Congratulations on your engagement ! Will you marry me? So now the big questions start, then stress levels are rising, and you need to start tying down some details, you may want to do everything at once, the time to fly by and the wedding day to arrive, however by ensuring everything is organised, or at least planned, you will save yourself a lot of wedding related stress. JL event Design have prepared some starting pointers for you to ensure you make the best start with your wedding planning.
BudgetSet a wedding budget. Very important before you start to set yourself some limits. It is very easy to let a wedding budget run out of control. Spiraling costs are all to common a tale. You need to decide if you will be funding the wedding yourself, if the finance is coming from the bride’s family, the groom’s family, or a combination of sources. It may be a good idea to set yourself up a spreadsheet to keep track of your planned costs. You could have a column with your estimated cost-of-item per person (make sure you research these, don’t just guess!). Then add a column for number of people/number of that item. Remember you may want to split adults and children numbers up on your spreadsheet if the costs differ. The final column is your total cost for that item, you just need to multiply the cost-per-item by the number of that item. You can add up the total to see if you meet your budget, or if you need to change the numbers etc. Editor’s Tip: Add a 10% slush fund to your budget to absorb any overspend
GuestsLook at the wedding guest list. Always a flash point for any Bride and Groom to be, and their families. It’s a good idea to only finalise the list of guests you will be inviting just before you actually send out the invitations, about 3 months before the big day. What you do need to do at this early stage is work out a rough guest list, only so you know rough numbers – this may then affect your choice of wedding ceremony venue, or wedding reception venue. Remember, this is only a rough list, it is not final, therefore it is not worth getting into any arguments about it!
Date
Maybe you’ve already set a date for your wedding day? Maybe there’s a special date you have in mind which means a lot to you both – an anniversary, a relation’s birthday, a bank holiday weekend? Some couples simply pick a day randomly – there’s nothing wrong with that! One Bride to be I know is hoping to secure the 12th of December 2012 – 12.12.12, now that is an anniversary your future husband/wife cannot forget. It’s a good idea to look at a sporting calendar to ensure there are no major clashes with your perfect day, you don’t want to find gentlemen rushing their wedding breakfast just to check the football score with the nearest waiter, or find a Tv. screen in the hotel somewhere.
Enjoy it
Remember to enjoy every moment, and that includes the wedding planning process – the next few months will fly by very fast.This is by no means a complete to-do list for organising a wedding, however it is meant to give you a good structure to work from.
Below are various wedding planning websites and tools,which will help you create a budget, guest list,website and more.
