Five Things I Would Do Differently If I Started Wedding Planning Today

Wedding Wednesday

Let’s make things easier, shall we…

If you are in the midst of planning a wedding, chances are you are getting a lot of advice about what to do & what not to do. My husband & I were engaged in December of 2022, which gave me thirteen months of planning. Most people told me I had to do these three things right away: 1) book a venue 2) book a photographer 3) set a budget.

While these things do need to be done, doing them first actually created more stress than I needed. If I could do it all over again, here are the 5 things I would actually do first:

1. Watch Mindy Weiss Masterclass on Wedding Planning & Start Building Your Binder: If you don’t have a Masterclass subscription, this is the best $100 you could spend. Her course is easy to follow and put me at ease knowing there were only so many things that money could be spent on. Her approach to wedding planning is practical & focused on creating a great day for you and your guests. She gives you the names of free tools that actually help you keep track of payments, contact info of vendors & keep you on a timeline. She also helps you understand the variables of what you will spend and how to prioritize based on what you care most about. After watching her master class, I probably would have avoided many of the mistakes I made.

2. Define the Vision Before Booking Anything: Imagine seeing a wedding you love, booking the same planner and then finding out the actual cost of the wedding you want is 6x your budget. Now envision that, after you already committed to a wedding venue - sounds stressful? That’s because it is.

   When I say define the vision, I mean go through on paper what you would like the day to be like - where is it? are you inside or outside? what does the decor look like? what time of year is it? how many people are there? I would do the exercise of saving photos or better yet organizing into a Google Slides or PPT that you can then share with a wedding planner.

3. Interview Planners based on your Vision: My planner is lovely & the sweetest human I think on earth. That said, when it came to communication styles - we probably couldn’t have been more different and this made communicating tougher than it needed to be. We would have realized that earlier if I had done a little more homework before we started - and that’s on me. When you interview planners you want to know - based on what I put in front of you what will this cost? Do you manage the budget? How do you help us manage costs with your vendor relationships? How often do we communicate? How do we communicate design decisions - excel or other means? Before you book, you also need to review the scope of work - what is included and how is it defined. Knowing this will save you money & time long term. If you are trying to save money, try a day of coordinator only or the month of planner. This requires you to be more involved and engaged, but can be a huge monetary difference.

4. Set a Range for Cost vs. Budget: I actually hate the word budget when it comes to wedding planning, because they seem pretty made up. A ton of people I know end up going obscenely over ‘budget’ and not only is that the part no one talks about, but it’s also just unrealistic numbers in the first place. You can set a budget all day long, but until you see what venues, photographers, flowers etc cost it’s challenging to determine what is a realistic budget. You do need to know the max you can spend, but you also need to see a more 360 view before making commitments.

   First, understand the ballpark cost for your vision, and then decide if that is realistic. If what you can spend is not going to achieve your vision, how can you make changes to have it be more aligned to what you can spend?

   Mindy says pick the 3 things that you really care about and invest in those. I agree - we spent a ton on a band & honestly they made the entire wedding. Go big on a statement and then cut other places that you care less about. Remember there are many details that you won’t find out about until the end - ie: day of stationary or a photo booth - and so don’t over invest too early.

5. Consider Travel Implications before booking a Venue: I loved my wedding. The whole weekend was incredible and it was designed to be a weekend of activities on an island so that my friends from all over could get a tropical vacation they didn’t know they needed without leaving the US. That said, what I hadn’t considered was how much of an expense travel can be not only for guests but also for the bride & groom. Things to think about include: travel fees for your vendors, hotel accommodations for your vendors, your own travel. The other thing you’ll want to think about is can my guests afford this. For us we were ok with travel meaning that guest count would be smaller, but for some this is a deal breaker.

These are things I would have liked to know going into our big day. Hopefully it helps you for yours!

Tuesday Tip - Wedding Invitations

Our wedding suite

Wedding Invitations is the part of the process I have been most excited for! Fast forward to yesterday, I learned that the mailbox I dropped the invitations into was vandalized with all the mail being taken out of it. We’re 3.5 months out from our destination wedding & have to quickly scramble to figure out what we do next…

With this top of mind, my Tuesday Tip is a breakdown of Wedding Invitation Suites in hopes that this helps you!

Timing: You will hear a million different average timelines depending on your sources. Think about how much notice you would want and use that. Our wedding is a destination and we knew we wanted to send everything early to give people plenty of notice. Our wedding is in February, requires travel for most quests and we treated it like someone would be planning a mini vacation. Our Save the Dates were very early (9-10 months notice) & our wedding Invitation needed to beat the holiday rush (4 months notice).

• Sending it early! We had a huge snafu and circumstance happen that our wedding planner had never heard of! Because we sent them so far in advance we can still meet the 3 month mark.

Design: Your design will be greatly dependent on what you are comfortable spending on an invite. For us, I looked at the invitation suite as commissioning art work we could later frame around our house. My sister had hired an artist for her wedding & it was my favorite keepsake. When it came time to plan mine I knew I wanted to hire an artist to create custom artwork. Other couples opt for more formal (letter pressed) or more casual (printed templates or e-vites). The look and feel was extremely important to me.

