planning wedding

You are so excited about planning a wedding! You whip out a wedding checklist in seconds. It is fun and a whole new experience, but there are downsides. Find out!

Planning a wedding within the right wedding planning timeline, although will save you hassles, is as interesting as it’s tasking. But we will tell you for free that in the course of planning, there are times you’d want to curl up and cry. This is because it is either you do not know where to start when planning a wedding or you hit a gridlock on the way.

If you are a bride to be, lucky you!! But if you got married already, all the better, because you will save someone out there by referring them to this post. Now, let’s show you how to plan a wedding and all the associated downsides to prepare for.

Your Wedding Is Not Your Wedding

You don’t know where to start when planning a wedding? This has got nothing with the fact that your own wedding is actually not your wedding. You cannot believe it? The truth is that everybody suddenly wants to become important. If you are not careful, they will take over your wedding and give you a bad day or call you ungrateful if you resist.

Talk about that cousin who does horrible makeup, but insists she wants to do your wedding makeup. That friend who doesn’t know how to close a weave well, but wants to style your hair for the wedding. We also have fathers, sisters, mothers, great aunts who say she has your gown sewn already.

You feel like dropping yet? Well, you either take a stand or be an ingrate. Give in, become an onlooker and perhaps have the worst day of your life. You can also stand somewhere in between.

In hindsight, you would feel honored and valued, because these people only want to be a part of your day. Although, everything they offer may not have been what you want. But you will discover that those gestures came from a place of love.

Weddings Cost an Arm and a Leg

Exhausted Asian couple sitting at spacious restaurant and thinking over details of their future wedding day

Lesson 1 on everything you need to know about planning a wedding is…… Planning a wedding is a task and the wedding itself cost a kings’ ransom! Do not be in veneration by the wedding glamour coated with all the frills on the web. The bills could give you palpitations, especially if sponsors begin to rethink their decisions.

Now, it is okay not to have a wedding. Two of you can take off to the City Hall or elope to Vegas and have it all done in 20 minutes. No need for a reception, some good wine for the two of you and a good sleep is enough. You can also decide to have a full wedding plus all festivities involved. At the end of the day, it is the two of you, and your wedding day is your memory to keep.

An average wedding costs about $22,000 and you will find DIY very appealing at some point. The good thing about this is that, whatever you DIY, becomes personal to you. That is a way for you to leave your touch on your wedding.

Weddings are expensive and you can choose to either have them or not. But whichever choice you make, looking back, you’d be glad you did.

Time Is Not Your Friend

There is so much joy in your heart on the day of your engagement. You can’t get over the fact that you will soon be in conjugal bliss to the love of your life. It is okay to savor all that because, in a matter of minutes, you will hit the ground running.

Time becomes your biggest foe and does not crawl anymore. In a matter of minutes, a month is gone and you still don’t know where to start from. You are still drafting the guest list, making that wedding checklist or still drawing up your wedding budget.

It is wise to kick off plans as soon as your engagement happens. Book a caterer, check out those venues, book the photographers and check out your décor. Do your dress shopping and arrange your cake tasting date. It is not too early to start.

This is because the best of wedding vendors/planners have a full calendar for the whole year sometimes. In other to make sure you don’t miss out on your choice vendors, plan early. This will also save you the rush and nervous breakdown. You would also have enough time to rest and be in good shape to rock your wedding day.

Tough Guest List

A wedding is a time to bring both nuclear and extended family, friends, acquaintances, and colleagues together. But how many people do you want to bring together? How many people can your budget cater for?  Who gets to come and who doesn’t? How do I politely tell Aunt Jane that she isn’t invited to my wedding? These are questions that no one ever told you would pop up.

From the moment your mom hears you set a wedding date, she’s mailing her list of 150 guests to you. She mails them with an instruction that all of them are important as they helped her at one time or the other. (Maybe mama should have another wedding and invite all of them? Sounds like a good idea!)

Dear nephew calls that he wants to bring his girlfriend along who is bringing her cat too (whoa!). Your fiancé sends his list of 89 friends from college, bar, work, and games. His mother does same and that dramatic aunt too. The list is looking 700 total, but you can handle only 250.

You are planning your own day, but thinking of how not to offend another person. Nobody ever told you these right? Now you know. Wedding planning is hard work!

Bridezilla Moments

No, I’m as cool as a cucumber and I handle situations with a clear head and calm demeanor… All that goes out the window during wedding planning. Everything gets to you because everything has to be perfect. You want your day the way you dreamt it in your head, so any slight fault and you go bonkers.

You begin to binge on Pinterest and other fashion bibles which you do not need. You go gown shopping and you don’t even know what to choose, because they are all beautiful. You will eventually choose one and go home with a satisfied smile. You will wake up hysterical in one week because you noticed a roll on your stomach and cannot fit into your gown anymore.

Then you call your girls and they say they are yet to go in for fittings– you want to scream! Your floral vendor says she has maroon flowers instead of the orange color you wanted– someone will pay!

