No idea what kind of wedding i want

Your photos are forever. Your wedding is one day, but these photos are your keepsake for the rest of your life. Invest in your photographer!! For us, having a photographer that aligned with our vision was one of the most important and crucial decisions we made other than our venue. We booked these NYC vendors as our venue was a la cart and did not come with vendors except for the caterer. It gave us the freedom to choose vendors that reflected our own style, and their catering company is sustainable, delicious, environmentally friendly, and has the coolest staff!!

This was ALL exactly what we wanted! You can read about my experience wedding dress shopping here! Are you wearing a wedding dress? You can also order a dress off the rack from a department store or local boutique if they have it in your size. Are you wearing a pantsuit? Or slacks and a button down? Or a short dress? Or a rainbow unicorn costume? I hope this was helpful as you begin your wedding planning journey! Remember to breathe and take each day, day by day.

I thought I had to do everything all in one sitting and drove myself nuts! Take a deep breathe, it will all get done and it will be beautiful as it will be your own. Your destination could be New York or Vegas, Clare or Donegal, but wherever you are, your wedding can still have all the style, personality and attention to detail of a person party. An adventurous but ultimately low-key couple who are happy to forgo the fuss and fanfare, and have got the confidence to break from tradition.

An elopement is a great option for thrifty couples, as they tend to cost a fraction of the price of a wedding with a large guest list, but, of course, this depends on how extravagant you plan on being! You'll need to settle on a location, but make sure to research the legal requirements before you get carried away. An elopement in Paris, for example, sounds dreamy, but getting legally wed in France is extremely tricky for two non-residents. Read our dos and don'ts for planning an elopement and wedding abroad guides to help you get started.

The dress code sets the mood - this is a glamorous and glittering affair, but it can be lots of fun too! The couple who appreciates the finer things in life , although not necessarily in their everyday lives! You may be happy with lunch in the local pub on your birthday, but have always dreamed of owning a designer wedding gown and having your first dance to a ten-piece jazz band, and now is your chance!

Whatever your motivations, you want an extravagant affair and are happy to foot the sizeable! Let's face it - you probably already have your dream venue in mind, so now's the time to contact them and make an appointment, while pricing up a few alternatives. Be sure to warn your guests early if you're having a strict dress code, so they have time to dig out their most glamorous glad rags.

Photo by Navyblur via One Fab Day. A chic, contemporary and somewhat unpredictable celebration in the heart of your favourite city, usually a multi-location affair with a stop-off in your favourite pub for a pint and a visit to a local landmark for some super cool wedding portraits! This one feels more like an extended night out than a traditional wedding, and tends to have a smaller guest list than a typical country affair.

If your chosen city is also your home town, this means an extra layer of convenience throughout the planning process, from first steps to the day-after brunch! Unfussy couples who want the comfort of getting hitched in their natural habitat or are looking for something simple, sophisticated and modern.

These couples will get a kick out of the idea of hailing a public bus to the ceremony or hitting up their favourite chipper for an edgy photo op. Nobody needs a program or useless party favour the has the bridge and grooms initials!

I also agree that the bouquet toss and garter throw are silly too. Great post you wrote dear. I absolutely loved every bit of it. By knowing How to Become A Wedding Planner people can get motivated and can make a smart way of income as part time or full time. Hi, just came across this website.

Its a brilliant illustration of how small to medium sized businesses can use Awards based marketing to get their companies recognised on the 1st page of Google.

Awards programmes offer many benefits to participants. After all they bring publicity and you can share the news of your win with your employees, clients, industry peers and target market as much as you like.

Additonally awards offer prestige and status, giving potential prospects peace of mind that they are working with a reputable company. There are many types of awards programmes, including those that host awards ceremonies and you pay per table , organisations that award only their members and you pay for membership and advertising and those that provide marketing materials.

The latter is a great way for those who are unsure about the benefits of using corporate awards programmes because generally nominees and winners do not have to pay a penny to be involved. Participants often receives online recognition, usually with a reach much greater than their own marketing efforts can deliver. Other free benefits can include the use of an announcement.

Most participants have the option to purchase additional marketing materials to further enhance their win, if they wish to, for use in social media campaigns, on their own website, email marketing campaigns or in customer newsletters.

