27 Sep 5 Wedding Planning Tips From a Real Bride
It’s so easy to find wedding tips, tricks, and advice online these days, and while wedding professionals can give you great input to the planning process, nothing is better than a wedding professional AND real life bride. Dream Team member Kayli was recently wed and is both of these things! We asked her to sit down and give her best advice for wedding planning from her unique perspective. Here are five of her best tips for saving you from any potential mess or stress!
1. Leave the DIY projects up to someone else.
Now don’t get me wrong, DIY projects are great! They are fun, cute, and can sometimes even save you money! However, you don’t have time for that. With work, planning the wedding, and just life, DIY projects can quickly become another item on your list of to-do’s and let me tell you… that list will add up quickly when it comes to planning your wedding. I know some of you out there are thinking “but I love making stuff. It really is fun for me and not so much a task I have to do”. However, I can tell you from being a bride myself and being a planner in my daytime job, this hardly ever ends well… or completed!
2. Write thank you notes as gifts come in.
Remember that to-do list I just mentioned? Yeah, thank you notes are always at the end of it. If I could go back and correct something I did, this is something I would’ve made sure to sit down and make time for when I received gifts. Had I just sat down to write the note when a gift arrived, I would’ve saved myself hours of writing once my husband and I got back from the honeymoon. Not fun. The last thing you and your significant other are going to want to do after it’s all over with is to sit down and write 100+ cards for a long period of time.
3. Don’t sweat the stuff people aren’t even going to notice.
When everything is getting down to the wire and you’re still deciding on which color matches the best, what plates styles are perfect, and how you want the napkins folded or gift table decorated with… just pause. Ask yourself “are my guests really going to care or even remember any of these details?” The answer is always no. (Unless you are contemplating food, alcohol, or music of course!) It’s your big day, so of course, you want all the details to be perfect! However, I promise once the wedding is over with, even you are going to have a hard time remembering those small things!! It’s not worth a long discussion or headaches!
4. Pay for the coordinator.
This one is important, and I can’t stress this enough. If you can’t afford or don’t really care to have a full planner, that is no problem. You do, however, need at least a day-of coordinator. I’m a planner and still had a coordinator for my wedding. You can’t possibly know how to create a timeline that flows and works for you and your family but also all the vendors involved. There are way too many moving parts to sit down and figure them all out in order to create a timeline. Plus, why would you even want to put that stress on yourself anyway? You have enough to deal with, so pay for a coordinator and hand all the details you’ve worked so hard to get, over to him/her! They will make your day a breeze and you won’t have to worry about a single thing. Doesn’t that just sound like the cherry on top of a delicious ice cream sundae?!
5. Have fun.
This is my last advice to all couples out there. I can’t tell you how easy it is to get wrapped up in all the details, chaos and stress. Whenever I found myself starting to fall in this black hole of stress, I took a step back to remember why I was even having a wedding in the first place. It’s not about the flowers, or the dress, or the color of the linens. It’s about two people coming together as one! Remember that as you go through your planning process. It should be a fun memory, not a stressful one. If you get too strung out on all the details, you’ll end up worrying about everything on the day of the wedding and you don’t need that. You should be relaxing with friends and family on the big day, while preparing yourself to marry your best friend whom you are about to spend your entire life with!! Now come on….how could you possibly be anything but excited and happy?!
Photos of the bride and groom by Elizabeth Looney Photography.
Ready to plan your big day? Contact the Dream Team and get started, [email protected].