Wedding Planning: How to take control and plan your dream wedding! Part One

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This multiple part series will explore how to systematically plan your own wedding. Whether you choose to seek the help of an event or wedding planner to assist with some aspects of your planning or do it all yourself, this how-to guide will empower you with all of the information you need to take control of your big day!

In this wedding planning series, we will discuss all key elements of wedding planning, including selecting a wedding date, budgeting, creating a guest list, choosing a theme, selecting vendors, creating a registry, bridal party, decorations, invitations and much more.

The Start of Your Wedding Planning Journey

Getting engaged is likely going to be one of the most memorable and happy events in your life! Whether it was something you were expecting or it was a complete shock, the engagement typically marks the beginning of your wedding planning journey; Although some of us have probably been planning for years, even since we were little girls.

When I got engaged, after the initial excitement and celebration, my thoughts immediately went to wedding planning. I have a feeling a lot of women may have a similar experience when it comes to this topic.

Is Wedding Planning for Everyone?

I am a planner by nature! I enjoy planning my day, my week, big and small events, and just about anything that permits me to make lists and checklists. So of course I relished at the thought of having a big event to plan, and probably the most important event I would ever have the opportunity to work on. This post is meant to help you whether you are a seasoned planner or a newbie with no idea where to begin.

Should you Plan Your Own Wedding

Whether you choose to plan on your own, seek the help of family and friends or hire a partial or full service wedding planner, planning a wedding involves time, effort, and a whole lot of choices! There are so many options and consequently so many decisions to be made that many people shy away from planning on their own because they anticipate it being a lot of work.

Many newly engaged women don’t know where to start or how to go about the process, so quickly hire a planner, which ends up impacting the amount of money they have to spend on their actual wedding.

Making the Decision to Plan Your Own Wedding

I will share how I planned my own wedding with very little assistance, in under a year, during the pandemic and ended up having the best day of my life! It turned out far better than I ever could have expected and I am often asked by other brides for advice on how I pulled it off. I want to share my process with you in hopes of empowering other brides who may want to plan their own wedding.

Now, I don’t think there is anything wrong with hiring a wedding planner, but I believe that all brides CAN plan their own wedding, if they choose to. Planning your own wedding allows you to retain full control of the entire event and personalize it to your liking without feeling constrained. It can also allow you spend you entire budget on the event, rather than having to pay a planner’s commission.

If you’re in the process of planning your wedding, you should also check out my post about the 10 Lessons I learned while planning my wedding. It will definitely help you during your planning process!

Making the Right Choice for You about Your Wedding Planning Process

After reading this post, you may choose to plan your own event, delegate some aspects to a wedding planner, or you may decide that planning your wedding is not right for you and handoff all of the planning to someone else. The goal of this post is to educate you on the process and steps involved so that you can make an informed decision.

What Will we Cover in Part One of this Wedding Planning Series

In Part One of this series we will explore the five initial steps I took when planning my wedding: wedding planning options, choosing a wedding date, creating a guest list, making the initial budget and creating a timeline. This foundational work will lay the groundwork for the remaining steps in the wedding planning process, which will be covered in subsequent posts.

Options for Wedding Planning

When I initially started, I went my usual route when I approach any task or project. I asked friends and family, searched Pinterest and Google, scoured magazines and explored blogs to do all of the research that I could on wedding planning. I even checked out wedding planning books on audible. After all of that, the one thing that I was sure of was that it seemed like a lot of work and there were a lot of aspects to wedding planning.

I came up with three general directions that wedding planning seemed to go in:

• OPTION 1: Hire a wedding planner: Planners offer various packages but typically they can plan the entire event from start to finish, leaving you with very little to worry about, or they can plan certain aspects, leaving you to handle the areas you feel comfortable with. Rates vary depending on the package, guest list size and other factors.

• OPTION 2: Opting for a “pre-packaged” wedding: By having a destination wedding, eloping or seeking a venue that offers packaged wedding options, you can save yourself a lot of the stress of planning the fine details. You simply select a package and tweak to your liking along with the assistance of an on-site coordinator or planner. You may also select one of these packages and still work with an outside wedding planner.

