You’ll probably get a LOT of advice throughout this pre-wedding time of your life, but I’m telling you – this is actually good advice. Or you won’t think it is because, you know, everyone is different. But either way, this is the advice I wish someone had drilled into me while I was planning my wedding so maybe it will help you avoid some of the infamous “wedding planning stress”.
1. Decide what your care about BEFORE you start planning the wedding. It may be having an amazing vimeo from a top-quality videographer, or having your grandparents walk down the aisle, or to have all your nieces be flower girls. It doesn’t matter what it is, it matters that you make it clear to the people involved in planning the wedding that these are the things you feel are important. It will save you SO much stress if, from the very start, you have an open discussion with your fiance, parents, future in-laws, and any other relevant party and tell them what exactly you care about it and what you don’t. While you’re at it, review with everyone what parts of the wedding planning you want to be actively involved in, in charge of, or totally don’t care about. Just like with your relationship, you can’t expect others to read your mind and know what matters to you in these types of new scenarios. If you don’t tell your mother-in-law that one of the most important things to you is the bridal bouquet, she probably won’t know that you care a ton about your bridal bouquet. I found this advice to be super helpful and to give me perspective to realize that everyone cares about different parts of the wedding and that is okay- as long as it’s all communicated in advance.
2. Write thank you notes as gifts come in and don’t put off depositing checks! These were biggies for me, because I could literally go years with a bunch of checks in my wallet, waiting for a “convenient time to deposit them.” Don’t wait for a convenient time- it will never arrive. Just download the bank’s app, or take a quick trip to the bank and deposit them. It’s just so worth your time and it’s real money! As for thank you notes, if you can get away with a 2-3 line email and planning is still in the calm stage, just do it right when you get the gift! The gift-buyer will be super appreciative of how on top of it you are (it shows you really appreciated the gift) and you’ll be so relieved that it’s off your to do list. And I will promise you this- you will not remember who gave you each gift by the end of all the wedding festivities.
3. Discuss with your fiance how involved you want each other to be in decision making. You and your partner may make every decision together, or have some sort of division of labor going on, and you probably have a groove you established while you were dating. Something like “he’s good at cooking, I’m good at planning dates” and so you stick to your domains. But when it comes to wedding planning, there are just SO many decisions to make, that along the way you may start to think to yourself “How on earth does he/she not care about what food we have, who our photographer is, what the invitations look like, who will marry us, what we register for…” and the list goes on forever. In order to avoid what can potentially become a tension filled conversation, set a time to discuss your expectations BEFORE the wedding planning begins. Talk to each other about how much you each want to be involved in wedding planning, if you’d rather be consulted before a decision is made or just notified of it afterwards, and what sorts of things you DO want to be involved in. Share what ideally would work for you (“I would love if we could register together, even though I know you might not actually care”) and see where you two can meet in the middle! Then, when the time comes, you’ll know exactly what’s expected of you and decisions will be made smoothly.
Happy planning!
Have advice you wish you’d gotten that you would like to share? Let us know in the comments below.