The Five Best Articles to Read When Starting to Plan Your Wedding
Wedding planning can be overwhelming and stressful, but I promise that it doesn’t have to be. I want you to have a wedding, and planning process, that focuses on what you love best about each other and creates time for more date nights together. That’s why I’ve pulled together the 5 best guides to get you started wedding planning, stress-free. With these guides you’ll know exactly what your next step is and when you should begin each part of the planning process. No more wondering or worrying. Just you and your love building your dream wedding together.
As a wedding photographer striving to create joyful photos of my client’s favorite days, I’ve seen how un-fun a wedding day can be when you get lost in the little details of what’s not working right. And I promise you, something will not go to plan. These are the best beginning guides I’ve found to help you keep everything in perspective and make the process of planning the biggest event you ever have, feel straightforward and achievable.
Step 1: Revel
Just Engaged? How Long to Wait Before You Start Wedding Planning
- Wedding Wire
Okay. I know there’s lots to be done in order to make a wedding day happen but I promise it doesn’t all have to happen right now. This post from Wedding Wire’s Planning Basics series helps you estimate how long you can just enjoy being newly engaged and when you should eventually start planning what. Their framework covers how to schedule your planning for short or long engagements and includes a monthly checklist based on how long you have.
33 Tips for All Couples Planning Their Own Wedding
- Brides.com
If you’d rather see the big picture first, before diving into the details, then this is the planning list you should start with. These 33 tips are the perfect roadmap to helping you keep one eye on how your planning should be going and the other on reality, and the rest of your life. My favorite tips are #22 Take some time off - together & #33 Just Have Fun! I know that you’re psyched to be marrying your love. And that’s so freakin’ awesome. Go celebrate it!
Step 2: Dream to Reality
After reveling in this exciting moment, you can jump into taking action. A few easy decisions, and enlisting trusted professionals, can help you make your dream wedding a reality.
How to Plan a Wedding Step by Step
- Wedding Wire
This post is your step by step process to engage planning mode and make your wedding vision come to life. If you’re looking to dive deeper at any step in the process, Wedding Wire boast a plethora of wedding planning blogs so you’re certain to find what you’re looking for - just don’t get too distracted by everything else. Like these 6 Unique wedding ideas that are SO extra. #6 made me laugh out loud!
Your Complete, Chronological Wedding Planning Checklist
- The Knot
If you think Wedding Wire has a lot of wedding content, The Knot has even more. Since they’re now owned by the same company, they are pretty optimized to helping you with any planning question that might come up. You’ll find their content on nearly every blog round-up cause they’re just that good, so make sure to utilize the heck out of these resources. The downloadable calendar maps out your planning process, from beginning to wedding day, and equates it to exactly one year. You can easily reshape this plan to match whatever planning timeline you have.
Wedding Planning Checklist + Free Printable
- Junebug Weddings
Did you love that calendar from The Knot, but was hoping for something a little more compact? This checklist from Junebug Weddings gets straight to the point, with about the same general information. People may grumble about the wedding industry, but we’ve gotten really efficient at creating beautiful ceremonies to celebrate what you love most. Trusting professionals to guide you through this process can make it way easier. This blog post even has fun check boxes that you can click. While it did save my checked responses over the days that I wrote this round-up, don’t rely on that for your whole wedding planning. Instead, scroll to the very end to download a printable version of this checklist (no email address needed!). Print that at Kinkos (cause who has a printer these days anyways) and put it up on your wall. You’re good to go!
Weddings can look like whatever you want them to look like - it’s about celebrating your unique love, so why not get creative. I hope you use these guides as inspiration or information but not as a prescription for what you must do. Don’t hesitate to chop out traditional or newly trendy wedding dos that just don’t fit your love. In the end a wedding should be about sharing the love you’ve found in your partner with the friends and family who you love most.
“Celebrate love,
stress less,
do what feels you. ”
I’m a wedding photographer for couples who want all the joy and none of the stress.
Learn more about how I guide my clients through their favorite day here.