• OPTION 3: Plan your wedding yourself: You do all of the planning on your own. You recruit vendors for various aspects of the event, and can do a lot of DIY and seek help from friends and family. You may also choose to enlist the help of an on-the-day coordinator to help carry out your plans on the day of the wedding, when you obviously be occupied. We will discuss this more in a later post.

What Impacted my Decision

In the beginning, I wrestled with the idea of hiring a planner. What changed my mind was the fact that I wanted a lot of control over all the aspects of my wedding, wanted to be mindful of budget and I was planning in the midst of a pandemic which made a lot of things very unpredictable. We ultimately decided that I would do most of the planning on my own plan but would recruit the help of some amazing vendors to pull off our dream wedding! I must say, I am so glad that I made this choice.

Beginning the Wedding Planning Process

I wanted to set out a concrete plan and course of action to keep myself organized, and not feel overwhelmed. Whether you are planning your wedding yourself or selecting one of the other options above, it is important to focus on four main considerations of wedding planning from the very beginning. This is where I began, and where I suggest you start.

The four elements that will dictate your wedding planning are:

• Wedding Date: This will establish the season you’re getting married, which may impact things like your venue, colour scheme and apparel. It will also help you to create the timeline.
• Guest List: The number of people invited to a wedding is probably one of the biggest decisions you will make as it will impact your venue, budget, feel of the wedding and several other elements of your event.
• Budget: Wedding costs can quickly add up. Before you start planning the fine details and spending money it is good to have an idea of how much you have to spend and where that money will come from.
• Timeline: A wedding timeline works backward from your wedding date and lists all objectives and tasks that must be completed. It attaches a date to each task to help keep your planning on track. It can be updated after each task is completed or at weekly or monthly intervals.

STEP 1: Selecting a Wedding Date

This is a personal decision that has to be made by you and your fiance.

Things to consider:

• It is important to take into account the season: Do you prefer a summer, spring, fall or winter wedding?
• Do you plan to take vacation around your wedding, if so when is this most feasible?
• Will you be inviting out of town guests, if so when is the best time for them to travel (taking into account vacation time, cost of travel, etc.)
• Does the date leave you enough time for planning? I recommend leaving at least 6 months (for a small wedding) and at least a year (for a larger event), although there is no right or wrong length of time to plan your wedding.

Once you have a date in mind, it is a good idea to come up with two backup dates. This is important because you will soon discover that not everything will work out as planned with wedding planning when you begin booking and solidifying your plans.

The venue that you choose for the ceremony or reception may not be available on the date of your first choice. Once you have your first choice and two backup dates selected, you are ready to move on to step 2.

STEP 2: Creating the Guest List

To tackle the guest list, start by having a serious discussion about “the feel” you want for your wedding. Do you want an intimate event or more of a party style gathering with a lot of people. This will impact the list that you create and how flexible you are with numbers. At this point I like to use these questions to help me determine the feel for the wedding.

Things to consider:

• Do you envision an intimate wedding or a grand event?
• Do you have a certain number of guests in mind that makes you comfortable?
• Will you be limiting guests to family and close friends only?
• Are you going to invite every distant relative you have as well as coworkers, neighbours, friends and other acquaintances?
• Will you permit parents to invite a certain number of invitees (if so, establish that number now)?
• Do you have a venue in mind that may dictate the number of guests you can invite?

Once you have answered these questions, it is time to factor them into your decision making. Create a preliminary goal for how many guests you would like to invite total, knowing that this number may change later on. Do you feel comfortable settling on 25? 50? 100? 200? even more?

The next step is to create a list of all of the people you would possibly want to invite, considering “the feel” of the wedding you just established. It took us about an hour to come up with our lists, it may take you even longer.

Once you’ve both written out your full lists, do a count of the two lists and then add that number to get the total number of guests. How does this number align with your goal number and feel of the wedding you want to plan?

Revising your Guest List

It is likely that you will do many revisions of this list, however, I like to start with the first revision at this point if the number you end up with far exceeds your goal. With your partner, go through both of your lists with a fine tooth comb and add or remove anyone that you feel can be taken off of the list.

Use the following questions to help you with your revision:

• Would it make a difference to you if you didn’t have this person attend your special day?
• Will this person have a positive impact on your day?
• Do you still see this person being a part of your life in 3,5 or 10 years?

