Wedding

1.  Find your Budget! (and stick to it!) 

As tempting as it is to just start planning, establishing a budget is an absolute must.  Get everything out in the open with what you can spend and if your parents or future in-laws will contribute.  If you aren’t happy with your budget, maybe that means a longer engagement.  But just remember that there is an AMAZING wedding for every budget. 

1. VIDEOGRAPHER- GET ONE!!! 

Still photos provide an image of a moment in time, but wedding videos capture both movement and sound. With a wedding video, you’ll be able to hear your spouse gasp during your first look, your dad’s toast and your mom’s laughter. You’ll be able to watch your first kiss as newlyweds, your first dance, and your grandmother’s amazing dance moves. For as beautiful and artistic as still photos can be, they cannot capture motion or sound—which makes a wedding video a must-have. 

Asking “Will You Be My Bridesmaid?” to your favorite girls is such a fun time in the wedding planning process. And these new Bridesmaid Proposal Boxes are such a fun new trend.  Now that you’ve got your celebration on, with your own Bridal Box Subscription, and you’re getting use to your new bride status…it’s time for, what I believe to be, one of the most exciting parts of your wedding planning process…asking your bridesmaids to stand up with you as you say “I do”. Your bridesmaids are the girls in your life who are there for you during the crazy wedding planning phase. “Back in the day”, brides simply asked their girls to be bridesmaids, but now…there’s a fun trend to ask with a fun gift…also known as a “bridesmaid proposal.”  I personally love this trend, as I get to give my girls a special gift while I ask them to stand up with me as I marry my best friend. 

1.  YOU DO YOUR THING GIRL.

I spent a year planning our wedding and at the start it was a completely different vision. Halfway through, I realized that I was planning a traditional wedding that would be just like every other wedding I was at, even though it didn’t reflect what I had dreamt about my whole life. I am a free spirit and have my own unique tastes- I realized MY wedding wouldn’t be traditional. Some of the things I changed were: *I went from having all matching traditional bridesmaids dresses to having all different mis-matched patterened, non-traditional dresses * I changed the flowers from just some uniform smaller bouquets to bright, fun, crazy wildflowers spilling out from every which way.

1.  Invite who YOU want to invite, not who everyone says you should.

We struggled with the guest list the most. We are in our mid to late twenties so we still have lots of close friends and family friends that definitely added up when it came down to invite them all. We had invited 190, 175 had RSVPed and 165 came. We were a little upset that people weren’t more considerate about the fact that we pre payed for the plates but it didn’t interfere with the day at all. It took us over a week to realize they were missing.

Cocktail Hour…the dreaded in between time after the ceremony and before the reception. Weddings are always amazing and mostly full of excitement all around. As fun as it is to be a part of your friends or loved ones special day, the cocktail hour in between can seem to drag on while the Bride and Groom take their photos.  But, your cocktail hour does not need to be the most boring hour of the day.  

1.  Decide what aspects of the wedding you want to splurge on and where you can save. 

Early on in the wedding planning, we decided what aspects of the wedding were the most important to us. From there, we decided what we were going to need to spend the most money on and where we could cut corners. For example, we both decided we wanted a venue in downtown Chicago that was unique, so we allocated a large portion of our budget towards that. For the things that weren’t as important to us, such as, invitations, we saved money by going the DIY route. I made the invitations using a template off of Etsy and printed them on Vistaprint, which saved us tons! 

1. Please, LISTEN and remind yourself often when people tell you not to stress the small things. I heard that so many times while wedding planning and I shrugged it off thinking my problems were too large, expensive and nobody else could possibly understand, yadda yadda. There is so much build up and stress while wedding planning, that on the day of your wedding just give up pleasing anyone but you and your future husband. Throw it out the window because if others aren’t making sure things run smooth for you, chances are it was suppose to be another way for a reason and you’ll have no choice but to roll with it. It is suppose to be FUN and memorable for the right reasons.

My partner and I plan to get married in Iceland on June 5th, 2019. However, we wanted to do a private service one year prior so that certain family members who may not make it to Iceland could attend our marriage. We also thought that might help with the legalities of getting married in another country. We decided to get married exactly one year prior on June 5th, 2018 downtown Chicago at the courthouse.