What are the ‘Must-Complete’ Aspects to Cover First When Planning a Wedding?
For many of us, our wedding will be a dream event. You get to organise the party of all parties, thinking about every single detail until you’ve got it just right. That being said, the planning process can be tricky (to say the least) and you’ll want to make sure you get off to a good start.
There are several aspects of your wedding that you’ll need to think about before you can move on to the details. From thinking about your budget to getting a guestlist together, these are some ‘must-complete’ aspects to think about early on.
Think about your budget
One of the driving factors that you’ll need to plan your wedding around is your budget. It will inevitably be a limiting factor for pretty much everyone, and while it’s ok to dream a little, you also want to take a realistic approach to the kinds of venues you can afford and the number of guests you’ll be able to invite.
If other family members are contributing towards the cost of the wedding, make sure that you have a proper chat with each of them to confirm how much they’ll be putting in. You don’t want to plan based on assumptions, just to find that you were operating on a miscommunication.
Make a timeline
To make sure that you get everything done, you want to create a timeline very early on in the planning process. Set some clear deadlines for getting every single aspect of the wedding planning finished, right down to flower arrangements.
Make sure that this timeline is in a shareable document so that you can pass it on to all other relevant parties. You’ll need to be flexible, of course, and the reality of planning likely won’t fit your perfect timeline. That being said, it’s still useful to have an overview, to get a realistic picture of how much needs to be done.
Book the important stuff early on
While it’s important to come up with budgets and timelines, you’ll also need to start booking some things quite early on as well. Popular wedding photographers and venues like Heaton House Farm can get booked up months (or even years) in advance. This will be especially important if you’re planning to have your wedding at a popular time of year, like early summer.
Consider your guest list
Lastly, you’ll also want to think about how your guest list will affect the other parts of the planning process. For example, within the same budget constraints, you can have a less lavish wedding but with more attendees, or a more luxurious affair with fewer people involved.
You can create different categories of guests if you like – those who simply must attend, those who it would be lovely to have around, and those who you’re uncertain about. Then, based on the other aspects of the wedding planning, you can come back to this list and amend it as you see fit.
It’s important to note that none of these things can really be done before the others – they will inform one another, and will generally need to be done simultaneously.
This is a collaborative post.
