Wedding Planning Truths
From the minute you get engaged or decide you should probably crack on with booking something, all thoughts, questions and topics of conversation turn to wedding planning. I have always maintained I didn’t want to get engaged years before we could afford a wedding but in October 2018, having already discussed the fun of getting hitched in 2020 ten years after we got together, I thought it was probably time he popped the question once and for all. He’s been bothering me to get engaged for years so he was only too happy to oblige and it seemed a good amount of time - about a year and a half before we wanted to get married in February of 2020.
And from the minute we got engaged and that family heirloom ring was on my left hand, I dug my heels in and refused to do any sort of planning until the following March, less than a year before we were planning on getting married. I knew starting wedding planning was going to bring a lot of family drama my way and I was going to have to make some really hard decisions so I put it off for as long as I could, until we were at risk of probably not finding a 2020 date at all cos damnnn those venues book up quick.
Here’s my wedding planning truths (and I was only at it for under a year!)
You don’t know where to start. There is nothing more overwhelming than thinking you’ll start planning, only to sit with google open and no idea what to search first. As fabulous as Pinterest is, it has a million and one infographics telling you what you should be doing when, and chances are you’re already behind without knowing it.
It’s stressful. There is no getting away from it, I was a horribly chilled bride for 90% of the wedding planning but there is always at least one moment of stress and yes, I found myself in tears of frustration when it wasn’t going my way. You can be the most laid back person ever but you probably will have even thirty seconds of bridezilla at some point. See me putting my brother and dad as bouncers on the door of the rugby to make sure nobody went into the main barn and ‘spoiled it’ too early.
It’s fun. It actually can be fun too, it’s not all bad. I probably would say I didn’t enjoy wedding planning on the whole if I was brutally honest and that’s because I felt like I should be doing more all the time and I just didn’t have the time. However, when I actually knuckled down when a deadline was approaching, I enjoyed doing all the crafts and loved planning all the little touches that I knew people would appreciate.
It’s overwhelming. Everyone has an opinion, everyone is asking you questions, suppliers need answers, if your partner is anything like mine they’re probably happy for you to crack on with whatever you want and it’s just a lot. That being said, I was fully ready for sleepless nights and stress the week before and actually, I was super chilled out, actually had done everything I needed to and probably slept better than I’d done in the last year.
It’s easy to get carried away. My mantra was cheap, DIY and reusable and I still found myself getting carried away with over-planning. I wanted to do all the crafts, I wanted to think of everything and have a solution to every potential problem and I found myself googling how feasible it would be to buy video cameras for every table instead of forking out for a videographer. It’s so easy to run away with yourself thinking you NEED this and you MUST do that but try and rein yourself back in and refer back to what you really want.
It’s hard to keep costs down. There’s a whole blog post dedicated to saving cash coming later in the week, but there is no getting away from the fact it’s hard to keep costs low when you’re planning a wedding. I found that if you approached any supplier and uttered the word ‘wedding’ you could add a fortune onto the cost of everything than if you approached it as ‘a party’.
It’s all about the bride. Sorry grooms but you are very much secondary here. I was amazed how many questions were directed at only me, how people would look at me not him when discussing ideas and plans and how many people expected me to have the answer not him. I mean, I did have the answers and I on the whole I was making all the decisions but hey, that’s just the way we run our lives. Apologies brides but a lot will fall on your shoulders but it also means you’ll get the most hugs on the day itself and you will probably get everyone toasting your hard work. Would love to know if same sex couples find one party is more ‘on it’ than the other….
It’s hard to let go and ask for help. I am controlling in my day to day life anyway. I would rather do something myself and take on too much than let someone do it not to my standard and I hate going on leave in my day job because I don’t like the idea of someone doing my work, so of course, wedding planning was the biggest control freak’s dream. I had a lot of offers for help and I would say I turned 95% of them down, saying things like “what’s the point in describing to you how to do it when I could just save the time in explaining and do it myself’. However, it means you take way too much on and become a sweaty mess so try and ignore me and take as much help as you can.
You won’t know what to do with yourself afterward. I tried not to wish the wedding planning stage away but I’d say from Christmas onward I was thinking ‘it’ll be over by XYZ time’ and I kept saying to Jos how much time and money I’d have afterward. And yes, the cliche is true, you come away from the wedding sad because it’s over and at a loss of what you’re supposed to fill your time with now…..
The perfect sense of irony.