From the moment you’re engaged, your relationship becomes between you, your partner and a lot of family and friends. I thought I was prepared for this, but I was not. The only thing everyone kept telling me to prepare for was fighting a lot with my partner and our relationship falling apart because of the stress of wedding planning, which was the one thing that didn’t happen.
leave your expectations at the door
As someone who has been a bridesmaid ten times, you would think I would have known to do this. The first thing I had to give up was my ideal venue. Before I got engaged, I imagined renting out a restaurant and covering it with flowers and having only 300 guests. I had talked about this idea with my family before and everyone was super onboard…until I got engaged. Then, everyone looked at me like it was a ridiculous idea until it started to seem ridiculous to me too. Luckily, My amazing partner, and my dear friend planned a surprise party for me the next week that was as close to my ideal wedding plans as possible. *tears of gratitude*
my gorgeous engagement cake
The cost of everything aka wedding tax
In theory, everyone knows that weddings are expensive. Everyone knows that everything costs more. I still wasn’t prepared for it. The first shock was venues- mate. When I say Pry you say See- Pri-cey.
In my first meeting with a potential decorator, she asked me what my budget was and laughed when I gave an answer.
The first reception dress vendor I went to was trying to charge half of a million for the FABRIC. Not the work o- the actual like 3 yards or so of dirty fabric that she pulled from a cupboard.
Ole ni everybody
The manager of the hall misrepresented herself as the owner and overcharged us by almost double. I only found out after the wedding.
The expectation of being invited
There were people that don’t even follow me on Instagram, don’t have my number and I’m 100 percent sure have never read a single word of this blog that I’ve had for like 5 years, that expected to be invited to my wedding. Now my wedding wasn’t an invite only thing, people could have turned up if they wanted etc but seriously, a wedding isn’t a free turn up (at least it shouldn’t be), don’t be awkward and expect invites from people that you know you don’t care about in real life.
The way your brain convinces you into thinking everything makes sense
A pricey hotel room, an expensive car rental, the cost of slippers for guests- for some reason, everything makes sense when you’re in that wedding haze. That’s why it’s important to know beforehand what your absolute nos are because if you don’t decide beforehand, you will end up overspending on things you don’t care about. And don’t think you won’t regret it- post wedding spending regret is very real.
Tips I would recommend and things I would do differently
1. The DJ is the absolute most important part of your day. Do not pick someone you haven’t heard play a full set before, seriously. I had heard my dj at two weddings before I booked him, so I was sure he was going to be fire. If you have everything sorted and your dj isn’t great, the vibes will be dead.
2. Give your MC clear instructions about what you want to do- my MC had crystal clear instructions from the planner and he was appropriate and almost abrupt, which was what we wanted. The reception was very quick and I enjoyed that. Think about the wedding from a guest perspective, most people can’t even hear what’s going on on stage, so making it long is just dead.
3. Hire multiple food vendors to start at different times- I think this was a big key in everyone having food throughout the day. We also made vendor and driver food packs because realistically, you can’t have people working all day and not make arrangements to feed them. My worst nightmare was random guests having to know someone to get food, I’ve been in those situations and it’s not nice.
We had a main caterer that we could trust to feed everyone and then many many many many smaller caterers with food to feed numbers ranging from 100-300 people. We also had bowls of fruit on every table as the centre pieces and boxes of local snacks on each place setting. Basically, there was no chance of going hungry at the wedding. I think at some weddings where you don’t get food, it can seem like it’s because of a lack of food or planning, but most times, it’s because of poor management of food vendors on the day, which brings me to my next point.
4. The on the day co-ordinator is one of the most important people in the wedding. There’s a difference between wedding planning and wedding co-ordination and I feel like not enough people know that. It’s a shame to spend so much money and time making sure everything is great and then your guests having a poor experience and here’s the thing, you probably won’t ever know, sadly. Your experience as the couple is far removed from people’s experiences as guests. Vet the co-ordinator really really carefully, honestly. I wish I could recommend mine but she came out of retirement to plan and co-rodinate as a favour to my mum and isn’t in the business anymore.
pre wedding make-up trial
5. If there are souvenirs that you only want specific people to get (like I made slippers with shoe bags for people to put their shoes in for young guests), include a tag to receive that as part of your access cards. I was bummed that the slippers kept going to people I didn’t intend for them to go to (yes, big auntie, I know you like slippers and shoe bags, but you’re not dancing).
6. Things are bound to go wrong, take it in your stride and enjoy your day. Ask any of our guests and they’ll tell you I was the happiest bride, because the day only happens once and I could not be bothered for anything to upset me. I had fun with my friends, ignored wardrobe mis-haps and changed into slippers at like 5pm. I didn’t worry about my husband or family, I focused on myself and had a great time. Luckily, most people had a great time too.
I’m sure I’m missing out so much, but I’m tired. Drop a comment if you have any questions or vendor recommendations and message me if you want to ask something more private. Also let me know your own planning experience(s)!