photo credit: Emily at EME Photography
Today is our five year wedding anniversary! I loved planning our wedding! It was so much fun. Although not an expert, I thought it would be fun to share five tips for planning a wedding of your own on our fifth year of marriage.
1. Hire a wedding planner. Hiring our wedding planner was one of the best things we spent money on. She was worth every penny we paid her! Our wedding planner did so much to make sure every detail was perfect. Even if we only had her the day of the wedding, we both said she was worth her fee. I recommend hiring a wedding planner who passes on vendor discounts to her couples. It is hard to find, but SO worth it if you can find one and love her work! If you think you can’t afford a wedding planner but find one who passes discounts to her bride, you will find you save more than her fee; at least we did.
2. Decide early on your most important elements. In the event you don’t have an unlimited budget, decide early on what you want to prioritize and where to spend more of your budget. For us, we chose things that we would have forever, photos, and what would be photographed most frequently, flowers, dress, etc.
3. Don’t try on a dress more expensive than what you are willing to spend. Stop looking when you’ve found ‘the dress’. If you try on a dress out of your budget, without fail, that will be the dress you fall in love with. Save yourself the heartbreak and don’t try it on in the first place. When I found and purchased the dress, I stopped looking at dresses altogether. I didn’t watch Say Yes to the Dress on TV, skipped over the dress section in bridal magazines, etc. I tried as much as possible to avoid seeing something I might like better.
4. Ask potential photographers to see a complete wedding album, not just a best of portfolio. You may find someone whose work you love when you see only a single element or two but realize their whole wedding portfolio doesn’t quite stand up. Ask to see full albums up front, if they won’t show it, move on. There are no d0-overs, so you need to get it right. Luckily for us, I knew our photographer and have always admired her work. I’ve had friends who have used her and have seen multiple weddings she has done. Hiring her was an easy choice.
5. Try not to be a bridezilla and show gratitude to those who have helped make the day special. We all have our moments. I had mine at our rehearsal. In general, try to enjoy the experience, it goes by fast. We had a small wedding, our vendors were amazing and I would use or recommend every single one again. At our reception, I offered all of them cake and cookies (we had a cookie bar as favors) and they were genuinely appreciative of the gesture. Little things go a long way with your vendors; be sure to thank them.
There you go, my five tips for planning a great wedding! Now if you’ll excuse me, I am off to pick up our anniversary cake from Piece of Cake Desserts! You can see a few more wedding and trash the dress pictures here.
If you are in the Phoenix area and would like a list of our vendors, send me an email, I would be happy to share!
This post is not sponsored or affiliated with any company mentioned.
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