If you’re like me, then you’ve been envisioning what your wedding would be like since you were 5 years old. I always wondered who I would marry and what my dress would look like and where I would go on my honeymoon. Well, fast forward twenty something years and HERE I AM PLANNING MY WEDDING!!!
I got the man (check) – AND HE CUTE.
I got the ring (check)
SO LET THE PLANNING BEGIN!!!
To be honest with you, I really thought I was going to be bridezilla throughout this whole process. For the majority of my life, I’ve been an organized control freak. I LOVE to have every second of my day planned out and put in my planner. Yes, it is color coordinated. My parents always laugh when they tell the story about me being 5 years old and hand writing to-do lists that went something like 1. Wake up 2. Brush Teeth 3. Change Clothes 4. Eat Breakfast 5. Change Band-Aid 6. Play (LOL – I die!!!!) I’d say my whole perspective on life changed after I got sick because I came to the realization that no matter how planned, organized, and prepared you are, life throws some big shit your way that’s totally unexpected and there’s nothing you can do about it but roll with the punches.
So when it came to planning my wedding, I took the approach of rolling with it. First, I’ll give you a little bit of a background story. Carl and I met in November of 2017. By January, we were living together and in April of 2018, he proposed. And believe me, I was just as surprised as everyone else. We were bombarded with congratulations but also some concerns that it was too early. People said it was too fast and that they were hesitant about it all… we respectfully took it all in and then decided to not think twice about it (I’m considering making a shirt that says “I don’t want your opinion unless your opinion is pizza”). For all my Real Housewives of Beverly Hills fans, LVP and Ken got married 2 weeks after they met and are still living their best lives after 37 years of marriage.
The saying goes, when you know you know… and Carl and I just knew!!
It made sense for Carl and I to have a long engagement because of a few different factors. I had always dreamed of having a Fall wedding, so we had the choice between 6 months or 17 months as an engagement. We decided on the long haul so I could graduate from grad school and hopefully get my health mess under control before we said “I DO” (still working on that but it’s a work in progress). We set the date for September 7th, 2019! I would say after you’ve picked the date, then it’s time to get an idea of if you want a big wedding or a small wedding. For Carl and I, we decided on a very small and intimate wedding. This was SO hard to decide since it brought us both back to P.E. class picking kickball teams but I’ll include tips on this below.
THEN IT WAS TIME TO FIND A VENUE.
When it came to the venue, I had pretty much already picked it out because I had seen it on social media and had fallen in LOVE. Carl and I made the appointment to view the property and had decided on it without seeing any other venues. My first tip of advice for wedding planning would be to GO WITH YOUR GUT!! I’m a very decisive person (except for when it comes to food) but I made decisions for our wedding based on my gut and intuition. If you love it and it speaks to you and what your vision is like THEN GO FOR IT. I’m someone who gets super overwhelmed with lots and lots of options so, if you fall in love with your first option, then why keep searching? That’s been my M.O. for our wedding but everyone is different so it’s totally up to you!!
Then we went and searched for our vendors in order of what was most important to us! I’ll speak to this more on my tips for wedding planning below.
I would say in terms of picking vendors, I of course considered their work, professionalism, and pricing but beyond that, I chose who I could see myself being friends with. I wanted our vendor team to be SQUAD GOALS and honestly, I couldn’t be happier with who we have chosen. They are all wonderful people, who I am not only grateful for being part of our big day, but feel as though I’ve created genuine friendships with the majority of them! This was really really important to me and I recommend you do the same. Your wedding is such a special day and you want the people involved to really get you and know who you are so it can be more meaningful for everyone!
My absolute FAVORITE part of wedding planning was dress shopping!!! The first dress shop we went to was A & Be in Dallas and I went with my entire bridal party because they had all flown in for our engagement party (legit have the best friends in the world!!!) It was honestly a little overwhelming to have a lot of people there cause there was so much going on but I actually ended up choosing my dress during that appointment. I decided to hold off on purchasing because I wanted to go to a few more stores (because this is the only time you’re gonna be able to try on beautiful wedding dresses so why not take advantage of it). I went to a few other stores and tried on SO MANY dresses but ended up deciding on the very first one I tried on. I’m obsessed with it but won’t go into too much detail because it’s going to be a surprise. For tips on dress shopping, I would say GO EVERYWHERE and try on EVERYTHING. And look on pinterest for some inspo before you go. I’d say start trying on dresses as soon as you get engaged so you can have fun with it and have so much time to make your decision… but don’t feel pressured to order right away. Go home, sleep on it, think about it, go back and try it on, take pictures in it, and then decide!
