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Woo Hoo…YOUR ENGAGED! Bling Bling you’ve got the ring and you are starry eyed in love and moving towards being Mr and Mrs (or Mrs & Mrs/Mr & Mr)…but where do you even start to plan for the biggest day of your life so far?
There will be so many elements to think about for your Dream Wedding, so many details to decide on and tasks to get done - it can seem a bit daunting and even overwhelming.
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time….having the luxury of time to plan can ease things and let you chunk your tasks into a month by month schedule to get to you the church (or wherever???) on time! This makes the journey much less stressful, easily doable and much more fun and enjoyable!
Many couples work on about 12 -14 months from their engagement to their wedding date - but this rule of thumb is just guide not hard and fast - some couples get married in a whirlwind of a few weeks or months, and others stretch it out a lot further allowing time to save for the extravaganza they dream of. There’s no right or wrong, only what’s right for you!
The schedule we will be sharing with you is based on that 12-14 month timeframe but you can obviously just condense it or extend it out to suit yourself. (Eg if you are planning to get married in just 6 months, just group the first half of the tasks scheduled of months 14-6 into that first month to be completed and that will bring the complete schedule in line for you the rest of the way!). Happy Planning!
Now's the time to sit down and have an honest heart-to-heart with your fiancé. 5 Simple Steps to Start Planning Your Dream Wedding The feel and style of your wedding needs to be a mutual decision between you two - it’s your day! Ask yourselves -What’s important to you and why? What do you value? These are the foundations that will help you to build a vision of what your “Dream Wedding” would look like and who will be on the Guest List which have a huge influence on your decisions and choices in other essential things like the venue! You need to work out your non-negotiable elements, what would be nice to have, and what you could do without if you had to cut thing back.
5 Ways to Budget for Your Wedding Crunch the numbers to work out a realistic budget (or savings plan) you can afford or are prepared to pay. You might need to do some research by Googling or attending Wedding Expos or Open Days to get information and ideas from vendors you like - but as a rough guide the average Australian Wedding is around $35,0000! The most expensive item is usually the reception including venue hire, catering and alcohol! Next is generally your photography and videography but can also be your honey moon - if you’re planning this as part of your wedding budget.
A Budget Spreadsheet Australian Wedding Budget Planner helps you allocate what you initially think each element of your wedding will cost and then make adjustments as your planning progresses - the numbers WILL change - so it’s smart to know what you are prepared to cut back on and what you are not. This is also the time to have a look over a “Wedding Planning Checklist” of what most people include in a wedding - so you don’t miss out any important things you didn’t even know about and decide that you want.
It’s totally okay to organise your wedding yourself, or with the help of family and friends, but you might want to consider employing the talents of a professional Wedding Planner. There are pros and cons to both approaches, the first will give you total control and independence but can also be a lot of work and stress (although purchasing a Wedding Planner Book helps). The second can be expensive and often lock you in to their network of suppliers and vendors - which can be a good or a bad thing, but ultimately you wont really know the quality of what you are getting when it’s being organised by someone else - in some cases you wont even get to see or meet the people involved beforehand - and this is an essential thing for your photographer and videographer. You want someone you trust and connect with, who is as invested in you and your wedding day as much you are, not someone you haven’t even met, who is just going to turn up on the day and wing it, then download their camera, shove a preset over it and put it up as an online gallery for you to download and then try to figure out what to do with! Your wedding memories deserve much better than that! For this reason some Wedding Planners will let you remove certain aspects from them for you to organise yourself - so check first!