Wedding Planning is often stressful for brides when they start thinking about their upcoming wedding, as the entire planning process seems complicated and foggy.

Let's try to find out how to properly approach the issue of wedding planning, so that a situation does not arise in which the wedding planning has not yet started, but the bride is already nervous.

Wedding planning - when to start?

If the wedding will be in the middle of summer, isn't it too early to start planning now? But maybe it's too late? My unequivocal answer is - it is never too early. If your wedding is planned during the wedding season (May - September), the optimal time to start wedding planning is the fall of the previous year. I recommend not putting it off until the winter, because it is in autumn that most brides start planning their weddings, which means that it is at this time that wedding specialists and celebration venues have fewer and fewer free dates. If we talk about the days of the week, then, of course, Fridays and Saturdays are the first to be booked, because they are the most popular days for holding weddings.

Therefore, if you want to calmly choose wedding service providers, instead of taking what is simply left free, it is better to start booking services early. In that case, you will also have the opportunity to book specialists at more favorable prices, because often, for example, wedding organizers review the price offer and raise the prices in winter or spring, but if you had already agreed on the service costs before then, they should remain unchanged.

Defining the main wedding guidelines

Once the decision has been made to start planning the wedding, the first task is to establish the main wedding guidelines. A situation often occurs when only the bride deals with wedding planning, but the groom is responsible for the issue of wedding financing. But at this stage, I recommend talking to the groom. If you have diametrically different visions for your wedding and you only find out about it in the later stages of planning, arguments are inevitable.

Answer the questions together:

• Do we want a wedding in Latvia or abroad ?
• Is there a specific date on which we want the wedding, or is it only important the time of year and the day of the week?
• Do we want a wedding as a couple or with guests?
• Do we want a wedding only in a narrow circle of loved ones or do we want to invite all the people important to us?
• Do we want a party place within the city limits or outside the city?
• Do we want guests to be accommodated at the venue?
• In what language will the wedding take place?
• Where do we want the wedding ceremony to take place - at the registry office, at the church or at the venue?
• What is the approximate wedding style?

By answering these questions, you will already have a clearer idea of how your wedding will take place and what specialists and celebration venues to look for.

Making a wedding guest list

After agreeing on the main wedding guidelines mentioned in the previous paragraph, the next stage of wedding planning follows - drawing up the guest list (of course, if you have not chosen to celebrate the wedding as a couple).

Everything is clear about the closest people - you will definitely invite them. However, if you decided to celebrate the wedding with a wide circle of guests, then sometimes brides wonder how wide this circle should be. Is it necessary to invite all cousins ​​to the wedding? Invite work colleagues? Should you invite your aunt and grandmother's sister? Of course, it depends a lot on how close you are to each of these people. But I would offer a universal formula to understand whether it is worth inviting this guest to the wedding.

Answer 2 questions for yourself:

• How often do I communicate with this person?

If you haven't communicated with this person for more than a year or just sent a standard greeting message on birthdays and Christmas, then ask yourself the second question.

• At the wedding, I will definitely want to give my attention to each guest. Am I ready to devote time to this person at the wedding, knowing that in that case I will devote less time to other guests, perhaps more important to me?

If the answer is negative, I advise you not to waste this person's time and money on your wedding. Remember that each person at the wedding is an additional expense. Knowing this fact will probably make it easier for you to decide who to invite to your wedding and who not.

And here you definitely don't have to ask yourself whether this person will be offended if I don't invite him to the wedding. It is your wedding and only you decide what and how it will happen. People who care about you will understand and won't be offended because they respect you and your choice.

Will I have a wedding planner?

The very initial stage of wedding planning is also the moment when you need to understand whether you will cooperate with a wedding organizer or continue planning the wedding independently, because the wedding organizer will be responsible for all further wedding planning processes if you hire him. If you want to realize the wedding of your dreams, but you are afraid of doing something wrong and you realize that you do not have enough knowledge in this field, or you simply do not have time and do not want the unnecessary stress of planning a wedding on your own, then a wedding planner is exactly the person who will solve all your problems and uncertainties.

To understand if I am the right wedding planner for you, I invite you to the first free meeting where we get to know each other, you tell us how you imagine your dream wedding, and I tell you what we can offer you.

Wedding planning on your own - what to do?

If you have enough time and energy for independent wedding planning, then the next steps are choosing the place of celebration, determining the exact wedding date and booking wedding specialists. However, in order not to make mistakes at these stages, which can further ruin the entire wedding, I recommend contacting me and arranging a pre-wedding consultation. In this way, you will not only protect yourself from fatal mistakes in wedding planning, but you will also get a lot of valuable information from an experienced specialist, as well as receive a structured individual wedding planning plan and be sure that you will definitely not forget something important.

Author of the article: Oksana Shpakova / Wedding Fairy

Photo: Nous Nous Photo