Top Five Wedding Planning Mistakes to Avoid
Top Five Wedding Planing Mistakes to Avoid
You’re engaged—congrats! By now everyone including your ex has heard about the big news, you’re still swooning, in cloud nine gushing over the proposal, and celebrating with your loved ones. Well, it’s finally time to start thinking about planning your wedding. It’s a monumental job which requires a lot of proper planning and can be so daunting not to mention other responsibilities such as a full time job to add to your busy schedule.
Not Setting a Budget
Finance is the spinal cord to our everyday lives, not to mention of your entire wedding.
Be realistic on the overall goal on who you want to invite and where you want the wedding to be. Number speaks truth and without data, you are more likely to put or dig yourself into a financial hole. Pick a starting point to where you two feel comfortable with the number and start with that. Also, don’t forget to add contingent into the number. For example if the budget is $20K, you might want to add 20-30% contingency. Once you have an overall number, you can break it down into categories or vendors. It is okay not to have the exact number that changes over time. Here are some of the ticket items: Venue, Photographer, and Catering. The rest of the items such as: florals (how elaborate you want the flowers), dress, makeup/hair, cake, and rentals, etc. will depend on the number of guests.
Doing Things Because you “Supposed To”
There is no “supposed to” because someone else wants you to do it. You either do something because it’s meaningful or adds some value to you or you cut it out. Have a plan and pick one or two things that resonate with the two of you.
Having “Open Toast”
This is the big danger when there is no time limit on when the toast should be done. It can and will soak up most of the time if you are in a time crunch.
Be transparent with your friends and families of whom you want to give the toast. Not having control of who should be toasting especially when alcohol is involved, you might have to carefully reconsider this option. Again, it is your big day. You should celebrate the way your heart desires. More times than not, “open” toasts can lead to disaster. Instead, have designated people give toasts so they can prepare ahead of time and you can keep your timeline on schedule (we recommend around 3 toasts— 5 max)!
Invite guests that you don’t want there
This not only goes back to number 1, it is also a way to reduce the number of guests that don’t want to be there. Think of it as, do you want someone you have seen or talked to since grade school to be at your wedding? It is a time of celebration with you and your loved ones. It is perfectly alright to not invite your third distant cousin to your wedding. Think about it, how awkward it’ll be when you do have to interact with them. I’m not trying to tell you who you should or should not invite, after all it’s your day of happiness and joy with friends and families.
It’s YOUR wedding. Your guests should all be people that you love and truly want there!
Too Many DIY Projects
Select one or two projects and focus on those instead of ten other things.
Keep it simple and be realistic of what you can accomplish with the timeline together without the stress. However, do not overwhelm yourself with ten different things because you want to reduce costs or be involved. This will become more stressful if you are not able to complete them. If you like me, do plenty of research on whether or not it is beneficial to hire a wedding planner or plan your own wedding. “Do I need a wedding planner?” is a question that crosses the mind of most brides-to-be. For some busy and well to do brides, hiring a wedding planner will be the answer to all your problems. However, for those who want to have more creative control or save some money, planning your own wedding may be the way to go. To give you an idea, since I’m very hands on and also, the fact that I’m a low key bride, I just do my own wedding planning. Some of the reasons that we didn’t hire a wedding planner was because of the size of our weddings of less than 50 people. In addition, I didn’t care about the little details such as letters, flowers, and scripts. My fiance (at the time) and I narrowed what was important for us. The biggest ticket items that we had agreed on were the venue, photographer, and food. For us, we had to compromise the wedding photographer (selected the second best favorite due to price) and agreed on the most stunning venue. Don’t be one of the 40% brides that regretted not having the right photographer (I’m guilty). This can be best if you brainstorm this prior to hiring a wedding planner if you are on the budget. Best advice is to work with a wedding coordinator or vendor if you’re on the fence of a wedding planner. This will help ease the stress and sleepless nights!
Want to learn more? To help you plan your best wedding, I’ve come up with some tips on when to hire a wedding planner or a day coordinator. Click here for your personal Wedding planning tips.
