Wedding Planning

Wedding Planning Secrets – How To Have Your Fairytale Wedding On A Shoestring Budget!

6 Essential Steps For Planning A Wedding With Ease

Until they are in the throes of it, most people do not appreciate the extent of the preparation necessary for planning a wedding. Even if you are pretty organized most of the time, planning a wedding is unique in the fact that there are so many factors involved that cannot function without each other. Because of this it is ideal to carve a plan that deals with individual aspects in the order they must take.

For example, there is not point in beginning your search for a venue if you do not have a date and there is no point booking a caterer when you have not decided on an exact location. Planning in an orderly manner will allow everything to fall into place naturally.

Following are the steps to guide you in the right direction.

1. Roughly a year before the wedding.

Here you will begin gathering the necessary tools to carry out your planning and arranging effectively. They may take the form of wedding planning software such as spreadsheets for keeping track of all the expenses and costs with totals and planning co-ordination software. Search around for a tool that you are comfortable with using on a regular basis.

At this time you should also be booking the services of a photographer.

2. Around 9 months before the wedding.

Begin putting the software tool to use. Input all the tasks involved for planning the wedding that you can think of. Don’t worry if you don’t think of everything, that is the beauty of such software, you can modify your plans as you go, keeping track of everything.

These tasks will involve booking your venues for both the reception and ceremony and the catering. Buying the rings, your gown and the bridesmaids dresses, invitations and everything else required for the event. If you are looking for highly sought after venues, you may want to begin the planning even earlier, however in most cases this should suffice.

Allocate a date for each activity being careful not to overlap. Give a realistic time length for each. Don’t worry if you don’t have exact dates but roughly within a week period or so. Remember to plan for the booking in advance tasks first, anything else that does not require a waiting list can be done later down the line within reason. Always keep a running total of your spending, keeping in line with the budget. This way you can rest assured that everything is safe and can be afforded.

Always back up your work on a disc or USB stick and update regularly in case your computer crashes. You don’t want to be losing this kind of information, especially later on when things are hotting up. You can even save in an email if you don’t have the above resources. At this point you should also be constructing your guest list.

3. Around 6 months before the wedding

Begin making arrangements with the various venues, caterers, photographer and ceremony staff. Make sure everything is safely reserved. At this point it is a good idea to have an alternative plan in case something should go wrong. It is very unlikely that it will but unfortunately, it happens. So, plan for a second caterer and venue etc. to be contacted for any such mishaps.

4. 4 months before the wedding.

Begin sending out the invitations and keep a note of who is coming.

Now that the boring part (well maybe not that boring) is over you can begin the exciting part. This is the time for buying your dream gown and the bridesmaids dresses, buying the rings and making honeymoon reservations. You will start to feel that is it actually really going to be happening. But, don’t forget to keep an eye on the budget, everything must be accounted for and put in the spreadsheet for approval.

5. 1 month to go.

Make final fittings for your dress and the bridesmaids and make sure everyone is ready (within reason).

6. You are There!

Now you can enjoy the fruits of your labor and have a fantastic day!

Wedding Planning Secrets – How To Have Your Fairytale Wedding On A Shoestring Budget!

Wedding Planning on a Budget!

Wedding Planning

Recent Posts

Meta