My LEAST favorite part of wedding planning has been the invitations… ugh it was such a nightmare for us. Picking out the invitations was a breeze.. after talking to lots of previous brides, we decided to go with Minted to save on money (it was a difference between around 1k versus 4-5k for an actual vendor). Getting peoples addresses was easy too, just time consuming but because we had such a long engagement, a lot of people’s addresses changed from the time we sent out the Save the Dates to the time we sent out initiations so that was a challenge. ALSO CHECK YOUR DAMN POSTAGE!!!!! I accidentally ordered post-card postage and had to go back to the post office once my mom realized and pick through ALL THE MAIL to get the 100 invites out to add postage to (and we all know the people at USPS aren’t the happiest, so be warned!!!!)
Now that y’all know my favorite and least favorite parts of wedding planning, I wanted to share some tips that I think would be beneficial to anyone planning a wedding!
5 TIPS FOR WEDDING PLANNING
1. Calculate your budget first: I didn’t do this and I wish that I had. We had a ballpark budget in mind but it’s important to figure out the logistics first. Who is paying for what? What is your goal budget? And what is the maximum, “LIKE DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT GOING OVER OR YOU’RE DEAD” budget. It’s important to have your big day beautiful and everything you've dreamed of but it’s more important to not break the bank over it. You don’t want to be left stressing about money just for one day!
2. List out what’s important to you in order!! This is a really crucial step because you want to make sure that you are putting the majority of your budget towards things that you really care about… and then go out and find the vendors based on that list. Ours went something like this:
· Venue
· Planner
· Photographer
· Videographer
· Dress
· DJ
· Flowers
· Hair and Makeup
· Food/Drinks
· Rentals
· Invitations
3. FIND A PLANNER/DAY OF COORDINATOR – this is actually one step that I interviewed probably 5 different people before finding mine. With my experience, most of the time you only get to choose between full planning or just a day of coordinator and I wanted something in between. I ended up finding my planner, Sarah with Keestone Events, and she is AMAZING. Like seriously I love her. She has an “A La Carte” option so I got to pick and choose what services I wanted her for. We created an individualized contract and it’s been awesome!! Definitely recommend! I would say this is a crucial part of your day because they have connections and relationships with vendors and can make the whole planning process so much easier. Often times they have discounted rates as well, which is amazing. And lastly, you want your big day to go SMOOTHLY. I promise you, there will be something that doesn’t go as planned, but the good thing about having someone like Sarah is, I won’t even know about it cause she will handle it. I want it to be a fun and relaxing day for me, my friends, and my family so we are very happy with our decision to hire a planner!
4. WHO TO INVITE? – Like I mentioned, Carl and I had decided early on that we wanted a small and intimate wedding. When we first created our guest list, we had a lot more people on it compared to who we actually invited. In our opinion, it was important to have people at our wedding that know both Carl and I AND our relationship, people who play meaningful roles in our lives NOW and that we know will be in our lives forever. We limited plus ones to people who were in serious relationships or engaged because we didn’t want people there that we didn’t know. This is of course up to you and your preferences, but for us, it was an easy decision. Don’t feel like you need to invite people because you don’t want them to feel left out or because of the “politics” of a friend group. THIS ISN’T THEIR DAY DAMNIT. You want people there that wholeheartedly love you and your significant other and will support y’all in your marriage for the long haul. If someone doesn’t bring you all the good vibes and support, then don’t invite them… it might cause some drama and people will of course talk about it but like I said, IT’S YOUR DAY so do what feels right for you and your soon-to-be hubs.
5. RSVP’s/Seating Chart – My wedding planner had the BRILLIANT idea of numbering the back of the rsvp cards and putting corresponding names on a document that you keep. This is to avoid a headache when people send back their rsvp without putting their names on it and TRUST ME SISTER, IT HAPPENS!!!!!! Also, keep in mind that you’ll have people that don’t send back their rsvp at all… which is frustrating but not worth losing your cool over. Just don’t be afraid to reach out and say, “I need to know by this date and if I don’t hear from you, I will assume you’re not coming”. DO WHAT YOU GOTTA DO!!!! Creating the seating chart can be overwhelming but some advice would be DO NOT and I repeat DO NOT start working on the seating chart until you get ALL of your rsvp’s back. It will save you SO MUCH time, energy, and poster board – LOL. I also used wedding wire to create the seating chart because they have a beautiful and organized format that makes it SO easy to place people!
There it is! MY 5 tips for wedding planning! It is seriously such a fun process and I’ve soaked in every second! I feel so so blessed to be marrying my best friend!!! I can’t wait to see everything come to life on SEPTEMBER 7th!!!!!!
THE COUNTDOWN BEGINS!!!!! 27 DAYS!!!!!!!! WOOHOOO!!!
Love you sisters!!!!!
XOXO,
E