10 Wedding Planning Things You Need To Know

It can be a lot of fun to plan your entire wedding, or just parts and pieces. But DIY-ing your entire celebration also has some potential pitfalls that every bride and groom should be aware of so that they don’t end up with problems.

If you plan ahead, and if you assign every task that needs to be accomplished on your wedding day to someone reliable, things are going to go much more smoothly.

Here, 10 things you need to know:

1. Plan to have everything you need to create completed at least a month before the wedding. If you wait til the last minute, you will be in trouble – the last month is when all the chaos will hit and you won’t be able to handle the time-sucking crafting projects.

2. Don’t plan to do anything yourself on your wedding day – deligate all the tasks to other people you can trust. On the day of the wedding you’ll be busy getting beautiful. Make sure you’ve assigned everything to your friends and family (or hired staff) who are assisting you. And confirm it again a week ahead and the day before the wedding. Put it all in writing with copies to each person so everyone is on the same page (pun intended).

3. Have a bossy friend assigned to handle everything on your wedding day. Someone has to be the bad guy :-), and we all have a friend to likes to take charge, let them do what they do best. You can’t be the one sending the bridesmaids down the aisle, or searching for a lost bouquet while supervising the table decorations.

4. Don’t take on the responsibility of picking up out-of-town guests at the airport. Again DELEGATE, if not you’ll end up spending the days before your wedding playing chauffer.

5. Write your wedding schedule and confirm it with all of your vendors a month before your wedding so you have plenty of time to iron out the bugs before the big day. Reconfirm it two weeks out. Share all of the contact information for each vendor with all of them so they can co-ordinate and work out kinks.

6. Find out well ahead of time what you need to do to fulfill the marriage license requirements and where to go to get them. There nothing like having a wedding, but not being able to actually get the paperwork done until AFTER the ceremony.

7. Make your own transportation arrangements for the wedding day. Don’t count on anybody else to get you to your hair appointments — and the church — on time. If a friend is driving, make sure it’s someone incredibly reliable and knows their way around the city. PLAN the days routes and keep in mind special =events going on in the city the day of. Nothing like trying to get to the Statehouse or a hotel downtown and finding out theres a marathon blocking all the streets.

8. If you’re doing your own centerpieces, finish them as far ahead as possible. Flowers can be done up to two days ahead if they’re fresh and kept in a refrigerated environment. You don’t need to pull an all-nighter making bouquets after your rehearsal dinner. Again DELEGATE someone else to do this.

9. Order lunch to be delivered for your bridal party in advance — you won’t think about it on your wedding day because you’ll likely be too nervous to be hungry. But bridesmaids get grumpy (and intoxicated) if you forget to provide food for them when you’re together all day getting ready.

10. Make sure you have a cleanup/teardown crew pre-assigned to handle whatever your venue requires. You’ll also need help taking the gifts home — possibly the space of several cars. Don’t wait til the last minute to deal with this or the bride and groom may end up spending their wedding night dealing with trash rather than romance.