Whether you’ve been dreaming about planning your wedding since you were a little girl playing ‘bride dress-up’ (like I did) or you’ve been completely dreading it, the goal of my first series of blog posts is to help you plan and actually enjoy your time of being engaged.
My hope is that I can use my last decade of wedding experience to help other couples during their wedding planning process. So, if you are saying to yourself, “I have no idea what I’m doing,” or, “I really just need some inspiration to get me started,” then keep reading! Use these tips and tricks as your foundation for understanding some of the major fundamentals of wedding planning. From cultivating your overall vision to being intentional with your soon-to-be spouse, it will allow you to plan with more joy & less stress. The result… a wedding day that is beautifully & uniquely your own.
TIP #2 – DREAM BIG OR SMALL
IN THOSE FIRST FEW DAYS of your engagement, don’t go overboard on the details or plans right away. Have a casual date night with your fiancé, where together you start to brainstorm any ideas that come to mind. Get creative and don’t hold back! To have a solid starting point, generate a list that isn’t restricted by a budget. That way when you go to curate your list, you’ll have a lot to go off of. This also helps you realize what attributes of your wedding mean the most to you.
Example questions: Do we want a big celebration or a small intimate gathering? Do we want all of our family and friends or just us two there? Close to home or destination?
Start each idea with, “What if we…”
This leaves it open for any and every idea to be considered!
MAKE IT A JUDGEMENT-FREE ZONE by respecting one another’s ideas or opinions! This is very important during each stage of your wedding planning process. Create a safe place for your soon-to-be spouse to share and express their unique ideas. Whether they want to be actively involved or are letting you ‘take the wheel’, it’s their wedding day too. At first, they may not express a lot of interest but it makes it a lot easier to start the process by knowing what they like and don’t like. Better to know now than later, after final decisions have been made. This will save you from potential arguments!
TALK ABOUT WHAT EXCITES YOU the most! Envision your wedding day together. What makes each of you giddy just thinking about it? Take turns expressing what you’re most looking forward to.
WHAT MAKES YOU NERVOUS? After talking about what excites you, go over the things you are not looking forward to. Whatever they may be, start to think about them before they come up, rather than be taken by surprise. Use thes things to inform your decision-making. If you are both extroverts that love entertaining, by all means, have a large party! If that makes you overwhelmed, you may consider eloping, having a smaller wedding, or eliminating some of the wedding elements that put you front-and-center.
DISCUSS THE VALUES that you share as a couple. Think about what brought you together in the beginning of your relationship. What did you find most admirable in one another as you were just getting to know each other? Choose your top few and use them to help align your personalities with your wedding day.
DON’T FORGET TO HAVE FUN! Wedding planning conversations can get stressful and feel daunting but now is not the time to take yourselves too seriously. Just enjoy this moment of dreaming up your perfect wedding day! Discuss the exciting stuff first. If a specific topic starts to make your head hurt, skip it for now!
–
I wish my husband and I would have done this! As I mentioned in the previous blog post, Worthwhile Wedding Planning – Tip #1, I immediately took charge and began planning without his input. In my defense, he said he wanted nothing to do with the wedding planning and didn’t care what I decided! However, as the weeks went on I discovered he had more opinions about our wedding day than he originally led on. He basically just showed up that day and had no real clue as to all the order and details. He told me later that he wished he would have been more involved. Not to say that he didn’t love our wedding, but that he felt like he missed a big part of it by taking a backseat during the planning. Don’t let that be you!
Be the first to comment