Want to know how to plan a wedding?

I’ve designed a 3 part blog series to go over everything that you need to know in order to plan a wedding. This blog article will include a step-by-step process of planning a wedding and stories of what my husband and I did while planning our own wedding.

Alright, let’s get real for a second, planning a wedding can be a serious challenge, especially if you haven’t planned one before. The good news is, is that it’s only supposed to happen once, so be sure to enjoy the planning experience as much as you can and try not to over exert yourself coming up with ridiculous and time challenging tasks.

 

Here at EventSlayer, we like to think about planning a wedding like baking a cake: there’s ingredients you need, a tried and true recipe and lots of creativity along the way. We’re going to take you step by step through our process and hopefully it will help you reduce the stress you feel about not knowing how to plan your wedding. In this first section we’re going to talk about the very first thoughts you should have when you get engaged. These are the things you need to think about before any actual planning happens. We like to think of it like the concept stage. 

 

Step 1) Your Overall Plan

 

Take 5 to 10 minutes with your significant other to brainstorm the different priorities and ideas you have for your wedding. Write them all down. They can be anything from “outdoors” to “fun”, “lots of games”, “pretty”, “blue”, “roses”, “family”, whatever. The point of this exercise is to come up with an idea of how you want your wedding to be, look and feel. Circle the options that you BOTH like. The things that you circled is the starting point to figuring out how you are going to plan your wedding from here on out. Keep these words in your mind and refer to them as you plan.

 

For instance, when my husband and I did this we came up with: Outdoors, games, green and red, artsy, fun, nice weather, and inexpensive. I took these words and made sure that throughout the planning process I was sticking to this “theme”. What we ended up with was an outdoors wedding at my mom’s lake house in Florida on November 12th with Jenga, Hula Hoops, and a Caricaturist. We chose November 12th by looking at the farmers almanac for the nicest day of the year on average in Florida.

 

Step 2) Figuring Out Your Wedding Budget

 

This step is a hard one. The average wedding in the US these days costs around $32,000. I don’t know about you guys but when I got married $32,000 was my entire year’s worth of salary and completely not possible to put towards a single day of fun. I ended up going to my family and seeing if they could help. My mom chipped in $4,000 and my Dad chipped in $6,000.

Neither of my fiance’s parents helped with the wedding but they paid for the rehearsal dinner, which was AWESOME! So, we planned for a $10,000 dollar wedding having decided not to put more of our own money into the wedding and deciding to put our personal money towards our honeymoon.

Obviously, this may not be an option for everyone out there. There are tons of ways to save up for a wedding and I will definitely be writing another blog post about that soon. For now my best advice is to see what you can afford and stick to that number, whether it’s with a year or two of saving up, getting a side gig, or asking your family for contributions.

Allocate your Wedding Budget

Once you’ve figured out the big number of how much you have to spend, it’s SUPER IMPORTANT to allocate these funds. Without allocation you run the risk of spending too much in one place and not having enough money for other parts of your wedding. Which means you could end up putting more money into the pot than planned.

Also, be sure to separate your funds for honeymoon and other wedding related events from your wedding budget. Too often I have brides come to me telling me that they have X amount to spend for their wedding and then complain that there isn’t enough money leftover for their honeymoon. Your WEDDING budget is your WEDDING budget, your HONEYMOON budget is your HONEYMOON budget. Do not think of them as the same (even if you are planning them at the same time).

My favorite budget allocation:

Attire: 10%

This includes: Dress, Shoes, Jewelry, Undergarments, Tux, Hair and Makeup, etc.

Stationary: 5%

This includes: Save the Dates, Invitations, RSVP cards, Escort cards, envelopes, stamps, calligrapher, menus, programs, etc.

Decorations: 10%

This includes: All your flowers like centerpieces, bouquets, boutonnieres, corsages, etc. as well as candles, guest books, signs, arches, etc.

Entertainment: 10%

This includes your music preferences like DJ, Band and Ceremony musician as well as any additional entertainers you want to include.

Memories: 10%

This includes everything that you want to have to remember your day by like photographer, videographer and photobooth.

Logistics: 5%

This includes your transportation and hotel as well as any guest transportation options you want to provide.

Venue/ Rentals: 20%

This includes your venue fee and if you need to purchase additional rentals like tables, chairs, linens, etc.

Food/Drinks: 20%

This includes all the food and drink options you want to provide as well as the server fees, bartenders, china, glasses, utensils, etc.

Officiant: 3%

This includes your officiant fee and marriage license and any premarital counseling classes that might be necessary.

Desserts: 3%

This includes your cake and any additional desserts you want to provide.

Misc. : 4%

This should cover any additional items that are not on the list above like your gifts to your parents and wedding party and favors. This can also include your wedding planner or be put towards any of the above that need additional funds.

 

Need help with tracking and allocating your budget? I made sure that EventSlayer’s budgeting tool is useful to you! Just fill out the  questions in the budget level and the budget tool will automatically create your optimized budget allocation!

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A gamified wedding planning app designed to help you plan your wedding step-by-step with tips and tools to help you plan like a pro!

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Step 3) Save the Date

Ok, so you’ve got your overarching idea for how you’re wedding is going to be and you know how much you’re going to spend. Going back to my cake baking analogy, we’ve figured out how many tiers and the flavor of cake we’re going to make and we’ve figured out how much we’re going to spend on ingredients. Now it’s time to figure out when we’re going to make it and if we have time to.

For my wedding I decided to go with November 12th because in our overarching ideas we wanted nice weather. If you have ever been to Florida before, you know that 90% of the year it is muggy and hot. Even on Christmas Day you can wake up to 80 degree weather and 90%  humidity.

We wanted to make sure that we and our guests were comfortable being outside in suits, jackets, etc. So, we googled “most beautiful day of the year in Orlando, Florida”. We were directed to the farmer’s almanac and it told us that November 12th had the least amount of rain and heat of any other day of the year on average for the past 30 years or so. It also happened that in 2016 (the year after we got engaged) November 12th was going to be a Saturday. DONE! We knew our date.

Exact Dates Aren’t Necessary Yet

Now, let’s be a little realistic here, I looked at the date I wanted prior to going to check out wedding venues because I knew I wanted my wedding to be held at my mom’s lake house. It was free and it wasn’t a regular wedding venue that could be booked on a certain day. As a planner, I always suggest for my bride’s to think of a time of year, and potentially a date but to not get too hung up on a specific date until you’ve decided on your venue since the location of your wedding can have a serious impact on your overarching plan for your wedding.

How much time do you have to plan?

Finally, when thinking about your date keep in mind the amount of time that you have to plan. A lot of couples ask me “when should I start planning my wedding” the answer is always: “As soon as you want to”. Why this answer? Because it’s important to start planning ASAP since there are a lot of moving parts that you need to lock down. However, it is also important for you to enjoy your engagement stage. You don’t want to rush into planning your wedding if you are not ready. It could cause unnecessary stress and an unwillingness to get married at all.

 

If you have family members that are pushing and rushing you into a marriage, please refer them to this article and tell them a PROFESSIONAL WEDDING PLANNER is telling you to relax and enjoy your time as fiance and not worry about your wedding until YOU (as a couple) are ready. It’s better for everyone involved.

 

Alright, That is the end of stage one of your wedding planning process. Now the real work begins! Be sure to check out our next section of the blog: How to Plan A Wedding: Choosing Your Vendors! In this blog we’ll dive into the first actual planning parts you should do like how to find a venue, food, and memories!