A Guide To Help You Plan A Wedding

The very first thing you should do before you start planning a wedding is to make sure you sit down with your partner and have a nice long chat about what you both want and expect. In the time it takes to plan a wedding, you and family around you will come across one or two stressful situations. This is why you need to be sure you are ready for possibly the most testing time of your relationship. That said planning a wedding is a lot more fun than people will think, so long as you know what you want!

One of the first things you should be enquiring about is availability of your local church or other venue. There is no point setting a date without a date set in stone for the church or wedding venue.
All churches are different and if you don't attend regularly it is a good idea to attend a few services to get a feel of your chosen church. Sometimes it is a condition for you to attend a church a few times before the ceremony.
Your wedding ceremony doesn't have to take place in a church and there are more and more licensed venues popping up all the time. Mostly large hotels and stately homes but a quick search on the internet will find any local venues.

This will be the next thing to book and will possibly take the longest time to decide on unless you both have a reception venue in mind.
A few tips are:
Don't cough up for the biggest venue if you only have a handful of guests. If you do this your reception will look like you have no guests.
The same goes for small venues, if you have a lot of people attending, your reception will look like you have cut costs and gone for the cheapest place.
Visit a few venues and ask if they have a wedding coordinator, if they do that's great as they will be able to advice on numbers.

Something which may come in handy is wedding insurance, you never know what you may need it for.
Weddings nowadays are costing an average of £18,000+ which by any stretch of the imagination is a lot of money. By taking out insurance for a few pounds in comparison you can rest easy knowing that if anything does go wrong you are covered.
Especially in these financially difficult times where businesses are closing, even if you have an accident and have to postpone or even cancel your wedding you need assurance you haven't wasted any of that hard earned cash.

Instant Wedding Insurance online.

This should ideally be booked as soon as you have your wedding venue arranged as you can discuss times and locations when you know all your travel plans.
Wedding transport varies greatly and not everyone likes stretch limousines, I think they look a bit common nowadays. Only because you expect to see a load of drunk women leaning out of the windows/sunroof shouting expletives.

Best to book these as early as possible, but before booking ask to see samples of work ask how many weddings they have attended! The more they have photographed will make it easier because they have the task of arranging all your guests for perfect photos.
If you are invited to visit a studio take the opportunity and view as much of their work as you can.

The same goes for videographers. Some studios will also be able to offer this service and should include a discount for both services together.

For truly unique photos give disposable cameras any children you have attending and ask for them back when they are full. Believe me you will be amazed at the pictures!

By now you will more than likely have a color scheme in mind. If you don't then you definitely need one as all the trimmings will need to be coordinated. We chose burgundy, gold and cream which is a popular choice.

Decorations
The key to this is not to go overboard! We have attended weddings with every imaginable decoration and some with hardly any. It is hard to say which works best but I would always remember a wedding where the couple spent that little bit more on quality rather than going for everything they could see and making the whole thing look cheap. Set yourself a budget and stick to it, no matter how pretty they look in the store! It is your day and you don't want people talking about that chocolate fountain more than how beautiful you looked, they will!

Balloons.
If you are having the room decorated with balloons, try and keep them to the edges of the room so not to obscure the view when speeches are being made. Same goes for table decorations, you may be five and a half feet tall but not all your guests will be. An eighteen inch high table decoration will obscure the view of smaller people. You want your guests to be happy at all times and people will moan about the least little thing!

Wedding Favors.
These are tricky. Spend a lot on these and your budget will go through the roof, but at the same time cheap is definitely a no-no. To get these right you need to think to the future, chocolates are good but tend to get eaten straight away. Sugared almonds are good and look pretty but not everybody likes them. We gave away little trinkets, as we thought this would remind our guests what a wonderful day our wedding day was.

Flowers.
Flowers and weddings go hand in hand but only if they are fresh. If you are going with the burgundy, gold and cream color scheme I would recommend you have a look at a Hocus Pocus rose! This flower fits right in and will add a lot of quality to your displays.

For this you could spend a fortune believe it or not. Traditional wedding cakes consist of three tiers but you don't have to follow tradition here. If you shop around you will find that cake makers are like artists, they can design and decorate cakes from your ideas. For example, if you like disney characters you could have a cake made of the famous enchanted castle with the statues of you both at the front doors. I'd love to see a cake like this!

For more reading all about wedding cakes please take a look at this excellent lens.

