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.

Wedding Checklist I and the Budget

Making a list and checking it countless times...

Santa Claus isn't the only one who makes lists. Brides, their families, wedding planners and MOH's all do this. It seems to me that making several wedding checklists, each assigning tasks and "to-be-done-by" dates is essential to getting through the months leading up to the wedding as well as on the day itself.

The initial wedding checklists need to include:

1 )What is your budget?

2) What can you do to make your day more economical?

3) What kind of wedding do you want to have?

4) What is your wedding date?

5) Have you “booked” the church, synagogue, mosque or other venue for the ceremony?

6) How many guests are you inviting?

7)What sort of invitation and invitation language are you having? When should you order or buy them?

8)Where do you want to have the reception?

9)What kind o f reception do you want to have?

10) Are you having a theme wedding?

11)Do you need a caterer? Wait staff?

12)What sort of wedding dress are you going to need? When are you ordering it?

13)What will the groom and his attendants wear?

14)How many bridesmaids? What will they wear? When will you shop with them for their dresses?

15)Who is your photographer? Can you lock him into the date?

16)Are you having music? What sort? If a band, can you book them onto your date?

These questions are an excellent starting point and as we progress through this process, we will be adding more questions, more wedding checklists and more ideas.

Let’s take a look at the wedding budget. This is the actual starting point for all planning. You need to know how much money you are going to need for your day. (More importantly, who the heck is going to pay for it?!)

Traditionally, and this stems from the olden days of dowry and other payment plans , the bride’s family pays for the wedding. The groom’s family pays for the rehearsal dinner and liquor and beverages.

Bridesmaids pay for their dresses, Groomsmen for their tuxes and so on, but the bulk of the money comes from the bride’s family.

In these days, there are other permutations of paying...Brides and grooms split the amount with their parents, both sets of parents may help or the couple pays themselves.

When my cousin got married, he and his fiancée both had good jobs, so they paid for the reception venue, the liquor, bar tab, food. Her parents bought her dress and the flowers, paid the minister and hosted a day-after brunch for out of town guests. His parents paid for the rehearsal dinner. This way they all contributed and no one was unduly stressed over finances.

Next time, we are going to talk about some more about the budget in relation to the other questions in our wedding checklist and figure out the best, most economical ways to address them.