Expected Costs: These will vary greatly based on what type of design you select & who you use. When you are working with an artist the majority of the cost is for their time designing your suite & the art. This means the cost will be higher.

• Designed Custom Invitation Suite: $4,000-$10,000

• Custom Invitation Suite (not original artwork): $2,000-$5,000

• Pre-Canned Design (Zola, theKnot etc): Under $1,000

• Evite: Under $500

How to Choose: If the cost doesn’t scare you & you want to take the Designed Invitation Suite route, start browsing styles that you liked on Instagram. What I did was followed most of the luxury wedding planners in the area to see who they were working with. Have a call with the designer, review timelines & don’t cut corners in the design process. We for instance, didn’t get a mood board & our first drafts didn’t reflect what I wanted. My designer was nice about it, but had we taken the time to do it right from the start it would have been easier.

Mailing Your Invitation Suite: We had the stationer stuff our Wedding Save the Dates and she was adamant about Hand Stamping them. When I went to the post office to Mail the Wedding Invites, the guy told me to save time just put them in the Mailbox, they all need to be run through the machine so there is no difference. Trust me… Hand Stamping takes more time but you should definitely not drop them in a mailbox. You want to Hand Stamp them at the post office to ensure they get delivered neatly to their destination.

Here are some of my favorites, which ones do you like?

Wedding: What To Consider Before You Book!

Considerations Before You Start Booking Vendors For Your Wedding

I couldn’t sleep last night & I started thinking about all of the things I wish I would have known before I started the wedding planning process to help clarify mine & Matthew’s thinking. If you’re recently engaged - this one’s for you!

If you are paying for your wedding yourself or if your parents have a set budget, before you book anything I’d recommend asking yourself (& the groom) a few questions:

• What time of year do we want to get married? Time of year will impact the premium you pay on the big day and it will impact the weather. The height of season vs. the off season will have huge cost variations.

• Where do we want to get married (location not venue)? Picking a location is really important & probably the most influential factor on cost. Different cities or towns have different price points, not only for the venue, but also for the cost of labor & goods. The venue will impact cost as well, but if you are not sure what location you would like to get married in comparing multiple cities / towns is important for avoiding excessive costs. For context our band charged us $3k more based on our location (travel costs & setup)

• What type of venue do we want? Beach, farm, resort, old building, restaurant, museums. There are different pros and cons to each.

• Do we want a tented wedding? Instagram is filled with beautiful tented weddings. If you are getting married on a beach, it is highly likely that you will need to put up a tent of some kind for your big day just in case the weather doesn’t cooperate. Tented weddings are like building a room from scratch. If you built a house, you’d need to pay for the materials & the builders to do the building - same case with tenting a wedding! There are different kinds of tents that have different costs depending on where you choose to have your event. Some other things to consider - A floor so people aren’t walking on grass or sand, will increase your cost between $12-$20k. You’ll need to add lighting, generators to provide power and likely need engineers to manage the process! All things considered - this will likely increase your cost between $75-$100K.

• Who is paying for the wedding? The wedding industry averages are just not accurate, especially when featured next to what you will see on Instagram. Let’s not glorify planners who spend a million dollars on an event & then are praised for how amazing it is. That’s great if that’s you & your budget. For the other 99%, let’s get real with you. If you are paying for the wedding, find yourself a planner who help you creatively get to your budget & advise early in the process on what is a realistic cost. A tented beach wedding will cost you over $60K just on the bare bones structure, power, lighting, labor.

• Roughly how many guests do we expect? Food & Beverage costs are between $250-$500 pp.

• What is our expectation for how the wedding will look & feel? Review these photos with a planner as you both interview them. Ask what it will cost to do what you want & get specific.

If you are exploring different locations & considering destinations here are some clarifying questions to consider:

• Managing Costs:

  • Are there local vendors that can be used or will vendors need to be brought in? If you are getting married on an island or in a small town, often times vendors will come from other cities & you will need to cover the travel + rooms. Depending on the season this can add many incremental costs.

  • How often do we need to go to the venue? What is the expense for you to travel to the venue. Is it more cost effective, break even or more expensive when you add in these factors?

  • What is the cost of a room / night? If a room is over $500 a night this starts to add up!

• Guest Experience:

  • Is the destination easy enough for guests to get to? While people love you, consider the guest experience & the amount of travel you are expecting of others. More than 1.5hrs from a major airport is a no.

  • What is the average cost of a room in the destination during the time of year? There needs to be affordable options. We didn’t figure out until after we made our choice that the most affordable room was $650 a night or an alternative was a motel. Not great for guest experience.

  • What is the average cost of flights at the destination during the time of year? This is important because you want to consider travel & you want to think about how many available flights there are. I had a wedding I went to where there were very few direct flights & my flight was canceled the next morning. Eager to get back, I spend $1200. While I had the greatest time, I’ll always remember what a pain it was.

Hopefully through these questions you have a bit more clarity on experience & costs that will come up. From here you’re ready to start interviewing wedding planners and locking in a date! It may seem overwhelming (because it is!), but you’ll thank yourself later for doing the work upfront to make an informed decision!