Thank you for making it sound so possible. Just hearing people have low budget — happy weddings keeps me motivated on my goals! Thanks for the share. Thanks so much and i am having a look ahead to contact you. Will you kindly drop me a e-mail? Take from this list what you want! I am hoping my guests just want to share our special day with us! Yes, it is my wedding, I can do inexpensive alternatives and still have my guests not wish their party favor was a gun!

All the people in our lives will accept us because we tried to share our day with them, not because they need a dinner theater experience! Your negativity was not helpful. If you could just remove all the comments, it would make wedding planning a lot less stressful. Thanks again. Very nice article! Oh my goodness! Incredible article dude! Is there anyone else having similar RSS issues?

Anyone who knows the answer will you kindly respond? In this day and age, there are many ways to communicate with other people and even those who are on the opposite side of the globe. With the advancement of technology, avenues have been opened left and right to allow people to do more things than they have ever imagined. For the past decade the World Wide Web has developed into one of the most innovative ways to make life easier for everyone and open countless opportunities for more people.

The internet is a great place to meet new people, make new friends and connect with old ones as well. That is why we see many websites that are put up specifically to make communicating and interacting much easier.

One way of keeping in touch is done through chatting on the web. Several programs have been specifically made to suite such needs of people surfing the web. There are even those sites that are specifically customized for what the internet population is looking for. Ha ha ha ha ha!!!! Laughing myself silly over this article and the responses to it. Sort of Wedding in two weeks. Second hand dress, not doing a first dance cos it would just be cringe-worthy watching us staggering around the floor or a bouquet toss because I have spent so much on the flowers!!

I did spend a fortune on the invitations, the food, the booze and the DJ. Beautful invitations were our way of giving the finger to emails. I love to get an envelope, a real letter or card in my mailbox, and we thought our guests would appreciate that as well, and they did, so many commented not on how beautiful they were, but just on how exciting it was to get a big, satisfyingly fat envelope in the mailbox.

They also got instructions about recycling the cards. We have got small pots of locally grown honey and miniature dippers as favours, just with small tags saying thank you and the date of the wedding. The cake is enormous, but my brother-in-law to be baked two layers of it as a wedding gift to us. I am the runaway bride, been engaged four times but never made it down the aisle, so this will be a first!!

We are both involved in search and rescue, surf lifesaving and we have both served in the military, so we have made a charitable wedding register, instead of gifts we have no need for, we ask people to donate in our names to charities that support our work in those areas. Oh, and if you are so inclined, go to sheltered workshops or charities who make decorations for work experience for people less fortunate than you — if you are going to spend thousands, spend ethically I say.

We have a lot to thank our respective families for and this is one way of doing exactly that, by having a big party and sharing our love and happiness with them for the day. Enjoy enjoy enjoy, do whatever brings you the most pleasure and does the least harm to others and share some of that love around!!

Totally agree! Simple is best! I remember more about the wedding that were less fuss and just down to earth caring about their guests! With everything which appears to be developing throughout this subject material, your opinions tend to be relatively radical. On the other hand, I appologize, but I do not give credence to your entire strategy, all be it radical none the less. It seems to everybody that your comments are actually not totally rationalized and in fact you are generally your self not really fully certain of the assertion.

In any event I did enjoy looking at it. But to experience a good match you have to understand all the tricks which help you to play safe. Seventh level betting is begun with the player for whom as a result the greatest poker hands. I will amend my previous post to add though that your wedding need not be an extravagant affair. I skip attending when I can. They can be really sappy and embarrassing.

Also, not a churchy type so much of the God part is lost on me. Ceremony goes to the top of the list of things I wish were not part of the whole wedding celebration. Keep it to family only. Silliest article EVER! If you think your guests take no notice or care over the things you listed then perhaps you need new friends. Love the list too! What is really important : thank you! There is a lot of good info here. I do my research and bargain buy everything humanly possible. Planning my own wedding for this summer.

Dexin Floral has real touch flowers amazingly real! My biggest expense was venue and vendors… found a package deal for videographer, DJ and Photographer through ThePros. No one wants judgy asshats at their happy event. Or, keep your negativity to yourselves! Yay for helpful lists and weddings! This is beyond perfect!!! I am marrying my high school sweetheart after reconnecting many years later and I now feel at peace about planning my wedding to a man that has never left my heart.