Wedding stationary needs a lot of thought and you have a lot of choices regarding pre-printed or custom made.
Custom made stationary adds to the overall effect of a wedding and shows you have spent time thinking of the little details.
I found a great lens on this subject which can be found at:
How To Organize Your Wedding Stationary
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Now you almost have a wedding in place only now is the time to organise your guest list. Start with family and then your close friends and last of all any work colleagues. Obviously all your family guests need to enjoy the whole day with you as well as some or all of your close friends. Try to keep work colleague invites to the night time events, this will help a lot with costs.
Invitations only need to go out a month or so in advance, if you know people who holiday every year make sure they know the date of your wedding. They will probably already know the date but don't leave anything to chance. you'll be kicking yourself if you find out your favourite aunt has booked a couple of weeks in Spain.
You need to pick and choose your bridesmaids, best man etc from your guestlist too!

Right now you have an idea of how many guests you will be inviting you should write out your gift list.
Just remember to include gifts of varying value as everybody has different spending abilities.
If you are sending out a gift list with your invitations be sure to include gift vouchers as an option.
Another way to do your list is online. Companies like Argos in the UK let you choose products from their catalogue and make a gift list online. Then when your guests make a purchase this is deleted from the list, very clever.

Book your honeymoon well in advance, you could save money by booking nearer the time but as your big day draws nearer you will be running around like a headless chicken. A good way to choose a destination is when you are at your most relaxed, no snap decisions can be made then. We took brochures down to a nice pub and had a meal, then sat on some nice comfy sofas and looked through the brochures. We came away without a definite destination, but was nice to relax and enjoy each others company. Something you need to do quite often in the run up to your wedding.

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All this talk of holidays, why not grab yourselves a few days away at this point. Doesn't need to be anywhere fancy, a little seaside resort like Scarborough (if you live in UK) should do the trick. Just take the time to unwind and forget all about the wedding.

Now you have had a break, it is a good time to chase up everything you have booked and ensure everything is to how you want it.

These are not as important to book plenty in advance because let's face it most people lose or gain weight over time. If your wedding is over a year away another reason not to purchase these too soon is how quickly fashion changes! Buy now and by next year your wonderful dress could look so out of date, not good. There is no harm in looking now though as this will give you a guide to prices and an idea of style.
If your wedding is 4-6 months away, now is a good time to be hitting those bridal shops! The part most women absolutely love, especially if booking fittings with your bridesmaids etc. If your partner has not organised his outfits for himself, best man etc give him a kick because he needs to do this as soon as you have your dress. This way you can oversee the choices! I'll leave you to interpret that bit.

Get this wrong and it will all end in tears, apparently!
I don't think this is true, my opinion is that everybody is coming to your wedding to enjoy themselves. When people are occupied they will not really be interested in that person they don't like, you are the centre of attention today. It is only when your guests get to the night time events can you be sure of something happening. If you are worried something might happen, hire some security! JOKING Seriously, take the time a week or so before the big day and explain your worries and ask or beg them not to cause any trouble. Tell them how special you want the day to be and that you don't want to fall out with them if they do cause trouble. This should do the trick, give them a call the day before if you are not 100% sure.
This is your call where to sit your guests but don't spend weeks planning it all. It might take a day at most to plan this.

Oh, that time has come. It is usually best not to leave this to the night before the wedding. We've all heard the stories and seen it on TV where the groom ends up on the other side of the country or tied to a lamppost naked! The weekend before is the best time I think, a very good time to relax with friends and make it special. A boozy saturday night out is not really enough, activities such as paintballing or go-karting are a good way to have a lot of fun. If you do end up going and getting plastered, remember you are celebrating that you are getting married, not advertising your last night of freedom!

You should have everything you need now to get married. If you have forgotten anything you only have seven days to put it right!
Most of your guests will have replied by now, so take the time to write out your thankyou cards. Doing this now saves time afterwards, trust me when all is done you will need a lot of time to relax and recover.

We stayed with our respective parents the night before our wedding, which was good because of all the running around the last few months has nearly ended and what better way to thank your parents.
A quick call to your partner is good and will be very appreciated, so much I bet you will not want to stop talking.

Congratulations, you made it! Only now will you see how much all your planning has been worth. All you need to do now is relax and be sure nothing will go wrong.

I have based this guide on my own experience of planning my wedding and may have missed some things out.
As you start planning your wedding you will find help and advice will come at you from friends and family and even people you don't know.
Only you know what you want and include anybody you can in the planning stages.

Images on this lens are provided by Freedigitalphotos.net.

If you already have or are now planning to have children then you may find another of my lenses useful.

My Tips For Being A Good Parent lens has been based on my experience of having three young children.