10 Things to Consider When Planning for Your Wedding Day
1. Take your wedding planning one step at a time. Make it fun, make a date out of it!
There are so many things to think about when planning a wedding. Often, it ends up being just one of the partners in the couple that does the majority of the planning. For me, I realized that my husband just didn’t really know what he could help with. We turned our wedding planning into date nights and I set aside tasks that I knew he would be able to help with easily. This alleviated my workload and made it fun for both of us.
Wedding planning date ideas:
Take your wedding planning to a coffee shop and chat about each of your wants and don't wants for your ideal wedding.
Serve up some charcuterie and wine at home while you prepare your save-the-dates and wedding invitations.
While choosing your songs for your reception turn your living room into a dance party!
When touring your dream venues go out to lunch or dinner somewhere you’ve never been before.
2. Consider a venue with the option for lodging.
Weekend long or even just an overnight celebrations are so fun because they allow you to experience your wedding and being with the people who are most important to you for more than just a few hours. Consider choosing a venue that includes lodging such as a campground, resort, etc. This can also make planning a lot simpler by providing a built-in venue for wedding weekend activities like your rehearsal dinner, after-party, and breakfast/brunch the morning after the wedding.
3. Involve the people who are important to you.
There are special wedding traditions like the father of the bride walking her down the aisle, the first dance with the bride’s dad and the groom’s mom, etc. But, I found that there were a few people that got left out of these traditions that I wanted to be included.
A few ideas:
Ask the mother of the bride to hold the bouquet during the ceremony.
Dedication of the bride’s bouquet to someone special.
Speeches are traditionally the Father and/or Mother of the bride/groom, Maid/Matron of Honor, and the Best Man. But, that doesn’t mean they have to be. Consider choosing someone else, or even playing around with the number of speeches. Just be sure that each speaker has a time limit of 5 minutes maximum. Any longer and your guests will lose interest.
Delegate tasks to loved ones. If you are opting not to have a day-of coordinator, there will be several things that may need to be done throughout the day of your wedding. Consider asking family members or friends to help with these things! Examples are: bringing breakfast/lunch to you and your wedding party the day of, handing out wedding programs, queueing your wedding party when walking down the aisle, etc.
Dedicate a song to someone during the reception. Just let your DJ know ahead of time what song and who it’s dedicated to!
Invite your grandparents to be a witness to your marriage on your marriage license.
Ask a friend or loved one to be your officiant.
I asked my bonus mom to be a part of helping me into my wedding dress alongside my mom. It was important to me to include her since she never had kids of her own. I wanted her to experience this moment as a mom and I’m so glad she was there for this moment.
4. Make an exit plan for signing the marriage license.
This one comes from my own poor experience. After our ceremony, we immediately went to the bar with our wedding party to grab a drink. We were first in line since we opted not to do a receiving line, so this seemed like a fun and great idea in theory. While it was fun, as soon as we turned around with our drinks in hand, there was a mob of people eager to say hello to us.
I wish that we had planned a spot for signing the marriage license away from where all of our guests would be. We could have had our Matron of Honor and Best Man grab a drink for us and bring it over. I feel like this would have alleviated a lot of stress and allowed us to be fully present when greeting our guests without the responsibility of signing the marriage license lingering.
5. Designate someone to pass out tips to your vendors.
We hand-wrote thank you cards to our vendors and put cash in them prior to our wedding day. I brought them to our venue the morning of our wedding day, but realized I didn’t really know what to do with them. Luckily, my sister found them and handed them out to the right people, but, it was something that I worried about the next morning when I realized this totally slipped my mind.
Designate your wedding coordinator, a family member, or someone from your wedding party to handle this for you so that you can have fun on your wedding night!
6. Hot take: Wedding favors are overrated.
Wedding favors are forgotten and left behind far too often. If you do them, think about doing something authentic or something that people will truly use.
Useful wedding favor ideas:
Scratch off lottery tickets.
You can get the $1 tickets from a gas station and put them in cute Kraft paper envelopes with a personalized sticker. Set them at each place setting for an activity for guests to do while they wait for dinner!
If you’re skipping cake, consider a personalized wedding cookie for your guests! This can ultimately save you money by combining two things in one.
Donation to charity. I’ve seen couples print out cards that say: “In lieu of favors a donation has been made in your name to X charity.”
Bud vases. Combine your seating chart with your florals! Have bud vases sitting on a shelf with guest’s names and table numbers on them. Include a sign with instructions to bring their flowers to their table, then at the end of the night they get to take them home!
7. Build in time to be with your partner.
You’re getting married to the love of your life! Wedding days truly go by so fast. Set aside time in your wedding day timeline for you and your partner to be together.
Intentional ideas:
Consider a private breakfast with just you and your partner before you part ways to get ready.
Have a first look and private vow reading. This is also a great segway to your couples portraits.
Have a private cocktail hour for just you and your partner.
Take couples portraits during the first 20 minutes of your cocktail hour.
8. Wear the shoes you want to wear. Be comfortable.
Wear shoes, or not! You can wear your dream Jimmy Choo high heels on your wedding day, but there's no shame in taking them off. Consider a shoe change or just completely ditching your shoes and going barefoot if that’s your style. Seriously, do whatever you want, but be comfortable enough to enjoy the moment and not be in pain.
9. Consider throwing an after party.
As we were planning our wedding, the thought of ending the night at 11pm seemed way too early. We knew we had friends and cousins who would want to keep the night going, and we hoped we would still have enough energy to do the same. We opted to throw a casual after party at the hotel pool following our reception. This was insanely fun, and our guests reach out to us all the time telling us what a good time they had.
I’ve seen couples throw an after party at a hotel bar, local bar, a friend’s house, bowling alley, etc. Consider the vibe you’re wanting and how many people may attend when you pick your location. I also would highly recommend choosing a location within walking distance from your venue if possible, or pre-selecting designated drivers.
10. Gift your engagement/wedding photos to family and friends.
Trust me, your people will love this. We gifted our engagement photos and wedding photos to our family for Christmas. We purchased inexpensive frames from places like Marshall’s, TJ Maxx, Home Goods, and you could even check the thrift store!
I would recommend staying away from places like Walgreen’s to print your photos due to the lower printing quality. Trust me on this one, your photos will not have the correct color grading. My galleries delivered to clients include a built-in professional print shop. I did a test and ordered some from the Pic-Time shop and some from Walgreen’s. The Pic-Time photos were SO much higher quality and the photos looked exactly as they did online. Keep an eye out for sales around Black Friday for ordering your prints.
Bonus Tip: I asked my husband if he had any tips for people planning their wedding and he said “Get the suits sooner than later. Your size probably isn’t going to change.”
Give yourself one less thing to think about when you are nearing your wedding day. Make sure you as a couple and your groomsmen and bridesmaids have their suits/dresses. I would recommend starting a group chat with your wedding party and giving a deadline for this.
To learn more about my wedding, check out this blog post: How Much I Spent on My 2024 Wedding
I’d love to be a part of your wedding day! As a wedding photographer I believe this is a very special and important time in your life. It’s my goal to collect as many moments for you to look back on and relive your wedding day in years to come. I’ll be here to help you along the way from start to finish as you plan and prepare for your wedding day. Click the button below to inquire with me.
All photos in this blog post are from my own wedding day, which was beautifully captured by Bending the Branches Storytelling.
