Guide to wedding planning

A Wedding Without a Plan is Often a Disaster!

The day you've been waiting for has finally arrived. Your partner has proposed marriage and you've emphatically said 'YES'! Now what do you do? The answer to that simple question will make a tremendous difference in how the real 'big day' plays out. Gone are the days when weddings were simple affairs that took place on family farms with all the neighbors pitching in to help. Today the bride and the groom are the ones calling all the shots. Others will try to get involved, but overall, it's the two people getting married who decide what's going to happen, when and how.

With so much to coordinate, it's amazing that weddings go on at all. Considering that both the bride and the groom are likely holding down full-time jobs, who has time to work out all the details? And there are so many. Well the big secret is it's all in the plan. Having a well-thought out plan that starts with selecting the perfect wedding date and ends with arriving at the most romantic honeymoon destination is the only way to keep nerves from fraying and budgets from being blown.

Plenty of tools are available to help you plan your wedding. It's up to you to decide which tool will work best for you and then you've got to make sure you use the tool you've selected. Wedding planning tools range in price so before you go spending any money, take a step back and think for a moment about the b-word. A 'budget' is crucial because it's what will keep you and your partner - and anyone else funding the festivities - from going into debt. As unflattering as the word is, every wedding needs to begin with a budget. Wedding costs can rapidly spiral out of control because let's face it, everybody wants their big day to be magical.

To determine a budget for the big day, start with figuring out who is going to be contributing towards the finances and how much each can afford to contribute. Once you have a total dollar amount to work with, you can then begin to allocate the budget to the different parts of the wedding.

The wedding plans all begin with the wedding date. Everybody wants to be a June bride, but with only four week-ends in this month, not everybody can. The wedding date you select will have a significant impact on your budget. A wedding during the busy summer months will cost far more than one that's held off-season. Not only will the wedding date impact the price you'll pay for everything from the function hall to the photographer, it also impacts availability.

Once the wedding budget and wedding date have been nailed down, it's time to get busy. We will provide a timeline of tasks you need to accomplish in the days and months leading up to the big day!

Your Wedding Is Worth It

How do you plan a wedding? As the old joke goes: carefully.

Before you can plan a wedding, you have to plan your plan. That convoluted sentence means: you have to have some tools and some idea of how to use them. In some cases, that will mean using software to plan your wedding. In another instance, it may refer to getting help in the form of a wedding planner or bridal consultant.

A wedding planner can help you with any or all of the things you will have to do. They have the skill, the experience and the contacts to help keep things running smoothly. But they can only do that effectively with your input. Your goals for the wedding are paramount. They can suggest themes, but you must select. They can make arrangements, but you decide what you want or enjoy.

Getting or developing a planning guide will help. It's essential to get and stay organized. The entire effort can take months or as long as two years. No one could track all the details in their heads, even with consulting help.

But before you can use tools or assistants, you have to know something about what you want to use them for. Selecting a theme, choosinga destination, choosing a location while considering locale specific issues, and more are all part of the process. You won't know how to use the tools unless you can creatively input the items they help track and arrange.

You'll need to track budget, develop to-do lists and more. You'll need to make arrangements with a number of professionals who are part of the big day and events leading up to it. A photographer, caterer and more are all very busy people. Wedding and reception venues get booked up far in advance.

Just about everyone will want to select a theme for the wedding and reception and arrange for decorations consistent with that. The ceremony and the reception, and maybe even the bridal shower or bachelor parties before them, can benefit. Even getting to the wedding, then to the reception will take some forethought. All that takes careful planning.

If you plan to have your wedding close to home, or in another state, or even in faraway Italy or Japan, that planning effort reaches a higher plateau. Some legal issues are relevant, but generally a very simple part of the process. Making arrangements for venue, hotels, transportation and more in another country is still challenging.

Fortunately, the Internet has made the process much easier than it was in the past. Email to France is as easy as one to someone across town. They can email photos, addresses and contracts. Sooner or later, though, a visit will become necessary. That can mean going there twice, or leaving a couple of months in advance of the big day.

But with all the items to track, all the expense and effort involved, one thing remains true. Your wedding is worth it.