You're engaged, congratulations, this is such an exciting time for you! It can seem overwhelming at first to know what to do when starting your wedding planning journey. These tips below are just a few suggestions to help guide you planning your wedding.
Tip 1: Celebrate Your Engagement
You're engaged, this is so exciting! Congratulations! First thing to do is celebrate this momentous occasion by sharing your news with your friends and family. This might be a little challenging under current circumstances but that doesn’t mean you can’t order a decadent champagne hamper for an alfresco picnic, host a Zoom engagement party with cocktails delivered to you and your guests, or just order takeout from your favourite restaurant (my London choice would have to be from Dishoom!). You might even want to arrange an engagement session with your favourite photographer.
Tip 2: Define Your Ideal Wedding Before you delve into the planning, I would suggest you sit down with your partner and have a chat about what is important to you both. Do you want an intimate wedding or a grand party? Have you given thought to what type of wedding ceremony you want? Discovering your initial wedding thoughts will help you refine your ideal wedding. Don't forget to think about how you can make your wedding personal to you. Ensure you bring in elements that reflect you as a couple, or aspects that are meaningful to you both.
Tip 3: Set a date
Choose when you might want to get married. At this stage you don't need to choose the exact date. Just determine the time of year that would be perfect for you, to fit in around your jobs, any other key celebrations. Don’t forget to check key holiday dates, or sporting fixtures that you might want to avoid.
Photo: Camilla Arnhold Photography
Tip 4: Set A Budget
It is essential to set a guide budget for your wedding. First determine who is contributing financially. Family members might want to pay some of the costs or pay for certain items such as your wedding attire. Once you have done this, create a spreadsheet and list all the items that you might need to buy. It’s handy to keep this updated throughout your planning with details on when you have paid suppliers and when balance payments are due. All this planning helps to reduce feeling overwhelmed, and to stay on track.
Tip 5: Venue Hunting
This is one of my favourite parts of the planning journey – hunting for the perfect venue. I love helping couples find the best venue, and I can appreciate that this can be a daunting task. Think about what style of wedding you are looking for. Do you like the idea of a celebration that is elegant, rustic, contemporary, or historic? Consider if you are looking for a ceremony and reception in the same place, and how many guests you might invite. Perhaps you want a spectacular marquee setting, or a quintessential English country estate.
Tip 6: Gather Inspiration
Time to delve into the world of weddings! Instagram is one of my favourite tools for inspiration from weddings to interiors. Search for hashtags such as #weddingvenues #weddinginspiration and everything else you can think of and save your ideas. Pinterest is also the definitive tool to search for décor inspo, and save your favourite ideas. I love it when couples share their Pinterest boards with me so I can bring their ideas to life, and use it as a springboard to curate their design aesthetic. For real weddings and styled shoot inspiration, take a peek at top wedding blogs Wedding Chicks, Style Me Pretty, Rock My Wedding, B.Loved & Wedding Sparrow.
Tip 7: Source Your Supplier Team
Having an outstanding team of wedding suppliers helps to ensure a seamless wedding day. Popular suppliers get booked up in advance, so concentrate on booking your key suppliers early. With many postponed weddings, you'll find suppliers have already got busy diaries for 2021 and 2022. As a guide, the main suppliers you need to think about booking for your wedding include;
- a wedding planner
- venue
- caterer
- photographer
- floral designer
- videographer
- cake designer
- entertainment whether that be a DJ or band
- a stylist
- stationer
- bar
- props and décor.
Look to first book suppliers that can generally only operate one wedding each day, and so are likely to get booked up. These include your venue, caterer, photographer and entertainment.
Tip 8: Hire a wedding planner!
You might not have considered hiring a wedding planner but we are invaluable when it comes to planning your wedding. As planners, we are wedding experts. We help map out all the tasks required to plan your wedding and approach those tasks in a manageable way. We create a realistic budget for you, ensuring regular reviews of this along the way. You have access to our book of trusted suppliers, as well as venue contacts that might not even advertise. We help plan the look of your wedding, creating an event design and colour scheme - all part of curating an exceptional experience for you and your guests. We also ensure that you can relax on your wedding day, overseeing that everything runs smoothly on the day.
In terms of services, you can book a planner to help you at any stage of your wedding. If you feel confident to plan the majority of your wedding then you might like to book a handful of consultancy hours for help on specific aspects. If you lead a busy life or live abroad, then enlisting the help of a wedding planner means all wedding admin tasks are covered from start to finish.
Tip 9: Save the date
This doesn’t have to happen straightaway but you might want to think about how you might communicate your wedding date to your guests. There are some incredible stationery designers if you like the idea of traditional Save the Date cards. Or go paperless and send e-invites. For stylish e-invitations check out Paperless Post.
Tip 10: Enjoy your engagement
This is the most important tip! There is no rush to dive straight into wedding planning. The above information is important but take it at your own pace. Relax and let the excitement of your engagement sink in. It can be stressful planning a wedding, but remember that it's about the two of you making a lifelong commitment. Stay positive and as relaxed as possible throughout your plans, and enjoy the planning as much as the day!
If you want advice about your wedding planning, why not book a complimentary call to chat through advice and to explore how I can help you plan your wedding. Just email me to arrange a time. And if the above suggested tasks all seem a bit daunting, then perhaps you might want to simply discuss if hiring a wedding planner might be the right choice for you.