“Are you about to start planning your special day? Here are the things we learnt when planning our wedding!”
Everyone loves a good wedding! Julian and I got married seven months ago, and since then, several of our friends have got engaged or married too! I’ve been asked a few times for advice on planning a wedding. Here are my top tips for anyone who is newly engaged and starting to plan their special day.
It is a significant day, but it really is only one day!
I had been dreaming about my wedding since I was a child! I can remember sleepovers as a teenager looking at beautiful dresses and stunning venues. When Julian proposed to me, I couldn’t wait to start planning the day. It is right to be excited about the wedding, but my advice to anyone planning a wedding is to remember that your marriage is a lifetime, not a day.
Plan an incredible day, but make sure that you invest in a pre-marriage course to give yourself the best possible foundation for marriage. Also, set yourselves a budget and stick to it! The average cost of a wedding is over £25k now, but it is possible to plan an incredible day on much less. Plan for your future together, and avoid entering marriage with a colossal debt if you can. Finances can be a point of tension in many marriages, so entering into marriage with healthy finances if you can is definitely something I would recommend prioritising.
Establish your priorities early on.
The best thing Julian and I did when planning our wedding were to set our three priorities early on. We choose family, food and fun, and all of our decisions centred around these. There are so many options to choose from when planning a wedding, and lots of people will offer you their opinion, it is so easy to say yes to everything. Centre your choices on your priorities, and this will help you as you plan the big day!
Consider what matters most to you. Is it food, the people you invite, the colour scheme, having an incredible photographer, the perfect outfits, a picturesque venue? Make a list and prioritise them.
Be true to your personality.
The best weddings I have been to reflect the couple getting married. Stay true to your personalities throughout. Julian is a massive fan of magic, and we had a magician perform a show for all our guests after dinner. All our guests were in awe of him! We also have loads of really talented friends who we asked to perform at the wedding, we love our friends and it was so memorable to have them involved on the day.
Be creative to stay in budget.
In order to achieve the wedding that we were dreaming of, we needed to be creative! We wanted all of our friends and family to celebrate with us, and the final guest list was about 300 people. Feeding 300 people within our budget was a challenge, but nothing a bit of creativity couldn’t solve. We created a sweet station for after the service with a trip to a local wholesaler, our main meal was a hog roast which averaged at about £5 a head (much cheaper than the catering quotes of £20 a head for one course we had received!), and our evening buffet was sourced from Morrison’s Food to Order for less than £2 a head! We had such an abundance of food, people were taking trays home with them as they left. Once you establish your priorities, be creative to make them happen!
If you splash out on anything, splash out on your honeymoon!
Being creatively frugal is important when planning your wedding, especially on a budget, but the one thing I think you should definitely invest in is your honeymoon. The build-up to the wedding can be stressful and tiring, and the day itself is full of excitement and fun, but after the day itself, you are entering into your life together. The honeymoon is a chance to relax, reflect on the wedding day, and dream about what the future holds for you together. We are so glad that we chose the Caribbean for our honeymoon, it was a stretch financially for us, but we recognise the importance of that time together. If you can, go somewhere particularly special for your honeymoon and make it a time you will never forget!
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Image Credits:Â Photos by Brown Bear Photography
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