Planning Your Wedding
Nobody knows how taxing it can be to plan a wedding more than the bride and groom, especially when it is one of those grand weddings that get into the media. But even if it is a small affair with less than three hundred guests it still requires careful planning. A lot of detail goes into shaping the whole wedding day, from pre-wedding preparations to the ceremony and reception on the day itself, up to the honeymoon thereafter. Most of what goes wrong in any wedding tends to emanate from poor planning more than lack of finances or any other factor.
The first step to having a trouble-free celebration of vows is agreement between the bride and groom. Even in cases where they leave all the preparations to an established and trusted wedding planner, and this is increasingly becoming the norm, it still pays to lay down ground rules that the planner will have to follow. The two most important people have to agree on what they want, how it should be done, how much to be spent, and so forth. This includes agreeing on what happens in case of changes in their plans, e.g. who will make the decision for something different. This ensures that nothing is left to chance.
Next, the couple should ensure that their wedding day is clearly marked out in their diaries and communicated in good time to all critical parties, that is, parents, siblings, the church, etc. They should save the date wedding cards and find a way of ensuring that those dates don’t change. In fact, among their to-do list they should have an item called ‘save the date wedding cards‘.
Every couple does their wedding differently, due to differences in tastes and background, but every couple should have assistance in the preparations since no-one is self sufficient. This could be in the form of a group of friends or relatives, or enlisting the services of a reputed wedding planner. Note that the planner should be of good repute – many wedding days have been ruined simply by choosing the wrong planner. A day or days should be set aside specifically to go over the plans with the planner or group of friends/relatives so that everyone is on the same page. Where possible, the plans should be in written format and distributed to every one involved.
As soon as they send save the dates wedding cards, the couple should come up with a list of everything that should be done up to the wedding day and honeymoon, and allocate each item to a specific person, tagged with the amount of budget allocated to that item. This makes it easy for follow up to be done when something is late, overlooked or not/
