WEDDING NOTES™ - Put First Things First

You may have been planning your wedding on paper or in your head for years before you ever got engaged. Or you may have had a whirlwind courtship and an even shorter engagement period.  Either way you can plan and pull off a great wedding if you take the time to PLAN.  

According to REAL SIMPLE magazine “The average American couple is engaged for 15 months”.  But your engagement may be a lot shorter than that.  Either way, you can manage it if you realize that planning takes place in two big time blocks:  the selecting and booking at the beginning and the coordinating of details at the end.  Those with longer engagements book the best vendors early thus ensuring their first choice of dates, times and places.  Those with shorter engagements find themselves booking and coordinating in compressed time frames.  

If yours is a shorter period of time, experts recommend that you focus your efforts on “the four components that guests are likely to notice – dress, food, décor and entertainment.  You may pick another four but categorizing elements of the event make it easier to handle and to make sure that what is important to you and your fiancé takes center stage.

Take time to figure out how elaborate a wedding you want and/or can afford.  Watching celebrities marry can give a bride an unrealistic look at the elements of a wedding.  This is your wedding – not a famous star’s.  Trying to do too much with limited resources can be a disaster.  Be realistic about the time you have to plan and the dollars available to support those plans.  

You and your fiancé should look at what is important to both of you.  Make a list and rank those items from most important to nice but not necessary.  Then start cutting from the bottom of the list until you are left with those items that are critical to you both.  Now that’s a plan you can manage.