Wedding Planning: Where do I begin?!
ONE: CONGRATS!
If you’re reading this, you’re probably a friend of mine who got engaged recently and have asked me for a few tips :) The first thing to do is to pause for a hot minute and just celebrate being engaged! There’s definitely a “honeymoon” period and you should enjoy being with each other and taking this next step in your relationship. There will be plenty of time for menus and vendor payments and fabric swatches in the next couple of months!
TWO: START WITH THE BRIEF
When you’re ready to get started, here’s a recommendation that comes from my professional event management background: create a “creative brief” for your wedding. You should each reflect on how you envision your wedding day, then come together and articulate a shared vision.
What is the tone and vibe you want for your wedding?
Pick a few words that you’re drawn to (don’t worry if they might seem like conflicting words). And of course, add any that aren’t on this list!
adventurous / authentic / boozy / casual / classic / community-oriented / destination / elegant / family-focused / festive / formal / freewheeling / glamorous / grand / handcrafted / hilarious / inclusive / informal / intimate / kid-friendly / laid-back / lavish / meaningful / modern / nontraditional / personal / quirky / raging dance party / refined / relaxed / religious / romantic / rustic / sacred / sentimental / simple / sophisticated / thoughtful / traditional / urban / vintage / wild celebration
What do you care about? And what don’t you care about?
Rank your priorities: what are the things you care about most? It’s equally important to think about what you don’t care about, because there will be times in the planning when you will have to make trade-offs. A few items to get you started:
Time of year
Ceremony location
Reception location
Clothing: Dress / Suit / wedding party outfits
Photography
Videography
Officiant
Music (band or DJ)
Food
Cake
Favors
Flowers
Decor
Save the Dates & Invitations
Honeymoon
What is your “north star”?
After the two of you have separately done the above exercise, discuss your lists with your partner and come to an agreement about the tone of the wedding and what your priorities should be.
As you reflect, I’d also encourage you to come up with a mission statement that describes your “north star” and guiding principles. It can be a collection of words, a few phrases, a paragraph -- whatever summarizes what you want the experience to feel like for your friends and family (and most importantly, the two of you!).
It’s easy to gloss over this step, but having something written down was really helpful for Henry and me. We found ourselves revisiting our north star at critical points throughout the process (like before we signed our venue contract) to ensure the decisions we made fulfilled our goals.
THREE: FIRST PASS AT A GUEST LIST
The next thing I’d recommend is doing a first pass at your guest list. Even though it’s hard to do (not to mention kind of awkward), you should rank people into tiered lists. This will allow you to see the baseline number of people you need to accommodate and the potential maximum number of people. Make sure you work with your families to get their input as well. We used the following descriptions:
Tier 1 // Can't imagine the day without; very close friends
Tier 2 // Want to have there
Tier 3 // Would like to have there [may not get invited]
Obligatory invites // people we wouldn’t necessarily have wanted there, but were important to our family to include
FOUR: LET THE PLANNING BEGIN!
Now that you know what you what it to feel like and how many people you want to have, it’s time to dig into planning. I’ve created a template, but there are multiple out there ripe for the picking. Happy planning!
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Some adjectives above are borrowed from A Practical Wedding (which I would recommend if you’re in search of a structured guide)