Wedding Planning Advice (Hi I'm Back)
Hi friends!
It has been quite some time since I have said hello!
Lots of changes have happened in my life since the last time I have posted. I got another Corgi (named Cayde) and I am engaged! My boo and I got engaged back in November in the happiest place on earth, Disneyland. Truly, I am so excited to see what the future holds for us. I cannot be happier.
So with being engaged, a wedding is going to come along (if you would like to, everyone is completely different!). Wedding planning so far has been incredible for me. We have planned for our wedding to be in February 2020. From the day I post this, I have about 100 more days left until the big day. I want to share with you some advice that has helped us along our journey of planning.
My ultimate goal with this post is to help you fellow (or future) engaged ladies and gentleman with your wedding planning! (This is based on if you have like 1+ years to plan [I'm sorry that I cannot help those who are doing a short engagement{I respect you though, that's tough}])
1. Enjoy being engaged to your boo!
CONGRATS!! Yay! You are engaged! Please enjoy the beginning of it and please celebrate endlessly until you get married and then celebrate even more. This is some advice my sister gave me when I first got engaged and I was already worried about planning. She literally told me to calm down and enjoy with your other.
Enjoy with your friends and family too if you would like to. We did an engagement party about 5 months into our engagement and it was so special. We got to celebrate with everyone so close to us, including our bridal and groom parties.
2. Join a wedding planning website.
I highly recommend this. Personally, I use Wedding Wire. There is also The Knot and Wedding Happy. The reason why I used Wedding Wire is because it's an easy website to use and it's completely free.
They feature a huge wedding planning checklist. First, you fill out your info on your wedding (like goal wedding date, theme, etc.). It'll create this checklist of a ton of things that you need to think about and recommendations on when these things should be done. If you don't care for certain things on the list, you can simply delete them!
They also feature a whole wedding vendor search. You can search for different locations that vendors are based out of. You can see reviews, see prices, and even contact them. You can save vendors that way you can compare one to another.
You can throw your guest list on it and even use it later for a seating chart if you do decide to do assigned seating. You can also create your wedding website on there to share with your guests. I have a beautiful website made through Wedding Wire. It is free unless you want to do a true custom URL for the website. (It was like $25 for it to be active for one year with a custom URL).
If you have any questions or stories you want to share, they also have a forum where there are a ton of engaged or even married people who just want to help others out.
Again, I recommend Wedding Wire.
Also, I have a handy dandy binder that I take advantage of by Mindy Weiss called The Wedding Planner & Organizer and it is such a good planner. It has different sections for planning with things that you need to keep in mind and questions to need to ask your vendors. Check it out!
3. Please find your venue before you choose anything else.
Please. Don't find your dress before this. Don't get any vendors before this. Don't get any decor before this. Just find your venue first please.
Your venue is everything. It's the vibe of your wedding. Again, this is another piece of advice my sister gave me and it is beyond true!
Imagine if you got your dress even before you got your venue and it is beyond vintage and rustic vibes and you end up going for a very modern day venue. That wouldn't match, right? (REMINDER, EVERYONE HAS THEIR OWN OPINION AND IT'S OKAY, YOU DON'T HAVE TO AGREE [but remember, you only get married once])
I thought I would have a wedding in the woods, surrounded by trees and I had such a perfect dress for it, but the price of the venue I loved was completely out of my budget. Thank goodness I did not buy that dress because now, my venue is in a rustic yet modern style building surrounded by fluffy chickens and vineyards. Completely different.
We toured about 2 venues and we went with our very first one because the price and the vibes were on point. Venues are expensive so keep that in mind. But when you find your venue, you know it is the one. You start to daydream about your wedding there. It's kind of like love at first sight.
After we booked my venue, we bought a bunch of decor because I know it will match our venue.
I hope you understand this piece of advice. I'll get more into decor though..
4. Pinterest can be yuor angle or yuor devil (I spelt this wrong for those who aren't familiar with memes)
I use Pinterest. It's okay. A lot of my pins are for that dream venue I had.
