Wedding Planning Tip:

Adding a Touch of You

         You have gotten engaged to the love of your life and you are so excited to start planning your day! I am more than 1000% sure you feel a combination of excitement, anxiety, worrying and joy. The weird part is you feel all these emotions at the same time. Well wedding planning is a continuous process that has brought me closer to my future husband and friends but also made me feel very confused and overwhelmed. I was dreading wedding planning because I was feeling so overwhelmed and indecisive. I think might have been the only girl in a serious relationship that did not already have a Pinterest board for my big BEFORE he proposed. I know women who are not even engaged yet looking for caterers, photographers and have a venue already to go. Then there was me, engaged with a date in mind but nothing else past that point. I am very creative and pay very close attention to detail so planning an event has never been hard for me but wedding planning, for MY wedding, I was not prepared for! Anxiety really kicked my butt, I started second guessing a lot of my decisions;” Do I really want an outdoor wedding?”, “Does mint really look good with blush?”, and “What should my wedding theme be?” Then one morning I had an epiphany on wedding planning. I started to realized my issues was I was not involving my personally and myself into my wedding.
 I wrote this blog to help other people make wedding planning simple and bring back the excitement to the process. There are millions of blogs that provide step-by-step guides on how to make planning your dream wedding a breeze; this is not one of those articles. This article is about putting the excitement in your wedding planning and letting the stress go. Hopefully, gives you the confidence to make your own decisions about your wedding. I am so indecisive about everything all the time, and I annoy myself and my fiancé. Even after I think I found the perfect thing; I will still look for something “better” ,and there is nothing wrong with that. However, make sure you are selecting things based on your future husband and yourself interest. 

Vision

​The first step in creating your day is considering, what is your vision? When I started planning my wedding I originally wanted a beach setting. The breathtaking water, beautiful white sand beneath our toes, and cool breeze, is what I thought I wanted for my wedding.  However, I realized I actually hate sand, it gets everywhere. Plus I hate that sand sinking feeling you get at the beach. I choose a garden themed wedding because I loved the simple elegance that gardens offer. I fell in love with different images of garden and imagined myself walking down the aisle. I do not understand why it took me so long to choose this setting because I love gardens and flowers. Hydrangeas are my favorite and they are in season for my wedding.  Once you have a vision in mind THEN you create the Pinterest boards. 

Venue
I pulled my hair out trying to find a venue to go with my vision. I know what you are thinking garden theme, get married in a botanical garden, DUHHH! Well I am getting married at the end of March and I live in the southeastern region of the USA. Either it can be rainy, freezing or very hot all in one day here. So I knew I did not want a full blown outdoor setting. I wanted something I could build up and make it my own. I think that is the most important part about a venue. Clearly cost is first is thing on your mind, do not get me started on the cost of things for a wedding is, but second should be how can I make it my own. My fiance and I love gardens we go to different ones all the time so this venue needed to have us in it. We settled on a country club that offers an outdoor patio area perfect for the ceremony. Then we have indoor cocktail hour and reception
My advice when looking at venues look for places that do not need much decor. There are so many reception venues that provide that regal and elegant look on its own, then ,you only need to add a few touches. Trust me this will save you so much money!

Very Important People
To hire a wedding planner or to not hire a wedding planner, that is the REAL question. I did not hire one because I did not think I needed one but if you do not even know where to start or just do not have time to plan it yourself, hire someone. The most important people you need to focus on hiring are:

1. Caterer
2. Photographer
3.               Videographer* ( I am 50/50 on the need of this expense)
4. DJ

Those are you V.I.P. Thankfully caterer and bartender comes with my venue. My suggestion is to look for bundles to save you time. Now it might be slightly more expensive depending on the venue but by bundling that is only ONE contract and deposit you have to deal with. These people make or break a wedding. It is YOUR day, you want to eat great food and have fun dancing with the people you love, while getting it all documented for the future. 

​Selfish Thinking
This next section may step on a lot of people’s toes but it needs to be said: STOP focusing on everyone else having a good time! I had an Epiphany in middle of a break down on what type of food my guest would enjoy. During my episode my fiancé asked “what do you like?” I answered with sniffles and tears running down my face "Steak and Chicken" and he said, “Well we will go with steak and chicken because that is what you like, this is YOUR day not the guest and you need to be happy.” He was right; majority of the headache of planning a wedding is centered on you consisting thinking “what your guest will enjoy”. This type of thinking can cause stress, take the fun out of wedding planning and ruin your budget. You are footing the bill for this not them (Unless your parents are helping then you have to take some of their advice). These are your memories that you will have forever and for some of your guest it is just an event they attended. Be selfish with the things you want and how you want them. I had to realize if they do not like it, they do not have to come. I will still be getting married whether if they like the chicken or not.
Small Tips:

• Remember to appreciate your wedding in the here and now
• Invite who you can afford
• Spend more on the honeymoon vs. wedding

(future self will thank you or so I been told)

Disclaimer: All images were used from Google and I do not own the right to them