How to Plan Your own Wedding

Seven Tips to Get You Started

So, you’re newly engaged and you’re just starting to think about your perfect wedding day. With so many decisions to make, it’s easy to become overwhelmed by the options. Before you get lost in a mass of mood boards, I’ve got a few tips which might just help. Let me help take the hassle out of your planning.

Be confident

Many couples are tempted to choose a professional to manage their whole wedding for them. This can be a huge help if you don’t have the time or inclination to coordinate everything yourself. However, it does come at a hefty cost. If you’ve got a good idea of what you’d like and you’re willing to put in the time, you should consider planning yourself. Do this and you’ll have much more room in the budget. You could then spend on things such as entertainment, decor and gifts. You could even use the money to bump up your honeymoon budget!

Set your budget

One of the first things to think about when planning your wedding is the budget. Once you’ve decided how much you’d like to spend, thinking about where you’d like to allocate the money. It’s really a case of personal choice which route you go down and how you allocate your wedding budget, but making a list of everything you’d like to include in your day is a good way to start. Then, prioritise certain factors and think about what you’d like to spend on them. For example, some couples have their heart set on a certain venue and allocate budget just for that reason. Whereas others will plan a DIY celebration in a more understated venue, choosing to decorate and style it themselves.

How to Plan Your own Wedding

Try to relax

Wedding planning should be fun, first and foremost. There’s no need to get stressed and anxious. Your day will be as wonderful as the pictures on your Pinterest board. It’s your day and if things don’t go exactly to plan on the day, you wont care once the celebrations start.

Seek inspiration

I bet you’ll already have been scrolling through Pinterest and Instagram on the search for swoon-worthy wedding inspiration, and there’s no better way to begin your wedding planning than this. Look for images of weddings that you feel reflect your personality as a couple, and decide together what sort of style you’d like to go for. Style choices might include a formal winter wedding, a boho summer celebration or a truly traditional day. These ideas are totally fluid and tend to transform as you head down the planning path. Don’t feel that the style you initially choose is set in stone.

How to Plan Your own Wedding

Organise yourself

If there’s one piece of advice we’d offer all couples it’s to focus on organisation! Being organised saves you a whole lot of time and money, and helps avoid any last-minute panics which could prove expensive. Make spreadsheets, share them with your bridal party and family members and make sure everyone’s on the same page. If you’re lucky enough to have friends and family helping you out, assign tasks to different people. There are plenty of great planning apps you can use, too.

Choose a timeframe

Ensuring everything comes together on the big day is really a care of careful planning. Decide on your timeframe early to make this as easy as possible. Choose a few dates which you’d like for your wedding and try to be as flexible as you can to ensure that you secure your first choice of vendors.

How to Plan Your own Wedding

The wedding website is your friend

Sure, invitations are beautiful and can be wonderfully creative, but if you want to make sure your guests are as informed as can be, a wedding website is a godsend. Put a stop to the avalanche of queries you’ll get when the invites go out by directing guests to an informative website where they’ll learn everything they need to know about your wedding. You might also wish to include links to your wedding registry here to make it as easy as possible for guests.

I know that planning a wedding is a huge job, but it’s also an incredibly exciting one which many couples really enjoy. So, while it may feel overwhelming to begin with, and the choices may seem endless, remember that as you chip away at it, the task becomes far easier and far more fun. Give yourself a year or so to plan the perfect wedding and you’ll find that planning your own wedding isn’t nearly as stressful as you had first imagined. I hope you’ve found our tips useful and inspiring. Now, it must be time to start the planning process! (We recommend you do so with drink in hand, of course).