But all I can say is that if you are on Pinterest for too long, you may go cross-eyed and/or crazy.
There are so many things on there that are awesome. But remember, you can only have so many things.
Working in a jewelry store, I have guys coming in for engagement rings and in hand, they have their girlfriend's Pinterest up on their phone. I can definitely say, when I scroll through their "engagement ring" board, everything is so so different from one another. Choose one style and stick with it or change it.
Pinterest, again, has so so much crap on it. After you find your venue, figure out the theme and stick to it or else you are going to overwhelm yourself.
What I did was before bed, I'd grab my laptop and scroll through and pin what we both like!
5. Instagram has a world of different photographers/videographers
I found my photographers on trusty ol' Instagram! I found @wanderlovecaptures while scrolling though and checking out tagged people in posts and I think that was one of the greatest things I have ever done along the lines of wedding planning. (The photo for this post was by @wanderlovecaptures , please please please check them out!!)
Again, find your venue first. You wouldn't do your engagement photos in a busy downtown location and have your wedding on the beach (or maybe you would???). The reason I say that is because you want to prep your guests for your wedding and what they expect (or you can say whatever and do what you want [it's okay, it's your own wedding, not mine]).
Find a photographer that fits you and your boo's vision and desires. There are so many talented photographers out there! Not to mention, if they are on Instagram, you get to see their portfolio and what their style is.
2. Join a wedding planning website.
I highly recommend this. Personally, I use Wedding Wire. There is also The Knot and Wedding Happy. The reason why I used Wedding Wire is because it's an easy website to use and it's completely free.
They feature a huge wedding planning checklist. First, you fill out your info on your wedding (like goal wedding date, theme, etc.). It'll create this checklist of a ton of things that you need to think about and recommendations on when these things should be done. If you don't care for certain things on the list, you can simply delete them!
They also feature a whole wedding vendor search. You can search for different locations that vendors are based out of. You can see reviews, see prices, and even contact them. You can save vendors that way you can compare one to another.
You can throw your guest list on it and even use it later for a seating chart if you do decide to do assigned seating. You can also create your wedding website on there to share with your guests. I have a beautiful website made through Wedding Wire. It is free unless you want to do a true custom URL for the website. (It was like $25 for it to be active for one year with a custom URL).
If you have any questions or stories you want to share, they also have a forum where there are a ton of engaged or even married people who just want to help others out.
Again, I recommend Wedding Wire.
Also, I have a handy dandy binder that I take advantage of by Mindy Weiss called The Wedding Planner & Organizer and it is such a good planner. It has different sections for planning with things that you need to keep in mind and questions to need to ask your vendors. Check it out!
3. Please find your venue before you choose anything else.
Please. Don't find your dress before this. Don't get any vendors before this. Don't get any decor before this. Just find your venue first please.
Your venue is everything. It's the vibe of your wedding. Again, this is another piece of advice my sister gave me and it is beyond true!
Imagine if you got your dress even before you got your venue and it is beyond vintage and rustic vibes and you end up going for a very modern day venue. That wouldn't match, right? (REMINDER, EVERYONE HAS THEIR OWN OPINION AND IT'S OKAY, YOU DON'T HAVE TO AGREE [but remember, you only get married once])
I thought I would have a wedding in the woods, surrounded by trees and I had such a perfect dress for it, but the price of the venue I loved was completely out of my budget. Thank goodness I did not buy that dress because now, my venue is in a rustic yet modern style building surrounded by fluffy chickens and vineyards. Completely different.
We toured about 2 venues and we went with our very first one because the price and the vibes were on point. Venues are expensive so keep that in mind. But when you find your venue, you know it is the one. You start to daydream about your wedding there. It's kind of like love at first sight.
After we booked my venue, we bought a bunch of decor because I know it will match our venue.
I hope you understand this piece of advice. I'll get more into decor though..
4. Pinterest can be yuor angle or yuor devil (I spelt this wrong for those who aren't familiar with memes)
I use Pinterest. It's okay. A lot of my pins are for that dream venue I had.
But all I can say is that if you are on Pinterest for too long, you may go cross-eyed and/or crazy.
