Wedding Planning 101: Chapter 1

Congratulations on your engagement and welcome to wedding planning! The engagement and wedding planning process can either be pleasantly productive or just flat out miserable. Now, it should be obvious that the miserable end of wedding planning comes with the lack or planning and organization. My hope is to share all of my Planning-OCD wisdom with you so you won't forget a thing! My wedding day was PERFECT, nothing went wrong and it went better than I could have ever imagined, so if you follow some of my tips and timelines then you should have a similar experience! My engagement was nine months long, but I did a lot of the leg work ahead of time and planned most of it in a little under one month!

When I planned my wedding, I utilized the below websites:

www.theknot.com - This site was so helpful! I used the...

     Local Vendor to select vendors with great customer reviews

     My Checklist to keep myself on a timeline

     My Budget to keep myself and my family on budget while making so many different purchases throughout wedding planning

     My Guest List to track who I sent invitations to, got responses from, and to track their meal choices

            Seating Chart to design the layout of the room and to figure out the reception seating arrangements

www.wix.com - This is the site we used to create our FREE  FREE  FREE wedding website for our guests

www.pinterest.com - This site was helpful for finding unique ideas from the reception, to the cake, to my                                       dress and my hair - it. had. everything.

I used www.theknot.com's checklist, so here I will display portion of their checklist along with things I included! (I will paraphrase their list)

The knot's checklist items
MY extra bonus checklist items


1 year - 9 months prior to your wedding

• Make a wedding binder to keep your ideas together 
• I made a  Pinterest board strictly for my wedding ideas, check out I Do 09.21.13
• I also printed out my favorite pictures that I knew I wanted to give to florists, bakeries, hair stylists, etc.}

• Envision your wedding 
•  This is when we chose WHAT SEASON we wanted to get married in. SO IMPORTANT! here's why:
1. What venues do you have in mind?
• Outdoor wedding? Outdoor Reception?
•  keep in mind the climate corresponding with the date, time and venue type
• what flowers are in season and less expensive to get (some exotic flowers are more expensive to order at different times)
2. Seasons effect the attire being worn as well
• Bridesmaids:
• short dresses?
• long dresses?
• wear a sweater if it's cold?
• Tuxes:
• More often than not, you will not see khaki tuxes at a winter wedding unless it's in a warm location
3. What color scheme would you like? 
• this effects
• bridesmaid dresses
• tuxes
• your dress
• flowers
4. What do you want your wedding pictures to look like?
• Sunny, warm and no jackets- go spring or summer
• Brisk, changing leaves - go autumn
• etc.

• The Budget Talk with Family
• For some families, this could be a sticky situation. Traditionally, the bride's family pays for everything for the wedding day and the groom's family pays for the events the night before the wedding, such as rehearsal dinner. Every family is different! 
• I also used www.theknot.com's My Budget to help keep everyone, and myself, on task with spending and accumulating costs

• Get Your Engagement Ring Insured
• We bought my ring at http://www.helzberg.com/ and for a minimal fee we insured my ring for life, provided that I get it looked at every 6 months, which is completely worth it to us! This coverage includes any re-sizing, when diamonds fall out, and any work I need done to it. This DOES NOT include if it gets stolen or lost - but we have it on our renters insurance which is always a good thing to do!

• Place Wedding Announcements
• We contacted our local newspapers and included some basic information about us and a picture to let people in our communities know of our engagement. This was neat and we have a clip of it saved! 

• Book a Wedding Location
• Make sure you find a location that fits your vision or can be made to fit it without going over budget! 
• Check to see if your officiant requires you to accomplish anything before the wedding, such as pre-marital counseling
• http://stpeterscolumbus.org/

• Book a Reception Location
• Make sure you find a location that fits your vision or can be made to fit it without going over budget! 
• SIGN A CONTRACT! read it, have your groom read it, have your mom read it, make sure it's legit! 
• Pay the down payment to reserve the space
• http://www.factory12eventloft.com/

• Pick a Wedding Date
• DO NOT DO THIS UNTIL YOUR VERIFY THAT YOUR VENUES ARE AVAILABLE! We made sure to get penciled in with our photographer of choice, our reception venue and the church before officially selecting a wedding date.
• Don't forget to check that all immediate family can make it as well. You may find that some friends or family try to tug you towards a different date or time of year so that they can be part of your day, but honestly, you can't accommodate everyone that has special requests. At some point you need to draw the line and decide on a date that works best for you and what you're trying to accomplish, good luck with it, this is a pretty tough part sometimes!

