3 Pieces of Advice You Need to Hear Before Planning Your Wedding

Wedding planning can be crazy stressful. Sometimes it’s hard to believe that it can take a year to plan for a single day, but it’s true. When my fiancé and I were planning our wedding, it honestly felt like a full time job (a very fun job, but man it took a lot of time!) I was fortunate enough (and still am) to have been surrounded by amazing people who helped me pull the wedding off. I wanted to share with you brides-to-be some of the most important pieces of advice I received before I planned my wedding.

1. You’re going to offend someone in the planning process

Unfortunately, it always happens. Thankfully someone told me this when I got engaged, and it enabled me to plan my wedding without losing sleep at night because of whom I might offend. Maybe you can’t invite everyone you wanted to because you don’t have the budget for a big wedding. Or maybe you decided to do a small bridal party because you only wanted family to be a part of it. If you have a friend who’s a wedding vendor, they may be upset you didn’t hire them. Because weddings encompass so many facets, it’s impossible to not upset somebody. As the bride, your opinion is the most important. However, your opinion is not the only opinion that matters. While I believe that you should plan the wedding that you want, even if that may offend someone, you need to be gracious. A gracious bride is the most radiant bride. However, when you know that you may offend a family member, a friend, or someone on your future spouses’ side, it gives you the liberty to make a decision and not stress about it. You may owe someone an explanation, but if you’re honest, they will most likely understand.

2. Something will go wrong on the wedding day

I cannot stress this one enough. This is another piece of advice that will free your mind from stress on the wedding day. Brides usually want their wedding day to be perfect- right? I know I did! When you understand that something will go wrong on your wedding day, you will be able to focus on what’s important and shrug off the problems that may arise. On my wedding day, a couple different things went wrong. I was really late getting ready and the pictures we were supposed to take before the ceremony got pushed back to after the ceremony. My fiancé and I had planned the day so that we wouldn’t have to take any pictures after the ceremony; for some reason, we had our minds set on going straight from the ceremony to the reception. However, that didn’t happen. We had to take 30 minutes after the ceremony to finish pictures we didn’t get pre-ceremony. While we were taking pictures, my father-in-law went up to the reception, prayed for the food, and the reception started without us. Compared to what I was expecting though, this problem was pretty trivial (I knew something would go wrong, so I figured with my luck there would be a huge snow storm in the sunny Bay Area and no one would make it to the venue). I could give a couple more examples, but I’m sure you get the picture by now. When you prepare for something to go wrong, you’ll be better equipped to deal with the problems that arise. And most likely, you’ll be relieved that something of greater magnitude did not go wrong. The success of your wedding is not measured by how much fun your guests had or how beautiful the decorations looked. If you leave as a married couple, your wedding was successful. So keep the main thing the main thing; don’t stress about the stuff that goes wrong and enjoy getting married.

3. You have to make time to “soak it in”

I’m sure you’ve heard this before, but it’s worth repeating: your wedding day will fly by. There isn’t a lot of time to stop and truly appreciate everything that is happening. There are a couple of ways to make sure you have some spare moments to stop and soak it all in. First of all, make sure you allow yourself more than enough time to get ready. Let me say this- getting ready always takes longer than you anticipate. It’s a good idea to leave up to an hour of “just in case” time; it also allows you to have downtime with your girls before the festivities begin. Although there are several reasons I recommend doing a first look, one is that the alone time allows you to savor the moment before the craziness really begins. After I’m done shooting the bride and groom’s portraits, I like to walk away and leave them alone for a couple of minutes. Even if your photographer doesn’t suggest this, I would ask him or her to give you a couple minutes of privacy. You can breathe together, pray together, hold each other, and just let time stand still for a couple of moments.

 

I’m so grateful that I heard these 3 pieces of advice before planning my wedding. As you plan yours, I hope this information blesses you and helps you have an even more magical day.

 

XO

Julia