Organizing a Wedding

Planning a wedding can be fun and exciting, but if you are not careful and organized, it can also be stressful. There are so many details that you have to consider. It really can take almost a year to get everything the way you want it, and to ensure all will be how you want it to be on the happiest day of your life.

Whether you are having an at-home simple wedding, or a huge extravagant wedding, you will need to carefully organize and plan each step of the way. If you plan to hire a wedding planner to assist you, make certain you and the planner have identical wedding planners (books), including a wedding checklist that defines everything you need to do or even consider doing, and the best period in which to accomplish each activity.

If you hire a wedding planner with a lot of experience, depend on their contacts with vendors - florists, caterers, hotels, banquet/party rooms and so on - to get you the best deals for your wedding budget. Check the wedding planner's references before hiring him or her. Also watch some television shows like Whose Wedding is it Anyway and Bridezilla, to define how you are going to interact with your wedding planner and also behave during the year long process of planning your wedding.

If you are going to go it alone for the most part - and hire a wedding planner at the end, or ask a friend to organize events on the actual wedding day - you need to be extra organized. Get your own wedding planning notebook and start with that all-important checklist. Here is a site that can get you started with the wedding checklist. Then determine your wedding budget.

Once you've decided that wedding budget, list all the expenses that are typically incurred during a wedding (here is a site that can help you), and decide what is most important to you. Assign a percentage of your wedding budget to these items and stick to it. For example, you want to use printable wedding invitations, but you want the paper to be handmade rather than card stock. Compare the costs between these items.

The same goes for all your vendors. Talk to several and compare prices - what they offer, if there are any packages available, what time of year is most reasonably priced. I guarantee that if you hire a vendor for a late January wedding in the Northeast, you will be getting quite a deal, since winter is the worst time for weddings (except of course Valentine's Day).

Good luck with all your wedding planning. Just remember if you keep it organized, you will get through all the details.