Location

Location, location, location: Where are you going to get married? Where are you going to hold your reception? WHERE WHERE WHERE????

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     Like everything else in the Wedding Universe, there are a million and one ways to orchestrate your ceremony and reception, but there are three to get you started:

1. Ceremony and Reception in the same area, CLOSE to home
2. Ceremony and  Reception in the same area, FAR from home
3. Ceremony and Reception in different places and at different TIMES

Confused yet? Let's break this down.

Option One: CLOSE TO HOME

You live in Dallas…host your event in Dallas. This one isn’t too hard.

Pros:

• Close to home = little to no travel costs

• You’ll be able to view your venues at your convenience

• You have a tight knit group of professionals at your fingertips (Most wedding professionals know each other and have worked together. Find one good one –say, your wedding planner- and you’ll be able to find them all.) 

Cons:

• Every city has its prime “wedding locations”, so you might have a case of the BTDT’s (been there, done that’s)

• If everyone you know is in the same place where you’ll be hosting your wedding, they all might expect an invitation

 

Option Two: FAR FROM HOME

You live in Denver. Your childhood vision includes a beach and palm trees. You plan for the Bahamas.

Pros:

• Your event gets an added touch of “amazing” because now it’s a “destination wedding”!!

• You have the unique opportunity to combine your wedding  and honeymoon (making sure the latter happens!)

Cons:

• Depending on the location you choose, you might not be able to see the place until days before your wedding

• Coordinating from afar will be a challenge, not impossible, but a challenge none the less

• TRAVEL COSTS!!!! For you AND your guests
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Option Three: DIFFERENT TIMES, DIFFERENT PLACES

You live in Tallahassee. You have your ceremony in Cancun. The reception is back home in Tallahassee.

OR

You live in San Diego. His family has an estate in the Hamptons where you hold the ceremony. The reception is in Las Vegas where everyone you know lives.

  Pros:

• This option gives you the freedom to have it all. You can have your dream wedding on Mt Everest (where most people won’t travel to) and celebrate with your friends and family later at sea level, back home a few months later.

• Opens up the whole world to you as the back drop to your wedding.

• Your timeline can be extended- you get married in January on a beach somewhere and host your reception in October once you’ve recovered from the cost of your trip.

Cons:

• TRAVEL COSTS!!! Changing locations multiple times is going to cost you.

• Hosting events in more than one location will definitely prove difficult. A wedding has a ton of details in and of itself, but to spread those out will require a high level of organization.

There are a million and one ways to do this. You have to decide what is going to work best for you, as a couple. There are also plenty more pros and cons to each method than I've listed and I’d love to hear what you have to say!! Post your additions in the comments and I’ll post a revised list as they come in. Remember, this is your wedding and even the location should be something meaningful. Keep in mind too, that no matter what, you’ll find a way to have the wedding of your dreams!!

Setting the Date

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Setting a date does add some solidarity to your plans, doesn’t it? Once you pick a date, your plans really start moving forward. It might seem like an arbitrary decision, but don’t take it too lightly. There are some important topics to consider.

• When can you both take time off from work?

This one might seem silly, but it’s important to check with your employer to make sure that you can time off to have your wedding (and honeymoon) without sabotaging your job. If yours is the kind of work that requires you to be on-call, taking time off might be particularly tricky and the more time you have to work it out, the better.

• What’s your menses schedule like?

Whether or not you are planning to honeymoon right after the wedding, there’s still sure to be some hanky panky after the festivities and you wouldn’t want your period to interrupt that fun. If you haven’t been keeping track of your flow, start now. In three months, you should have a reasonable idea of “open” dates in the month. Of course, this one doesn’t apply if you’re both dudes…

• What season are you interested in?

Fall, winter, spring, and summer: each season has its pros and cons for weddings. A winter wedding will encounter weather delays for travelers, but there are few things as elegant as a winter wonderland event. Summer is a peak season for weddings, with its bright sunshine and blooming nature all around, but outdoor weddings held in the peak summer weeks have to plan for heat strokes and sunburns. Whatever season you choose, your wedding will be stunning; just don’t sell Mother Nature short when considering the pros and cons.

• How long do you want to be engaged?

Want to be married sooner rather than later? Want more time to save the cash you’ll need for your dream wedding? Is there anything else you’d like to accomplish, individually or as a couple, before you are married? The answers to these questions will play a role in deciding on a date. Sit down with your partner and work out a general time line of your foreseeable events and goals. This will help you find the date that will work out best for you both.

• Don’t forget about the money!

Getting married during peak wedding season, May to September, means everything is going to cost more, from catering to tux rentals. Tuesdays are cheaper than Saturdays. Going off-peak for your celebration could save you upwards of 30% on your total costs. Depending on your budget, this might play the biggest point to consider when choosing a date.

Once you decide on a date, start checking around to see if the other vendors you had  in mind (say the reception location you fell in love with) have your date available. Whatever day you choose, your wedding is going to be great!!!! 

