I’m a little over 3 months in to wedding planning, and a little less than 6 months away from the big day itself. It has definitely dominated my 2015 so far. For the most part it’s been a fun experience, though it’s also been a lot of work. Our wedding is on the small side, too; I can’t even imagine trying to plan something for like 300 people. So today I thought I’d share some of the things I’ve learned during the process so far:
- Wedding vendors don’t do weekend meetings. This seems obvious in retrospect, since, duh, most people get married on weekends and that’s when vendors are booked and unavailable. But it’s something that didn’t really occur to me until I was trying to set up appointments for tastings and floral consultations and our engagement photo shoot, etc etc. All of those will generally have to happen during the M-F week, or in some cases Tu-Th week if they block out Monday and Friday, too. Which means taking time off work if you have an office job, or flying solo if (like me) you work from home but your partner has an office job.
- The dress you end up loving might not be the dress you expected. I had a Pinterest board full of A-lines and sheath gowns, lots of sleek lines and such. And what did I end up falling in love with? A ball gown. Yup. Big skirt, train, and all. To be fair, the bodice fits like a dream, but the skirt is not at all what I expected to love. But love it I do, especially since it has pockets.
- Wedding brain is a real thing. You will have to restrain yourself from only ever talking about wedding topics. You will obsess over minute details and different shades of the same color. You will mess up things like your own mother’s address when sending Save the Dates. You will most likely get decision fatigue at some point (for me, it was during the meeting with my florist). You will do all of these even if you told yourself heading into wedding planning that you wouldn’t do all of these. Unless you hire a wedding planner, then maybe you escape all of that. But I wouldn’t count on it.
- Dark purple roses are not a thing. Or at least not a affordable/realistic option for something the scale of a wedding. One of our wedding colors is aubergine, a nice rich dark purple. And I had planned on having rose petals on the cake and down the aisle and for our send-off, in that color. Nope. No can do, says the florist. Had to rethink some things. So if you are a fellow lover of purple, just be aware- if you want eggplant purple rose petals, you’ll have to settle for fake ones (and most venues don’t allow you to use those outdoors in decor, because environment).
- Life does not stop moving just because you have a wedding to plan. The world at large does not care that you are busy and maybe stressed planning a wedding (even though, yes, you are excited and happy about it too). Life will still throw random curveballs at you, and you will still somehow have to deal with them. It might be a surprise nightmare client at work, or having a big house expense pop up right after you splurged on your dream wedding dress, or catching a bad chest cold the same week as your engagement photos. Or finding out someone you love has cancer. I don’t really have any advice for handling all of that except to stay flexible and try to take care of yourself (as I’m trying to do). Wedding planning can (and probably should) go on the back burner some weeks, so that you can focus on other things going on in your life.
Are you married? Any lessons you learned from wedding planning that you’d like to share?