Once you have considered those factors and done your adding or removing, do a count of your combined list to find your final number. It is important to remember that this initial list is probably just a starting point. It is likely that you will add or remove people some point later in your planning.

There is also a chance that some of the people you invite will not be able to make it to your big day or you will remember someone last minute and want to add them. So I suggest that you include an additional 10 to the list just in case, but know that this number may fluctuate further as your planning progresses.

Let’s move on to step 3.

STEP 3: Creating a Budget

Now that you have a guest list number, the next step is to tackle the budget. Similarly to how we began creating the guest list, I suggest you start this task by having a discussion with your partner on expenses.

You can do this by discussing the following questions:

• Is there a figure you feel comfortable with spending on your wedding?
• Where will these funds come from?
• Will you be getting any donations or loans?
• Will you do any fundraising?

The following step in this task is to create your budget spreadsheet. If you do not feel comfortable doing this on your own, there are many free or paid templates you can find online that you can populate with your information.

Begin this task by doing some exploring on Pinterest for wedding budgeting. I found the various categories I wanted to include in my budget, and created my own spreadsheet. I did this by creating a column for each of the following: the expense, the projected cost, the actual cost, other details. Then in each row I listed the various categories.

If you are up to creating your own spreadsheet

The main categories you should to include are: venue, apparel, entertainment, rentals, food and beverage, decorations, transportation, beauty and licensure. If you are aware of them, you may add other categories for other aspects you want to include in the wedding at this point. The great thing about a spreadsheet is that other areas can be added as you progress and become aware of other costs.

For each category I listed a ballpark figure of what I expected the projected cost would be. I used various websites, feedback from friends and Pinterest to help with this. Total these figures to get your initial working budget.

I say working because your budget is something you will likely revisit and revise very often, as you learn about additional costs or savings. The important part is to come up with initial total figure you are comfortable with and try to stay as close to that as possible.

Some tips on your budget

Once you have this figure you again need to discuss if this is feasible and fits in with what you had in mind and can manage. I DO NOT suggest that you start off your wedding planning by having a budget that is above what you can actually spend on the wedding. You will stress yourself out and be disappointed in the end. Weddings typically costs a bit more than projected even for the most seasoned planners. I recommend adding AT LEAST a 10% cushion to your budget. For some additional budgeting tips, be sure to check out this post.

STEP 4: Creating a Timeline

Before we delve into the nitty gritty of planning in the next post, I suggest creating a timeline to guide your planning efforts and keep you on task. A timeline will list all tasks you must undertake to plan your wedding, as well as a due date for each objective, and finally a status of completion for each objective. I created my own by adding an additional page to my spreadsheet, but if you prefer you may also search for a pre-made timelines online or find a spreadsheet template that you can alter for your own use.

You will populate your timeline and begin to attach dates to each task. Begin with your tentative wedding date and work backwards, estimating how much time it will take you to complete each objective.

As we progress through our planning guide we will be adding objectives to your timeline, but you can start now by listing any important dates, tasks or goals you know of now.

Revising your timeline

Remember, that you can revise this at anytime depending on how things are going if changes need to be made. Once you speak with vendors, they may also give you a better idea of more realistic timelines for each objective. You will likely add more tasks to your timeline as you get closer to your wedding date, which is why I like creating a spreadsheet for this part of your planning process.

What’s Next

Now that you have tentative wedding date, an initial guest list, a preliminary budget and a starting timeline you are ready to jump into the swing of things! These various elements will help you to get started with the next important aspects of wedding planning. They will help to guide your process and keep you on task.

That sums up part one of the multi-part series on how to plan your wedding.

In the next post we will discuss the next phase in the planning process, including choosing a theme, creating mood boards, selecting vendors and additional next steps in your wedding planning journey. I hope that you’re ready to jump into the fun of planning!

If you haven’t already checked out the 10 Lessons I learned while planning my wedding, be sure to check it out for some great tips to guide your wedding planning process.

It is also never too early to get started on creating your wedding registry! Create a free one on Amazon, here.

I would love to hear from you!

If you have any questions about anything discussed in this post, please feel free to contact me or leave a comment below!

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