Thanks for stopping by!!
The Married Lady’s advice: Did he propose to you in a blizzard? Were you on the beach when she said that she wanted to marry you? Was your first kiss on New Year’s? Keeping all these other things in mind, choose a date/time of year/location that means something to you. My husband and I met on June 30th, 2007. We were legally wed on June 30th, 2008 and our wedding was held on June 30th, 2012. Choosing a date or season that is meaningful to you as a couple will add another layer of “special” to your event.

The Guest List

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Some would think that this would be the point in the preliminaries where you decide if you should have a big blow out or a small, intimate affair, but you’d be wrong. The guest list is simply a list of people you’d like to share this day with. My own wedding had no more than 50 people in attendance, but it was as big a blow out as we could afford ($15,000)!!! In one magazine or another, there was a story of a couple who hosted a very intimate barn yard hoe-down for 150 people, feeding and watering everyone, plus entertainment, for under $5000. See what I mean?

When considering people to invite, you’re going to make three lists. First, both you and your partner should make a list individually. Next, make a list together of people you know as a couple. Go through and cross off the repeat names and tally up your totals.

If you are both happy with the number of people on the list and the actual people on the list, it is time to move on the next step. If you’re not happy with the list, it is time to start veto-ing people off of the list. Here are some guidelines to help you decide who to cut and who to keep:

1.   If you were invited to their wedding, you are NOT obligated to invite them to yours.
2.  Co-workers who are ONLY co-workers don’t necessarily deserve an invite.
3.  There is NO SUCH THING as “courtesy invites”, if you send them an invite, plan on them coming.

If there are other people contributing financially to your event, such as your parents, they might expect to be able to add some names to the pool as well. The best way to handle this is to set a specific number of people that each set of parents can add to the guest list. The conversation might sound like this, 

“Mom, I would be happy to include your friends in our guest list, but we can only fit 10 more people inside the budget. If you’d like to help cover the cost of more guests, then I would be happy to add more of your friends to the list.”

This scenario would be different if your parents were covering the cost of your entire wedding. In that case, they should be allowed to invite whomever they like and in whatever quantity they'd like. The general rule is whomever holds the checkbook gets to make the decisions.

Keep in mind that this list is going to evolve throughout the length of your engagement, right up until you start printing the address labels for the invitations. Stay flexible and open minded and your guest list will not become sore spot between you and your partner.

The Budget

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There are few things in life as stressful as money. We all needed it. We all work for it. Money is at the core of living our lives in the way that we deem fit. Your budget should be your starting point when planning a wedding.

Here is where I would like to stress that BEFORE you sit down to work out Wedding Monies, you two NEED to have a frank discussion about your individual finances as a whole and how you want to handle the costs of the wedding together. Money is going to be one of the core pillars upon which your marriage will balance, and it is VITAL that you are both on the same page. From money mistakes and money attitudes to bank accounts and credit cards and scores, if you’re going to be partners for life in all things, you should be able to have a frank dialog and be unafraid to share (conversation-wise) everything. (More on this topic HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE.) Now, I'm not a financial adviser, nor a marriage counselor, only a married lady who's been there and done that :)

When planning a wedding budget there are a hundred ways to delegate your funds. Decide together what is most important to you when you envision your special day. For me and my Mr. Million, it was the food and the pictures. We wanted everyone to leave satisfied and stuffed to the brim with delectable goodness and we wanted to walk away with beautiful photos that captured all the wonderful moments of the day. Working this out together will make sure that your day has all the elements that will make it everything you’ve BOTH dreamed of.

Whatever number you come up with, next is to break it down into sections. The typical breakdown looks like this:

4% Fashion	6% Flowers
5% Ceremony	2% Décor
40% Reception	2% Lighting
4% Rentals	2% Hair & Make Up
5% Music	2% Transportation
4% Bakery	5% Extras
5% Stationary	2% Rehearsal Dinner
12% Photography

There are different variations of this breakdown and you’ll want to adjust your numbers so those items that are more important to you have a larger budget. There are many websites out there that offer free budget trackers. Find a few HERE, HERE, and HERE.

Work out how much you can save, or contribute from your current savings, within your engagement period.  You’ll also want to explore any other sources that might also contribute to your wedding fund, such as your parents. For example, if you decide you can tuck away $1000 a month, plus an added contribution of $3000 from all sets of parents, in one year you can count on $15000 to spend on your event. (There is an argument for the use of credit cards here, but that will be explored in a different post.) Once you settle on a number, it’s important to stick to it. Not adhering to your budget is one of the top ways to sabotage your wedding.

The First 5 Steps of Planning a Wedding

You’re getting married?!?!?!?!!!!!! 

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Now you have a wedding to plan! Here’s a list to get you started. Over the next few days I’ll be covering each topic as well as providing other resources for you to explore.

•   What can you spend? Decide on a budget

•  Who should be invited? Start a preliminary guest list

• When do you want to get married? Check your calendar for acceptable dates

• Where do you want to get married? Talk location

• How can you stay organized? Start your Wedding Binder

Start on these 5 topics and you’ll be ahead of the game. 

Now, don’t everyone get uppity!!! Like the name says, there are a million ways to do this and everyone has a different way of doing it. This is just the one million and first way J You’ll hear this from me time and time again; take what you need from what’s out there and make it your own!! There’s no one right way to do anything, but there is one right way for you…

Until next time!