He finally proposed. The guy you want to spend the rest of your life with. I guess you already started to dream about your wonderful wedding ceremony. And keep imaging how gorgeous you are on your wedding day. While dreams are beautiful, we still have to go back to reality. To make your dreams a reality, there are 7 tips to guide you how to start planning your wedding:
- Set Your Budget
- Do the Research
- Have A Talk With Parents
- Draft A Who To Invite List
- Ask Yourself if You Need A Wedding Planner
- Hire Vendors
- Finalize Wedding Guest List
Set Your Budget
Firstly, figure out how much you can afford for your wedding, and spend accordingly to stay financially healthy. Even though it is an extraordinary time in your life, I don’t think you want to burn a big hole in your pocket at the end of the day. Thus, you should establish a wedding budget based on your savings and income, to identify the amount of money you can spend.
While setting your budget, don’t forget to track the spending. Mark down who, what, when you paid for. Record the payment and balance to be paid, as hiring wedding vendors might incur deposits to book the date. It helps you to better manage your budget and expenses.
To read more on this, check out our How To Plan Wedding Budget? What To Consider?
Do the Research
There are 2 main types of research for your wedding: wedding style and potential vendors.Researching ideas to apply to your wedding style. Which can express your personality and style such as wedding themes, colour, design and more. Whereas researching potential vendors, is to find someone who provides services that bring your dream to life.
Both of the research are time consuming but critical. You are advised to read customer reviews before hiring the vendor, make sure the vendor has a positive review. This is a crucial task to prevent from hiring a terrible vendor. Don’t let a bad vendor bring disaster and ruin your big day.
Find out more on 7 most popular wedding themes to inspire you.
Have A Talk With Parents
Marriage is about a combination of two families, not just two people. It wouldn’t be a perfect wedding without the support of both families. Hence, it will be good to have a conversation with parents, before you decide the wedding details. For example the wedding date, wedding reception, what kind of traditional ceremony that needs to follow, and roughly how many guests to invite and etc.
Different cultures, races, and education backgrounds can have different types of traditional wedding ceremonies to accomplish. Talk to parents to align your thoughts and their expectations. Ultimately, do your best to avoid miscommunication during the wedding planning.
Draft A Who To Invite List
Estimating the number of guests gives an idea of how big the wedding venue should be, and how much costs you are going to spend. After the discussion with parents, it’s time to calculate roughly how many guests you are going to invite. Meanwhile, you can draft out a list of wedding guests from you and fiance, your parents and fiance’s parents.
Traditionally, people used to send wedding invitation cards to invite guests to attend their wedding. Nevertheless, there are people who are using online RSVP to replace the traditional way to invite guests. Since guests are able to respond via the online RSVP webpage, in that it provides better insights to estimate the number of attending guests.
To read more on this, check out our Who Should I Add To My Wedding Guest List?
Ask Yourself If You Need A Wedding Planner
Wedding planning can be an appealing job, if you enjoy the process of planning your own wedding. Indeed, you will have more control over the planning process as well as save the money of hiring a wedding planner. Despite that, developing an extraordinary wedding plan is not as easy as you think.
It actually required the vitality to treat every single detail attentively. Consequently, it is really a time consuming and tiring process to undertake. It isn’t easy to carry out the wedding planning job without the feeling of anxiety and stress. So ask yourself and determine whether you need to hire a professional wedding planner, who can coordinate the wedding efficiently.
Read more on 5 signs you should consider hiring a wedding planner.
Hire Vendors
A wonderful wedding is the result of a collaborative effect of an industry professional team working together to make the dream come true. Since you already finished the research over potential vendors, now it’s about time to hire your dream team before they are fully booked. Remember to check the service details when hiring a vendor. It will be great if they can provide a contract or invoice for reference and avoid misunderstanding.
An advice to ask the vendor regarding payment terms. That’s for you to have a clear idea about when to settle all the payments so that you can be prepared. Ask for the deposit or down payment receipt if you made any booking fees.
Find out our advise on 10 things to know before you hire wedding vendors.
Finalize Wedding Guest List
Finalizing the wedding guest list is the most challenging job in wedding planning. We have organised these 10 essential tips for making a wedding guest list for your reference. Other vendors can’t help to take over the process, it completely depends on you and your family’s decision. The wedding guest list can be changing all the time, as guests might change their mind anytime. Therefore, you have to keep editing and updating the guest list to make sure you didn’t miss anyone.
Despite the guest list, the seating plan is another challenging job. Who should sit together, who shouldn’t. And you have to keep the VIP sitting in the right place, make sure they feel comfortable. That’s really stressful when assigned guest seating.
Even though no one can overtake the job, you can utilize smart tools to ensure the process smoothly. For example, Thebigdays Wedding Management App is a convenient and flexible guest management solution.
With that, you don’t need to worry about last minute changes on the guest list. As well as add, edit and delete guests as you wish on the app. All guest data is AUTO SYNC between devices! Meanwhile, it visualizes the guest seating chart in table view, ensuring you can monitor all guest seating at a glance.
Read More: 6 signs you are marrying the right person. Getting married? Download Thebigdays wedding planning app to help you get started to organise a perfect wedding day!
