I don't know about you guys, but my mailbox is full these days of wedding invitations and baby shower invites. As I know jack about babies (which should make my own shower and the rest of my life very interesting), I feel like I did learn a few things about being a bride with my own wedding experience. In light of that, I thought I'd share my wisdom in today's blog.
1. The first thing you'll need is a rough head count of how many guests you expect.
I've watched lots of girls try and start planning by figuring out a reception venue or figuring out a date or picking a church. I promise you, before you can do anything else, you need a rough head count of how many people are going to be there. That's the first question any venue or church is going to ask you. How do you get that rough head count, you ask? I made a rough list. Started off with family, added in family friends, added in my friends, and then did the same for The Boy from Texas. We weren't right on, but honestly, for jotting down names off the top of our head, we were pretty close. You can pretty much assume about 40-60% of the people you invite will show up. Start here, and it will make your next several steps easier.
2. Set a budget.
For the love of all things good, set a budget. I know, I know, this is not the fun part. It's much more enjoyable to taste cakes and look at pretty magazines and plan bachelorette parties. The most important thing you can do is set down and come up with a budget. Be realistic about it. And then make yourself stick to it. I promise you, if you don't do one, you'll rack up $15,000 worth of bills without blinking. And if you start cheating early on your budget, you'll wind up $15,000 over your set limit before it's said and done.
3. Decide up front what items are important to you.
This is related to budget setting. In a perfect world, you'd get exactly what you wanted at your wedding. For those of us living in reality, that ain't gonna happen. So you need to figure out what things are important to you. For example, having a reception (food and band) that could fit a very large guest list was important to us. We chose to make that a priority and spend less elsewhere to make that happen. For example, I did not put a single decoration in the church. That didn't matter to me and I didn't care to spend my money there.
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4. Enlist talented family and friends.
This really should be the first thing on the list, because our family and friends made our wedding. The Boy from Texas's grandma made the cake, we just paid for the ingredients. His cousin did all of our flowers, we paid the flower cost and gave her a totally insufficient little tip. My aunts did all of the snacks at the reception. My brother cooked at the rehearsal dinner. Our neighbors and friends helped us collect decorations and put them all together at the reception venue. Three of my friends served as our photographers. Without these people being willing to share their talents, our wedding would have been a major bust.
5. Get a thank you note schedule and stick to it!
First off, if you have any thought that you can get away with no thank you notes, you better think again. At least in my part of the world, not sending a wedding thank you is like flipping someone off in church. You just don't do it. So, knowing that, I made a schedule. I was fortunate that my showers and wedding were pretty spread out. After each shower, I gave myself one month to have those thank you notes done. I did the same for wedding gifts. I wrote it in my planner and if that meant I had to stay up until midnight to get them finished, I made sure they were each done within 1 month of the gift arriving.
One more helpful thing here that I did not do, but will be doing for my baby shower. If you print labels for either your shower invites or wedding invites (I hand addressed wedding, but the hostesses printed them for the shower), print an extra set of those address labels. That-a-way when it's time to send the thank you note for gifts, you've already got labels ready to stick on the envelope. That would have saved me a ton of time!
6. Consider a holiday shower.
I was fortunate to have lots of people who wanted to celebrate our wedding with showers. One such group was the ladies from my old law firm in Albuquerque. Instead of a normal shower, they wanted to give me a theme shower. I would chose a theme and their gifts would all follow that. Some examples were a tool shower or a cookbook shower or a kitchen gadget shower. I opted for a holiday shower, and it was the best! I ended up getting some really great holiday decor (Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas) that I never would have bought myself! It was a lot of fun and something I had never heard of before!
7. Think about multiple photographers.
Now, understand that this one will implicate #2 and #4 above. Photographers are expensive. Lots of people spend over $2,000 on one photographer. If you are doing that, the thought of hiring more than one will make you break out in hives. What I did, however, was ask three of my friends to photograph the day. It could not have been better. They sort of divided up the tasks--for example, Ag Teacher Friend went out where the boys were getting ready to do those shots. High School Friend took care of a bunch of the detail pictures. Super Mom handled our post-wedding photos. We ended up with so many amazing photos of so many different things and different angles, it was unreal.
8. Take time for a few post-wedding shots.
We took almost all of our photos before the wedding. Afterwards, we quickly snapped a few at the church with the wedding party and our families, and then everyone was off. While the guests headed to the reception (where drinks and food were already being served), Super Mom took The Boy from Texas and I off for maybe 10 or 15 minutes of post-wedding photos. These shots are hands down some of my favorite of the day, and it was really great to be able to take a beat, look at each other, and breathe, before heading into the chaos of a reception.
9. Assume you will have one hour less than you have to be ready.
I honestly don't know where the time went our wedding day. We were way ahead of schedule even after running the Wedding Day 5K and having breakfast. But I think that all the girl talk got us distracted and I swear I blinked and it was time to go. Just tell yourself you need to be ready one hour before you do so that you've got plenty of time and are not rushing around.
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| Wedding Day 5K |
10. Forget all the advice you get and just do what you want. It's your day!
People are all full of opinions about what you should do and not do, myself included, obviously! People told me the Wedding Day 5K was crazy, I loved it. People said we invited too many guests, I wouldn't have left anyone off. People said four months to plan would never be enough, it was plenty.
Take what works. Ignore what doesn't. And move on. Every couple is different, every wedding is different, and there is no advice that you have to take. (Except the thank you note thing....write those!)
