Where do I start?

When planning a wedding I have found that it can be very stressful. I had no idea where to start or even where to begin planning. I thought that I would start with some wedding checklists. If you're unaware of what those are or don't know where to get one most bridal magazines have them or I have found a website to be very helpful. You can find many checklists at this website for all kinds of things ranging from a wedding checklist to a guest list manager:

Wedding Checklists

Something else I found helpful was this Ultimate Wedding Planner that I bought from Amazon.

 

Once you get a time line of when you are going to get married hopefully everything will run a lot smoother from then on out. I am planning a traditional wedding that will include family and friends in the hometown both my fiance and I grew up in, therefore most of my information and references will be illustrating my type of wedding.

So after you begin to get started and after you look at a wedding checklist or make one of your own there are four things you need to think about. First is you need to set a date! This is one of the most exciting parts because every girl knows she has dreamed about this day almost her entire life, therefore I am sure there is a season or time of year that you already have in mind. After you set a day the second thing you need to figure out how much time you have to plan your wedding. I have a little under two years so I have a lot of time to budget and plan my wedding and hopefully save up a lot of money for my big day.

The third thing that you need to do is decide how elaborate you want your wedding to be (if you don't have a budget and you have no limit then you are one lucky lady and can move onto the fourth item). You should start by making a list, on your own for the items that you want most to have your dream wedding. Be realistic, and don't make a list of 100 things if you can really only afford 50. After you have your small list sit down with your fiance and make sure you both want the same things and maybe add to your list anything that he wants.

Now for the fourth thing to do before you begin any big planning, this one is very important. You need to decide who is going to pay for what. If your going to be the one paying for everything then I guess you don't need to worry about this. However if both parents are going to be contributing or even helping in the least bit you need to figure this out ahead of time so there is no confusion later. Sit down with both sets of parents (or just the parents that are helping) and ask them directly what they are willing to help with or if they are going to give you a set amount what will it be, that way you know what you will have to cover yourself. Since you decided in the third step what kind of wedding you want it will be easier to tell your parents when they ask.

I hope this helps because I know when I first started planning I didn't know where to begin. I finally decided though what kind of wedding I wanted and it made it a lot easier to talk to my parents about things after I decided that and had talked to my fiance about things he wanted as well. I can't tell you planning is going to get easier because these few things were the easiest decisions I have made so far.

Next blog we'll talk about the guest list which unfortunately might bring about a few, let's call them disagreements!