Let the calm planning begin… : Thank you sooo much!! We had pretty basic flowers, arranged stunningly by the owner of the venue. He even set some in balls that hung from the ceiling — it looked like a fairy-tail! Instead of a guest book, we handed out blank cards, on which the guests wrote their messages. We had these inserted in the back our wedding photo-book, along with photos of the guests. Honestly — this is my favorite part of the photo-book! Instead of an over-priced cake, we had a pretty stack of boxes with artisanal chocolate truffles — these also doubled as guest favors.

We skipped the ceremony — only one short speech by my darling hubby, no toasts, no bouquet throwing, no cake cutting, no choreographed details. In fact, nothing at all was choreographed, and nothing was rehearsed.

That reduced the stress, because there was nothing to get wrong. The venue was basic but the chapel was gorgeous, the guest list small and the food delicious, and the evening was simply a celebration of our love and the start of our life together. And even now, 9 years later, guests still talk about how much they enjoyed our wedding.

If I could do it over again, the only thing I would change would be to spend less time with the photographer, and more with my guests. Love your suggestion list. Our son is marrying this summer. Would it be appropriate to send invitations via e-mail? This way guests could download to save the date or print if they wish a hard copy. No expense to order, print, postage, etc.

Overall, everyone had a wonderful time, the ceremony and reception were beautiful we made her arrangements and the bouquets , the food and drink were good and plentiful.

To the lady who feels the favors are required because she brought a gift, shame on you. As someone with alcoholics for in-laws, I made sure there was not a drop of booze at my wedding — a decade later, not a soul cares. Thumbs down. I was amazed that people are so rude, this is only a guideline and quite frankly I thought it was a great list.

My husband and are doing a renewal this year, since we eloped, we are going to have a formal ceremony now. Great ideas and IMO, very true. Wow, the different perspectives.

My husband officiated over many weddings over the years and I watched as very nice couples went into debt to create something that lasted at most 20 minutes. Please, please be wise in how you plan your wedding. Consider your cultural taboos and traditions. Make it nice but do not do what you think others expect. Do what you want. We all get wrapped up in doing what we think everyone expects. Several of the comments were spot on: this is about the couple beginning their lives together and having a special event to celebrate that.

Make it what you want, what you can afford and not what others expect. I just stopped in to tell you. Thank you for this article. You most definitely have made this blog into something special. Recently got engaged, and I already do not see the point of having programs or printed invitations when everyone has an email address. Plus it saves the earth so why not?! Why not use it to support a local soup kitchen as the first altruistic act as a married couple?!

We had a fabulous time planning it and an even better time once the day came. Most important is to remember to take the time to enjoy it. And tell the photographer to leave you alone for a while. It HAS received a lot of feedback. Times h a v e changed. How far in the future the couple chooses to marry is important, too. How much time will there be?

Time equals money and the amount of stress. There is a difference between excitement and stress. Hitting the lottery, between now and then, is the only thing that would make a difference. My future son-in-law values that his likes, dislikes and input are equally important. Every aspect to every wedding is different.

If they love you and accept you for who you are the other days of the year, why is impressing t h e m so important? Awesome advice. The biggest take away, here, was what was mentioned about invitations. Thank you for opening my eyes!!! Wow this list has generated a ton of comments. Great advice — I was actually trying to work out how to cull some names off our invite list and stumbled across this blog.

Gave it a read and think it is really solid advice. My fiancee was the one who wanted a wedding…I would have been fine eloping. Most of things fit perfectly into most of my wedding plans. Getting married at my parents house is a great, beautiful and inexpensive location! Reading this is definitely helping take some stress of me.

The guests will not be criticizing every part of the wedding! Great perspective. You can get so caught up in the detail you forget what the day is all about! I agree with this for the most part. While I feel like I splurged on my dress, no one really cares at the end of the day.

As my mom and I have been planning, we have been most concerned about music, food, and drinks because that is what makes or breaks your party. Guests care most about when to be there and how the cake tastes.

Invites end up in the trash anyway. As other people have said, this is not true for all weddings. I know I have not had all of these thoughts when attending a wedding.

