After the excitement of the engagement party, comes the daunting task of the wedding planning. You may decide not to get married for a year or more yet, but you know that you should start your wedding planning as early as possible if you are to have the wedding of your dreams.
But where do you start? You know there is a lot to discuss, decisions to be made & details to plan, but you are lost as to what comes first. It is likely that your first port of call in this situation will the internet & one of the many wedding planning websites.
These sites offer a wealth of advice & ideas, along with ready-made wedding checklists to help make your wedding planning easier. But are these checklists really any good? How useful are they & can you use them without making a lot of significant changes & additions? Would it be better for you to start from scratch & write you’re own?
You will probably come up with a whole host of different answers to these questions, especially if your lives are already busy & you don’t have the time to think about all the finer details of a wedding. It can be tempting to print off a detailed wedding checklist from one of these sites & follow it to the letter, but there is a risk that you may find yourself carrying out a lot of needless tasks that have no relevance to your wedding, resulting in a lot of wasted time & effort.
However, you should have a wedding planning checklist. But I would recommend it is one that is drawn up between yourselves with some input from the ready-made versions online. Your wedding is a personal event in your lives & should reflect your tastes, personalities & style. It should be everything that you want it to be & drawing up your own checklist will be the only way to make sure you achieve this. Without a checklist, you will find yourself under extreme stress & extremely disorganized!
Set up a spreadsheet on your home computer & write a list of everything you want for the wedding, from the ceremony venue to the wedding favors. Include column headings for address, contact details, prices & a column where you can tick it off once it is finalized. When you think you have listed everything, rearrange that list in order of priority. This is where a ready-made checklist can come in handy as they will already be listed in order of priority, so you can easily see what needs to be tackled first.
Include some notes about your wedding theme, colors & style. Note down your preferred wedding date & type of venue for your ceremony & reception.
After you have finished prioritizing your checklist you will need to work out your wedding budget. When you have done this you may need to go back through your checklist & modify any items that you cannot afford within your budget.
It may take some time to complete, but drawing your own wedding checklist will be an invaluable tool to you as you complete your wedding planning. Take a copy with you whenever you meet with potential vendors & service providers &, of course, make sure you update it regularly.
