, managing the financial resources and vendors.
Simply put, Design is about making your wedding look beautiful which is what most couples focus on and Planning involves managing the financial resources, logistics and vendors for your wedding.
What usually causes couples stress when planning their wedding has more to do with not knowing how much everything will cost and what tasks need to be managed.
You can Design and Plan Your Dream Wedding without all the stress and here are 7 things to start with.
7 First Steps To Planning Your Dream Wedding
1. Create a Budget
Your budget is first priority because every purchasing decision for your wedding hinges on how much financial resources you have available.
2. Allocate Your Budget
Once you know how much you have available to spend, your next step is to allocate your budget for the services you want for your wedding. *Download my free Wedding Expense Allocator to help you break down your budget and allocate your wedding expenses.
3. Talk to Decision Makers
The news of a wedding is very exciting for family and friends. There’s a chance that you may receive unsolicited advice or suggestions from family or friends on what you should do. In the case of your wedding, the decision makers are generally the people who are helping you pay for the wedding. By creating and allocating your budget, you and your fiancé can let other decision makers know how much you plan on spending and on what.
4. Do Your Research
Begin researching the services you want to hire for your wedding. Things to look for are average cost of service for your geographical area, reviews and services offered. I recommend doing your research before contacting vendors, you should research at least 3 in each category of service.
5. Prepare a “Must Have” list
Identify and list services that you “must have” for your wedding. These will be your non-negotiable items. Keep in mind that your budget should be able to accommodate these non-negotiable items so make sure you have the budget for your selections.
6. Keep An Open Mind
If this is your first time planning a big event with multiple vendors, you should keep your mind open to suggestions when working with vendors. Make sure you let the vendor know your budget, by communicating your budget to potential vendors. A seasoned vendor will be able to guide you towards services they offer that best fit your budget.
7. Decide How Much Help You Need
You may be super detailed and organized, but if you’ve never planned a big event with multiple vendors, you will need help. Your help can come by way of the internet through research or by hiring a professional Wedding Planner. Either way, Planning a wedding is a big undertaking and knowing what tasks you need to do at what time can make all the difference in you enjoying your planning journey or rushing the date to get it over with.
Check out my video Design & Plan Your Dream Wedding for more helpful tips on planning your wedding. Got questions or have feedback? Leave a comment below.
For more wedding inspiration check out the latest “Real Weddings”.
7 Responses
This is a special day and I think everyone who plans it, should devote enough time and effort to make it memorable. This article is catchy. I loved the style of writing and the photos attached.
I like the distinction you made between designing and planning a wedding. These steps will come in handy when I convince my husband that we need a renewal of our vows in 2 years!
These are some great tips for sure and planning a wedding can be a stressful time for sure. My sister just got married and it was a blast but she was on edge for a solid year or more. Me… super simple…. I do not need a big day to make myself feel good…. I am much simpler and prefer to elope or do something super simple on the beach or in the country. I would rather use the money spent on a wedding for something else…. thank you!
It is a once-only special occasion and if you want to have a memorable celebration, planning is definitely the key.
This was really helpful. Thanks for this tips!