Here’s our most important wedding planning tips – check out our top 5 tips to get you started towards stress free planning. 

I talked to a lot of couples, planned many weddings, and helped couples keep planning stress free. With all the weddings I’ve planned, I think these tips are the most important when you first start talking about your special day.

I’m sure you are wondering what to do now. You just got engaged or are finally ready to plan your wedding. There’s a lot of information out there – from wedding planning binders that are 100s of pages long, inspiration on Pinterest that you can scroll through for hours, and advice from friends and family. 

Here’s our 5 most important wedding planning tips! 

Budget 

I start with this tip because it’s probably not the easiest thing to talk about – money! But, trust me, if you set your wedding budget right away, it makes planning easier. 

Before you start looking and dreaming, come up with how much you want to spend on your wedding. There needs to be that number.  

No matter how big for small your wedding is, talk about how much you want to spend and how much you can afford to spend.

Why is that you ask? 

Well…if you know your budget you will start your wedding search looking for places that fit your budget. Let’s say you fall in love with a location venue, spend hours dreaming about getting married there and are ready to sign the contract. 

But, you haven’t talked about how much you are spending on your wedding. Then, the money talk starts and you realize that location of your dreams is way too expensive – you are crushed! Now, if you knew your budget right away, when you contacted the venue for pricing, you would have found out it was too much and moved on. 

This tip is probably one of the hardest because it has to do with money and there’s sometimes more to spend money on than you think. 

If you are part of Simply Your Day, you will get a free download of our Wedding Budget Worksheet so you can see all the expenses and figure out the costs on each. That way you can see all the expenses and see how much you might be spending on your wedding. 

Your Wedding Day Vision

My favorite question to ask couples who are having a hard time coming up how they want their wedding to be is to ask them to close their eyes and think of how they want their wedding to look and feel. 

Here’s some words to describe how a wedding can feel: 

Also, for the look here’s a great resource that shows you different styles https://www.theknot.com/content/wedding-theme-ideas   . 

Talk About What’s Important Together

If you haven’t figured it out yet, wedding planning can be easier if you both talk about your things together. That means there might be some disagreements at first, but once you are on the same page and know what you both want, then making decisions are easier. 

Supporting each other through this process is also key. If planning is becoming stressful for your bride, maybe as the groom you should see how you could help. Also, if a friend or family member is giving their opinion and their opinion doesn’t match your vision or budget, then talk about how you can nicely tell that person to keep their opinion to themselves.

Next, find out what’s important to you both. The two of you are getting married and you both should have a say in the wedding.  This is your day and the vision for your wedding belongs to you both.  

Make sure you know what parts of the wedding are important to you. Maybe he wants a big party and you want a small ceremony.  Ask each other, “so…what does that look like?”  If your fiancé says the big party is their family and friends dancing the night away, maybe it’s more about playing some great music finding a great DJ, and dancing.  Then, to meet in the middle, you lower the guest count a little so there’s more of the budget to spend on a DJ and a fancy lighting package.  

Or another idea would be to have a big party after the wedding and celebrate with a “We Got Married” party. You are still having a party, but just not on your wedding day.  This is a perfect idea if you are thinking of eloping with just the two of you.

Not sure what’s important, think about this question – For the wedding day, what 5 things would you say are the most important?  For example, would it be your vows at the ceremony, pictures of the two of you, the bride’s  dress, spending time with the guests or the food at the reception?  

To keep things fair, the groom should choose his top 2 things and the bride should choose her top 2 things. Then, for the last most important thing, maybe it’s something you both want or maybe just let the bride have another most important.  If you both have the same most important items then that makes things a whole lot easier! 

By knowing what’s important, it will help to focus on those things though the planning process and spend more time on those details.

Along the lines of what’s important also comes the question of what’s important to the groom.  Most weddings are planned by the bride. But, the groom may want to be more involved in the planning process or he may say he only wants to be part of planning the reception food and picking out what he wears.  Make sure to communicate the important things the groom wants to be involved in.  And, if he says he doesn’t care about certain details, as a guy, he probably doesn’t care, lol.

Get Organized 

Another one of the most important wedding tips is about getting organized. If you haven’t started to get organized, here’s some simple steps to keeping track of wedding planning details. 

Get a wedding email – Go to Gmail and create a unique email address for your wedding. I’ve seen cute ones like smithsareinlove2020 or mrsandmrsjones2020. Whatever you decide to use, having an email address where all the inquires, invoices and planning details will go will save you from searching through your general inbox. 

You can also use this email for signing up for promotional emails. Let your wedding email inbox get filled up with “junk” and don’t clutter your personal inbox. 

A cute planner 

There are going to be a lot of dates out there and you are going to need something to write those dates on.  Go out and get a cute planner. One of my favorites is below. Click on the picture to purchase one.

A box for all the wedding stuff 

Head over to Target to get a clear storage box to put all of your wedding paperwork, receipts and little things in. This way all of the paperwork is in one spot and your not searching around trying to find your Michaels receipt for lanterns. 

This box will also come in handy closer to the wedding since you’ll probably load it with everything that needs to go to the wedding. 

Checklist

A wedding planning checklist is a great way to make sure you are keeping up with the planning. All of our Coastal California Wedding couples gets a time line checklist.

Enjoy Being Engaged

Take some time to let it sink in. If you just got engaged, don’t think about planning the wedding right away.  Just because you are engaged doesn’t mean you have to start planning the wedding the day after you have a ring on your finger. When you have that talk about what’s important to you and your fiance, see if you want a long engagement or a short one. 

Take some time to let it all sink in. I’m sure you may think this is still a dream. If you want to start to celebrate plan a little party to tell everyone the news. Or, if your families haven’t met, plan a brunch.  Brunches are more casual and easier to make!

Take time and be in the moment. Think back on your first date and how things were at the start of your relationship, then look at where you are today and what happened along the way. This really is an exciting new chapter in your life!

I hope you enjoyed reading our most important wedding planning tips. These tips start the foundation for stress free wedding planning. And, it’s always nice to know what the other person is thinking and how much you should spend on a wedding. Really, these tips save couples from having arguments that really don’t need to be had. 

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