There are so many things on there that are awesome. But remember, you can only have so many things.
Working in a jewelry store, I have guys coming in for engagement rings and in hand, they have their girlfriend's Pinterest up on their phone. I can definitely say, when I scroll through their "engagement ring" board, everything is so so different from one another. Choose one style and stick with it or change it.
Pinterest, again, has so so much crap on it. After you find your venue, figure out the theme and stick to it or else you are going to overwhelm yourself.
What I did was before bed, I'd grab my laptop and scroll through and pin what we both like!
5. Instagram has a world of different photographers/videographers
I found my photographers on trusty ol' Instagram! I found @wanderlovecaptures while scrolling though and checking out tagged people in posts and I think that was one of the greatest things I have ever done along the lines of wedding planning. (The photo for this post was by @wanderlovecaptures , please please please check them out!!)
Again, find your venue first. You wouldn't do your engagement photos in a busy downtown location and have your wedding on the beach (or maybe you would???). The reason I say that is because you want to prep your guests for your wedding and what they expect (or you can say whatever and do what you want [it's okay, it's your own wedding, not mine]).
Find a photographer that fits you and your boo's vision and desires. There are so many talented photographers out there! Not to mention, if they are on Instagram, you get to see their portfolio and what their style is.
6. Save the dates SUCK, but it'll be okay...
I chose to do my save the dates in a postcard form. Getting addresses will totally suck, but you need it anyway.
First what you want to do is form an excel sheet as your guest list (I did say that you can throw your guest list on Wedding Wire, but I did mine on excel). If you use Gmail as your email provider, you can use Google Sheets. It's free and it's basically excel!
Sit down with your boo, grab a bottle of wine, and pull up your little sheet and discuss who would both would like at your wedding! For couples, I put like "Jane & John Doe" on one line that way you don't have to copy and paste two addresses. Not to mention, after you fill out everything, the number of lines will show you how many save the dates you would need to order.
After you do that and then get everyone's addresses, order your save the dates! I used Zazzle for mine and they came out so beautiful and they shipped so quick! They always have great deals and coupon codes too.
When you get them, every time you write up the guest info on the postcard (or whatever), make a mark next to their name and move on to the next. I once totally messed up and I think I have sent two couples two save the dates because I forgot to make a mark next to their names.
I sent mine out about 8 months before the wedding. Now I am about to send out my invitations (also from Zazzle) and it is the same exact process as the save the dates. I am sending them out 3-4 months before the wedding.
7. Decor is so fun, wow.
I swear, every once in a while I go to Hobby Lobby and I black out and throw all the wedding decor into my cart. Hobby Lobby has sales from time to time like "50% off all wedding decor" and you need to take advantage of that.
Also, check out local Facebook wedding groups! You can find used decor at some great prices.
Where we are from, there are business that rent out decor and we are taking advantage of that. We are renting a HUGE marquee sign that spells out "LOVE" and it's an incredible photo op!
I am taking advantage of one that our venue works with for all of my glassware, tableware, and linens. One thing I can say is that there will be no "plate chargers". They're ugly and useless and it's my opinion. Thanks for listening to that. Just had to say it.
8. Teamwork makes the dream work!
This isn't an event just about you. You're getting married to someone so it's also their wedding.
Sometimes I catch myself planning by myself and I get overwhelmed. Get your lover involved! Also, it's really cute to hear their ideas and what they want. Weddings are just so cute and I love them.
Again, grab a bottle of wine and pour yourself and your love a nice glass and get to planning!
Also on the same page as teamwork, check out wedding planners! It will take the weight off of your shoulders and will take care of those nightmares you have from time to time. I had dream that it was our wedding ceremony and no one walking down the aisle knew where to walk and stand and it was so disorganized and my man forgot his suit. Yeah, you might get these dreams, but with a wedding planner, I know that will not happen.
OKAY FRIENDS. That is all that I have so far on wedding planning.
If you have any other points of advice, please drop them in the comment section and help some other couples out!
Love you all. I'm glad to be back.
Alyssa
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