Congratulations on your engagement. The biggest question is what do I do next?
The first step is to determine your budget, who will pay for your wedding, and how. Once that minefield has been crossed and you know who much you have to work with, you should start formulating a plan and shopping for vendors as soon as you can.
HINT: There are only so many Saturdays in a year and Saturday is still the most sought after day when people plan their wedding. Fridays and Sundays have become more and more acceptable days for a wedding service with Sunday being second in line.
For a Sunday wedding you can still have a rehearsal but since rehearsals usually happen the day before the wedding – which in this case would be a Saturday and likely to be booked for a wedding – you would have to schedule the rehearsal earlier in the day, which isn’t so bad. It just gives you more time between the rehearsal and the rehearsal dinner. Sometimes Sunday weddings will have a Friday rehearsal but it is still often earlier in the day since Fridays afternoons are the rehearsal times for Saturday afternoon weddings.
Friday weddings are most likely to be less formal affairs since they are the least likely day a venue will be available because of rehearsals for Saturday and Sunday weddings. Most Friday weddings are not at traditional venues and often resemble elopements more than weddings. They don’t usually have rehearsals because people often have to travel to be in weddings and can’t afford to ask off for two days to make a Thursday rehearsal AND pay for a bridesmaid dress.
The important thing to remember is to BOOK EARLY! Many of my weddings will book a year or more in advance, especially the Valentines Day engagements that want to marry during spring or summer of the following year.
Here’s why. People look ahead on the calendar to see where the holidays fall. For example, many people don’t want to get married on Mother’s Day weekend or Father’s Day weekend or Easter weekend, etc. And they won’t want to get married at Halloween or Thanksgiving or in the uncomfortable colder months. That starts to narrow the field of good Saturdays that will be comfortable and convenient for everybody to attend.
And the quality vendors get booked first. Couples seeking that top-shelf wedding will snatch up the most talented photographers and the most beautiful flower arrangers just by looking at their work. Similarly, they will research and find the best coordinator and musician they can afford.
As a practical matter, perhaps one of the most important decisions you will make is whether or not to have a wedding coordinator – and if so, who will it be? It depends on how large your wedding will be; and how busy you are with your life and/or career. A good idea is to ask other people about their wedding experience. There’s no shortage of married people around to ask.
If you decide you want to have a coordinator you may want to wait to look for the other vendors until you can look at the ones recommended by her. If she is experienced she will already know some of the better vendors around. That saves you a lot of legwork.
Some people will make the choice of vendors simply all about money. Others with more liberal budgets will base their decisions on intangibles like personality and bedside manner. My best advice is to see what other people have to say about any particular vendor and go with the one that is experienced but not jaded even if you have to bend your budge a little. The axiom that you get what you pay for is never truer than in the wedding industry. A team of top-shelf vendors can help make a wedding a joyful experience.
These people will be your co-workers for this entire project and unless you have a coordinator you will have to work with them to personally convey your wishes.
The ones with experience will bring up issues you never thought of before. If they are new to the game they will not know all the little ins and outs that you only learn by doing it again and again and seeing for yourself the many little things that can go wrong. After all, no two weddings are alike. If you can afford a coordinator, they can help streamline the whole affair by taking the pressure off of you to find the right vendors and ask the right questions.
Here’s the kicker: the most comfortable weddings – from the bride and groom’s perspective – are the weddings where they do as much of the work as they can before their wedding day so they can just cruise through it and relax as much as possible. When you know you’ve done their best you can in this project that is probably the first you will do together as a team, you will be off to a good start as a married couple.
Perhaps the greatest truism I have learned in over sixteen years of being a wedding minister is there is no end to the variations in the way people think about weddings, so be willing to express yourself. Your wedding will be a reflection of who you are as a couple so you should work together to make it happen.
-Rev. Sam