Photo Credit: Dan Sather Photography

• Start Shopping For a Caterer
• We made sure to look at these things when selecting a caterer:
• Their travel distance/time to our reception (most will charge you for mileage)
• Pricing, obviously, but how many things can you get included? You will be surprised how much some caterers can nickel and dime you!
• Linens like table cloths and napkins?
• China/dishes?
• Beverages?
• Appetizers?
• How well they stay in contact with us. Now my poor venders probably thought I was a psycho, but I liked being able to update them and ask questions over email at any given time and they responded to me within a few days. That's super important!
• How does their food taste? Again, totally obvious, but seriously, go try samples of their food!
• Visit a location, see how friendly and clean their location is. This will ensure that they are polite to your guests and that no one gets sick from the food you serve on your day!
• Check reviews on caterers (if you can)

• Start Your Guest List
• Generate an ideal "total number of guests" based on your budget/caterer pricing per plate/per person
• Make a "must be invited list"
• If there is room in the "total number of guests" after your "must be invited list", offer some of the spots left to your parents and in-laws to fill them with a few of their friends (this ensures that they not only have fun, but they fulfill some of their social obligations **this will earn brownie points!). Make sure to tell them the total number of guests you're trying to stick to and hopefully they respect that. 
• I used www.theknot.com's My Guest List and it was the BEST THING EVER!
• I keyed in our list of guests
• Tracked when I sent them their invitations
• When I got their responses
• What their response was
• What they wanted for dinner
• How many of them were his family, my family, his friends and my friends
• Seating chart according to those who responded
• and the list goes on! This was super awesome!



This is reception layout that I made on The Knot's website!

• Select your bridal party
• Large bridal parties unusually include drama, so choose wisely
• We had an uneven bridal party, 4 maids and 3 men, but it was no biggie!
• This could be a time when feelings of friends or siblings get hurt, this can be tended to by making important people "helpers" in your wedding instead of making them part of the bridal party. Between Andrew and I, we have 8 siblings. Since we couldn't make everyone part of the bridal party, we gave each one a special job like handing out programs or the bubbles and gave each one a corsage or boutonniere so that they felt special and part of the day.

Photo Credit: Kate Kerr Photography

• Start Looking for a Wedding Dress
• This experience is all what you make of it!
• Bring a SMALL GROUP of close friends or family. The less people you have, the less opinions are flying around, I'm sure you know that though, "Say Yes To The Dress" had that lesson covered far too often!
• You may not fall in love with a dress day one or day eight, keep at it and remember to keep in consideration your overall vibe: venue, season, colors, etc. 
• Most importantly, how do you want to look on your day? Modern, classic, elegant, edgy?
• I got mine at http://www.davidsbridal.com/



Photo Credit: Kate Kerr Photography
My dress was from David's Bridal

• Book a Caterer and Food
• Remember, taste some food, get some estimates and book away! Select your menu, but don't stress, this may not be finalized until it's closer to your date.
• SIGN A CONTRACT! read it, have your groom read it, have your mom read it, make sure it's legit! 
• Pay the down payment to reserve the space
• We used http://www.jonathanbyrds.com/

• Finalize your Guest List
• Do one last check with family to make sure you're good to go and do your best to keep the list as is! It's not uncommon though to be adding people up until a month or so before, hold your ground but also pick your battles!

• Start your Gift Registries
• Set aside a few hours to register...we went into two stores (Target and Bed Bath and Beyond) and it took us a total of 3 hours!
• Eat food and drink water before you head out
• I browsed ahead of time online to:
•  make a list of things we needed 
• look up reviews of the best products out there (vacuums, blenders, knife blocks, etc.)
• I also selected color schemes for our rooms ahead of time so I knew what colors of items to register for
• example: we chose to do gray, white and lavender in our living room
• lavender throw pillows
• white throw blanket
• gray ottoman
• white coffee table
• Register for a wide array of gifts for different price ranges
• Register for enough gifts for bridal showers and the wedding
• You will get things you did not register for, but try to locate their store of origin to return them and purchase things you need
• First register for necessities, then add things you want
• Select stores that are easily accessible or online to help make purchasing easy for your guests
• Most stores will have an online version of your registry, this factor was my kryptonite because I loved watching to see when things were being purchased, what they were and I constantly updated the items on our registry....literally...like every day if not multiple times a day...it was bad! Ha! but in the best way!

Our Additions to the List:

• Take Engagement Pictures!
• We didn't end up liking most of our pictures, but definitely research a photographer ahead of time. 
• DON'T book them for your wedding yet until you have your engagement pictures taken and you love them after you get them back

• Once you get your engagement pictures back, you can make Save-The-Dates
• We used http://www.shutterfly.com/ and loved ours! Take a look!

If this hasn't overwhelmed you yet, then you're doing great! But if it has, I'm sure you're not alone! It's a lot to take in and a lot to do, but I'll get you there! Don't worry! Check back in in a few days for the next segment of "Getting It Together Because...I'm Getting Married"

Goodnight!