One of the hardest things to remember as you are planning a wedding is that your wedding is truly all about you. It is easy to get overwhelmed with all the complicated moving parts that make up a wedding while also juggling sometimes complicated family dynamics at the same time. At Camp Hosea, we want you to be able to truly enjoy your wedding while feeling as little stress as possible! In this post, we will be exploring some practical tips about how to minimize stress during your planning process so you can be mentally and emotionally present for your wedding.
Managing Expenses with a Detailed Wedding Budget Breakdown
The most important part of planning any wedding is the process of creating a budget. Your budget will be the thing that all other decisions will be based around. The absolute worst mistake you can make as you are planning your wedding is to begin signing contracts before having a clear wedding budget breakdown. Once you have signed a contract, you are obligated to fork over the amount of money that you have agreed to pay that vendor. The number one stressor for virtually every couple is money, and the best way to minimize financially related stress is by organizing and keeping track of your expenditures.
Okay, fantastic! But how do you construct a wedding budget breakdown? Well, the process begins by understanding how much money you have to spend on your wedding, including money that will come from financial contributors like parents or grandparents. Once you have a good idea of the amount of money you're willing to spend, then it’s time to prioritize which elements of your wedding are most important to you. This will give you a guide to help you determine how you want to allocate your funds. For example, a couple for whom music is the most important may want to splurge on live musicians while spending money more sparingly on their bar.
Organizing Your Wedding Preparations
You have a budget and you know what elements you want to prioritize in your wedding celebration, now what? You want to begin the process of transforming that list of priorities into actionable steps. Just as money can easily become a source of stress, so can time when it runs short. Considering this, just as you will want to develop a budget to determine how you will allocate your funds, you will want to build out a schedule to determine how you will allocate your time.
So, how do you organize your wedding preparations into easy, bite-sized steps that are manageable? You will want to take a look at that list of priorities that you put together when you were putting together your budget. Of course, there will be some constants between every couple’s priority lists; elements like the venue and catering will always be pretty close to the top, but other things like DJs vary in their importance to different couples. Just like your financial budget, you will want to allocate more time to the things that you prioritize. This means the higher something is on your priority list, the sooner you want to get it done.
Setting a Clear Wedding Planning Timeline
Alright, you've got your budget written out and you know what your priorities are. You know that you want to do the more important things first and leave the low-priority things for down the road, but how do you organize things into a wedding planning timeline? Well, before you can answer that question, we have to point out that some things may start lower on the priority list but work their way up as time passes. This could be something like making your guest list or choosing your wedding cake.
Just as some priorities don't change from wedding to wedding, some things always happen at the same stage of wedding planning. You will always want to send out save-the-dates and invitations during the same phase of the wedding planning timeline. It is best to break the stages into two to three-month blocks and think about what you want to accomplish in each phase, considering that your priority list for completing a particular task will vary with the amount of effort you wish to invest. If you want to put a lot of detail into a specific task, it may be worth breaking that task down so you can approach it as part of a multi-phase process with many smaller goals to achieve throughout the completion of the task.
Using a Wedding Checklist to Track Every Detail
Of course, this is quite a bit of information to keep track of, and any one of these many details can easily fall through the cracks. If any important tasks as left undone accidentally, this will contribute to the pressure surrounding your planning process. One of the most tried and true tools for creating your own wedding checklist is the good old spreadsheet. There are plenty of spreadsheet apps that you can use (e. G. Excel, Google Sheets), but ultimately, what matters is that you are using a platform you are comfortable with.
Then comes the question of how to structure a wedding checklist. There are many details to consider when trying to keep up with all the tasks involved in planning a wedding. To begin organizing all the things cluttering your plate, start by listing all the tasks you need to accomplish throughout the wedding planning process. Next, write down an estimate of how much time you expect each task to take. Then leave space to record the amount of time you have spent on that task, as well as space to track your progress. This will help you manage your time and show you when something is taking longer than you originally thought. Also, think about checking your financial expenditure on each task, as this will help you keep track of how well you are adhering to your budget.
At Camp Hosea, we want our couples to enjoy the wedding planning process and be fully present on their special day. We hope these tips have been helpful for you, but if you need more assistance, our wedding coordinating team is ready to support you at every step of your Camp Hosea wedding planning journey. If you'd like to learn more about who we are or schedule a tour of our venue, please reach out to us via our Contact Us page. We look forward to meeting you!
