Keeping on with Wedding Week, today’s post will be about planning. It’s not an easy task to put together every detail of such a huge event and have it all work out beautifully. Our wedding went off without a hitch thanks to careful planning. This is especially odd because I am suuuuper disorganized! I owe much of my wedding organization skills to my Matron of Honor, Jackie.
She signed me up on The Knot.com. All you do is enter your wedding date and the site lets you know when you need to do what. For example, when you log in, your checklist will pop up and tell you that you should be thinking about ordering your invitations, offer you different wording options, show you a zillion examples of cool invites, etc. I am notoriously forgetful, and I didn’t forget ANYTHING because of this website! Plus, there is a budgeter, a guest list manager, and so many other useful tools. See it here.
Here’s a list of great websites that I obsessed over thought were really useful resources…
Style Me Pretty is a fantastic site that is packed with inspiration, real weddings, and some sweet D-I-Y stuff.
The Wedding Chicks have some great downloads, and tons of ideas!!
Martha Stewart Weddings is run by the D-I-Y queen herself! You won’t believe all of the ideas on here!
The Inspired Bride has so many D-I-Y ideas plus how to maximize your budget. My favorite feature that this site has to offer is the color palettes. There are so many different color combinations to choose from (and some you may not have envisioned before, but will love!) with moodboards.
A huge part of planning your wedding has to do with inspiration. I actually found inspiration at Victoria’s Secret! Meeeeoooow 😉 ! LOL! In their shopping bags actually. I loved the hot pink, fuchsia, light pink & black combo (I added silver for some sparkle). It screamed party to me! Here’s a peek at my inspiration that came to life through the details of the day.
How to negotiate with vendors 101: Okay, before I went through this experience, I was not known for my sweet Donald Trump-esque deal making capabilities. I thought you went to a florist, tell them what you wanted, they told you how much it would cost, and either you could afford it or you find a new one. Well, this approach got me 4 outrageous quotes and really panicky. I finally was running out of options. We couldn’t stretch the budget any more and I refused to end up with really low quality (which was apparently all we thought we could afford). I finally decided that I had nothing to lose, so I made an appointment with a florist that had gorgeous (and really expensive) flowers. I told the consultant that I thought they were the best florist in the city (which is true) and that I knew I probably couldn’t afford them. I told her exactly what I could spend and told her what I had in mind. I asked her if she could do this tastefully on our budget. She said absolutely! So the moral of the story is: tell the vendor that you love their work, you don’t want to sacrifice quality, and tell them the maximum amount you can spend.
Don’t try to make everyone happy. It will never happen. If you love seafood and your brother-in-law hates it, just make sure to have at least one alternative. If you love orange, and your maid of honor hates it, she can choose whatever color she wants for her own wedding. You don’t have to be Bridezilla either though. When choosing bridesmaid dresses do take into consideration the various size and shapes of the girls. Don’t choose strapless if you have a few top heavy ladies. Nobody wants a wardrobe malfunction during the bouquet toss! There are a few cute dress lines (like J.Crew and Alfred Angelo) that have dresses in the same colors, but different necklines or hem lengths. Every girl can look different but still look similar. I let my bridesmaids wear their hair however they liked, and wear whatever jewelry they liked too. I always hated my hair up and I was in a wedding once where we HAD to wear our hair up. Needless to point out, I wasn’t a happy camper. Leave them a little wiggle room.
Lots of great tips!
Great advice, I love the colour scheme you had!
AMEN and thank you for all these links too! I decided to let my girls pick a dress that would flatter them personally so long as the green scheme matched. I love this idea but you would have thought I asked them to write a term paper on physics or something 😉 !
Your inspiration is awesome and so fun. And I agree with you on letting the girls wear the their hair as they wanted. Looking back I hated wearing my hair up and don’t plan to for my special day, so why should I make my girls do that right?
Keep the great inspiration coming from your special day.
P.S. I am so disorganized AND a totally last minute person. Thankfully my finace is a huge planner and he’s helped me iron out all the details.
These have been awesome posts and I know that they will help anyone that is getting ready to plan a wedding! Such great information and links that you have shared will be such a blessing.
I hope they will be useful to somebody! I thought they were a blessing when I discovered them!
Oh, planning a wedding. I was horrible at it…..and I’m usually super organized. I was in my second year of pharmacy school so I did as little as possible to still pull it off. It was fun though. Nothing fancy!
Love your wedding colors!!