10 Things You Should Do Before You Start Wedding Planning
Before you start your wedding planning, make sure you do these 10 things to make your life a lot easier from the get-go!
1) Create A Wedding Email
There is an enormous amount of admin when it comes to weddings, so you don’t want to end up sifting through all your normal everyday or work emails to get to your wedding stuff. So before you start planning, set up a new email account dedicated to your wedding. That way when you go to wedding fairs and give out your details to potential vendors, you can keep up to date with it all a lot easier. You can also use it as an option for your guests to RSVP to as well.
2) Create A Wedding Bank Account
Just like a new wedding email account, consider creating a wedding bank account to, so you can more easily keep track of all your payments in and out. You don’t want to trudge through all your monthly expenses to double check whether you paid that deposit or not. Alternatively make sure you have a separate savings account that you can put wedding money into; that alone will make your life a lot easier.
3) Consider A Credit Card
Another alternative to opening a wedding bank account is to consider getting a credit card (if you don’t already have one). Weddings are costly, but you can definitely use this to your advantage. Shop around for the best credit card; there are so many that offer great benefits like cash-back, air miles, discounts and more. Just make sure you have the money already saved in your normal account before you use the credit card, so you can pay it off straight away every time you use it, otherwise the negatives will start outweighing the benefits!
4) Before You Book Anything, Make A Guest List
There’s no point booking anything, especially your venue, until you’ve made at least a rough guest list. The amount of people on your guest list will determine a huge amount of things, from the size of venue you need, to how much you will spend. The number one most costly part of wedding planning is the guest count, so the bigger the list, the more money you will spend. Also most venues will have a maximum, sometimes even a minimum, capacity. So it’s best to go into your planning with a rough number in your head.
5) Make A Budget
You can’t start planning unless you know how much you can spend! Sit down with your partner and create a budget that you can realistically stick to. For more in-depth information on how to create a budget unique to you, check out my Wedding Budget Tips blog post here.
6) Share Important Ideas With Close Family And Friends
If you’ve got very specific ideas about your wedding, especially if they are non-traditional, it doesn’t hurt to share these ideas with your nearest and dearest before you start planning. For example, don’t want kids at your wedding? Make that known as early as possible to avoid any potential issues. Same goes if your planning something a bit different, like a wedding abroad or an elopement. Weddings like this will effect your guest list and your guests’ ability to attend so be as forthcoming as possible if you suspect it could cause an issue with some family members.
7) Get Some Inspiration
Before you start getting into the planning, relax and do some research. Scroll through Pinterest and get some ideas and inspiration. It will be a lot easier when you start looking at venues and vendors if you already have a particular theme in mind or if you know how you want everything to look.
8) Time And Location
It’s good to have an idea of the time of year you want to get married in as well as a rough location. This will help narrow down your choices from the get-go. Remember that marrying ‘out of season’ or on a weekday could get you a discount! Also consider how far the majority of your guests would be willing to travel for your wedding before you start venue hunting.
9) Get Yourself A Checklist
Having a planning checklist to hand will help you focus and prioritize your tasks accordingly. It’ll also help you avoid missing out any important tasks. If you want to be really organized, you can also create or download spreadsheets for planning, budgeting, guest lists and more. You can download my planning checklist here!
10) Enjoy Being Engaged!
This time goes by pretty quickly, in fact, pretty much everyone you meet will tell you so! So take the time to enjoy your engagement. First off, arrange an engagement party with all your closest friends and family. If you find you’re getting bogged down with planning, arrange to go on a date night! Take this time to really enjoy each other’s company.
Happy Planning!
All images in this post are copyright (c) of Aby-Joanne Photography.