What a wonderful article. Out of all the weddings I have been invited to all I remember is the ceremony, food and the dance!! I am for sure going to make Ben read this! He wants over the top invites!! No thanks! This is actually a spot-on article for me! Thanks for the reminder! We all do not need to be married to comment on this article.

The correct shoe to put ourselves in here is NOT the US the ones who are getting married but that of a guest. How does a guest view this? How do you, as a guest invited before to a wedding ceremony, view this?

Of course the details of the invitation are important, but do we need to splurge for the best invitation card? Going for the classic designs always does the trick.

The guests only need to know the date, time, venue and when to be there. And I am actually skipping wedding favours. I have thrown away most of the wedding favours that I have been given at the weddings that I have gone to including some chocolates because I do not eat them. I also do not like to sign wedding guestbooks. I think some attendees have the bad habit of just signing off their name which are not legible.

Bouquet Toss — Honestly… I know exactly how the girls waiting for the bouquet toss and who do not get the bouquet feel. So, I will skip this too.

The wedding is a celebration of something much bigger :. Totally agree with this — just trying to feed people well, let them have fun, and show them the love! This is pretty helpful- I agree with the dress.

We skipped on the wedding favors and a few other things and it was great. So true! My favorite part is watching the ceremony and watching the bride and groom interact through the night the food and drinks are a plus! Whatever makes that couple happy will leave everyone smiling. Very interesting article. I think it depends on the person and every person has a different opinion. I think the music and drinks are something that people will remember about your wedding!! I know that I always do!

I have to agree with all of this! Love this list. I too am not surprised by all the negative comments but as I plan my wedding ALL of these keep ringing true for me..

Glad to have some reassurance that so many brides feel the same. Plus why do I want to pay extra for a bouquet some guests will toss 2 weeks later!? This is really informative post, thanks for sharing!! Would like to implement this list in my wedding. My advice for couples planning a wedding on a budget. Think about what your family normally does for a family event like thanksgiving or Christmas etc. Thank YOU so much for confirming my thoughts!

I feel soooooo much better now and it really did alleviate the stress of things that you can let go of. The food, music, drinks, venue, etc. Well done and thank you for the much needed reminder. This list was helpful, especially for those brides who have a budget and are not quite sure to budget. While some may disagree, which looks like there are a few judging by the hilarious and ridiculous previous posts, there are ways to decrease costs of a wedding.

There are always going to be people who disagree with your list and unfortunately they seem to think their opinion matters most.

Thank you for an insightful article. This article is crazy to me. I agree with the list. Times have changed. And I suggest people proof read before publishing their comments. Oh dear! Even my boyfriend would not agree with this list!

It is ok if you are not the kind of person who is into the weeding sheboom and there you can have a lovely meal with your close friends.

Which is awesome. But if you want a wedding party then you need to pay attention to these little things! I even pay attention to these details when organising even the Christmas dinner let alone wedding! And ps. Who wouldnt care about the wedding dress? That is the one thing i am super excited about!

Absolutely Love this list. We created a beautiful day for the two of us that about 50 others will watch and hopefully enjoy. We are having it in our backyard, we uploaded a picture to Walgreens and printed invitations, and we had the most fun making centerpieces our of burlap and mason jars. To change or withdraw your consent choices for Brides. At any time, you can update your settings through the "EU Privacy" link at the bottom of any page. These choices will be signaled globally to our partners and will not affect browsing data.

We and our partners process data to: Actively scan device characteristics for identification. I Accept Show Purposes. Jaimie Mackey was the Brides real weddings editor from to She also worked as a luxury wedding planning producing over high-end weddings and events over four wedding seasons in Colorado. Brides's Editorial Guidelines. Strategically Plan Your Guest List. Send Handwritten Invitations. Send a Wedding Announcement. Consider a Restaurant Venue. Use a Family Home.

Choose an Airbnb. Find a Small Space in a Large Venue. Get Creative With Seating Arrangements. Gift a Welcome Box. Make a Day-Of Timeline. Hire a Day-Of Coordinator. Be Thoughtful With Activities. Hire a Live Band. Elevate Your Escort Display. Detail the Space. Create a Lounge Area. Splurge on Dinner. Opt for a Long Estate Table.

Play With Place Settings.