These and many more are moments you may experience as you plan your wedding. You want to get involved in everything, but we advise you to relax. Stay calm and solve every issue as they come, with grace. It will all be over pretty soon.

Assumptions

While you plan towards your wedding, we advise that your psyche becomes a brick wall. Allow nothing, not even insensitive insinuations and assumptions get to you. At this point, everyone becomes seers, well-wishers and sometimes insensitive. They believe you can afford to splurge on a thousand guests because you and your fiancé have nine to five jobs.

They see a glow and believe you are glowing, even when you are dying under the weight of planning the wedding. You have to keep up a happy face most of the time, even when you want to cry and scream.

Some go to the extent of asking when you both will start having babies and how many. They don’t think about the fact that both of you may want to wait or not have kids at all. If you will still be staying in your old house or even dropping hints that the girl your man is talking to, is his ex. News flash– she is his niece!!

How Much Details?

The bride counts the money. Wedding expenses. Bride with a piggy bank

Too many, we assure you! This is the part where we give all event vendors and wedding planner the mighty thumbs up!! There are so many things to remember when planning a wedding and they forget nothing! Wedding planning is actually a professional skill that only the bold can handle. You may need to get one.

Coordinating people from around the country or the world if it is a destination wedding is no small feat. We are talking of at least, 70 persons in diverse fields with you at the center handling and still stay calm. If you as a bride decides to plan your wedding by yourself, we will be having many bridezilla moments– even if you are a professional wedding planner. This is because, it is your wedding, so the Pandora box of emotions will be open.

You don’t see it from the planner’s perspective anymore but as a bride. Checking on the cake, food, DJ, photography, décor and lots more will leave you out of breath. Balancing wedding running around, working and taking care of yourself leading up to your wedding will be a fast crazy ride. There are so many details. We guess nobody told you.

The bright side is that you will look back with a smile at how resilient you were and how much experience you gained.

Unsolicited Advice

From the minute you save the date invite goes out, every person, family or foe becomes a beacon of wisdom. You will be getting unsolicited advice from left, right, and center which could make or ruin your day. We advise that you become a sieve in this period.

Aunties will say, this is the way we did it in our time or this is the right way to do it. Moms will say, you have to follow tradition, it has been so for the past sixty years. Some will go ahead to start advising you about your own marriage. How you shouldn’t trust, how stuff happened to them which you should learn from.

This period, you would learn and unlearn, discover things you never knew and get confused. If you are not careful, your whole brain will scurry and you may make lots of mistakes. You will find out that you are obeying a hundred people and may lose yourself in the process.

The solution is to do you! Listen and thank them for every advice. Weigh them thoroughly and cut across on only what you feel comfortable and right about. There are some pieces of advice you shouldn’t even consider. Discard! Learn to use your head and do only you. It is your day.

Insatiable People

Everything you do as for your wedding, do it for your own comfort and happiness. This is because you can never satisfy everyone. What no one ever told you is that you will get disappointed by people who you thought had your back.

Throughout the whole wedding planning process, many people will give excuses why they cannot help. People will use work, health issues, family emergencies and more as excuses. You will run most of your planning by yourself, except you engage a wedding planner.

No one helps, no one cares, but they will come up with a lot of faults at your wedding. You will hear things like I know they can afford a bigger cake; what kind of low budget wedding is this. She didn’t even care to ask us what we’d eat, no arrangements for people on a diet? See the hall, I thought they could do better. She sent me an invite after she had sent everyone else, maybe I’m an afterthought and so on.

These are things that could break you, but wear an emotional shield! Have it in mind that humans are insatiable and pay no heed to their nonsense.

Last, Time To Exhale!

All through the process of planning your wedding and ticking off items on your wedding checklist, your blood pressure could rise. Asides planning, you are thinking of so many other things. “I can’t handle this stress, it’s too much”, do I want to do this? Am I very sure I’d be happy with him? What does the future hold?  And many more things that could pop up on your mind.

Your wedding day comes, you step into your dream gown and walk down the aisle. The minute your eyes meet, every stress, every burden, every fear melts away. Your heart fills with only joy, safety, love, happiness, and calm. You know immediately that this is where you want to be and it’s all worth it.

You get into the spirit of the party and have the greatest fun you have ever had. You look around with pride and say you did it! This is the happy ending every bride wants to have and you deserve it! From there, it becomes a jolly ride going forward, because you now have someone to share all your burdens with. You go on to have a great honeymoon and then settle into the married life, taking the experience of a lifetime with you!

If you are planning a wedding and you read up to this point, then you are ready with everything you need to know about planning a wedding. You will find out the good, the bad and the ugly sides of wedding planning. You will discover things that no one will ever tell you.

This is not a post to discourage or scare you, but to keep you prepared for the worst. Get into the wedding planning spirit with all your faculties intact, a resilient spirit and pull off the wedding of your dreams!

Author Bio:

Emily Gauthier is a SEO-obsessed writer from WeddingForward, specializing in wedding planning timeline and expert in wedding inspiration.