Firstly, I would just like to say - when someone gets engaged and they start calling up their parents and close friends to announce the news, asking "when is the wedding" 10 min after she has a ring on her finger is ridiculous.... just putting it out there. Not every girl has her entire wedding planned and is just waiting for the proposal before she locks it all in. Argh.
Anyways.... when it comes to planning the wedding, there is a lot of assumption that the woman does all the planning and the wedding is just about her. Now, if you didn't guess already, I am not one of those girls who has a binder in the back of her wardrobe and has been secretly planning her wedding her entire life - in fact, to be honest, I was content and happy in my relationship and marriage was not something high on my priority list. Yes, I am excited that I get to experience wedding celebrations and I couldn't be happier to be getting married, but I didn't see the need to rush into it. So up until there was a ring on my finger, I had not given it much thought in terms of what kind of wedding I would like.
Keeping E.B involved
It has always been important to me that E.B stay involved in the wedding planning prep as I do heavily believe in it being OUR day, not my day (don't get me started on how desperate women are in wanting "equality" but how quick they are to claim something as "women's rights"... What about human rights bitches? -argh! #FuckDoubleStandards). We are deciding to spend the rest of our lives together so I think we should decide how to celebrate that decision together. So while I was the one who definitely put in the many hours of research (most of which involved trying to work out how to make the unrealistic wedding expectations I had built from Pintrest work within the budget we had agreed on), all the final decisions came down to a joint effort and I can very happily say that OUR wedding is one WE have planned together and that is the perfect representation of US and our PARTNERSHIP.
What they don't tell you about planning a wedding.
When we got engaged I literally had an "oh shit" moment of realization that I knew NOTHING about planning a wedding. I had been to my fair share as guests; I was a flower girl for my dad and step mum's wedding, I was bridesmaid for my mum and step dad's wedding and then again bridesmaid for one of my closest friends - but all that had done is equip me with the knowledge of how to get pampered with hair and make up on the day (and how to throw a killer hens night for my BFF, if i don't mind saying so myself). But when it was all of a sudden time to plan ours, I had no freaken clue where to even start. So here is a list of random shit I did not know, or had to wing my way through during the planning process:
Apparently wedding cake is traditionally fruit cake - I had NO idea and was briefly disappointed when I found this out, but then overcame this quickly when I remember E.B and I are far from "traditional" and therefore we could have whatever flavor we wanted (Snickers flavour FTW)
The bride is meant to stand of the left side of the alter as the groom is considered her "right hand man" - dad stands on the left of his daughter when he walks her down the isle (never knew this and found it interesting)
Bridal Party expenses: this was a tricky one - I had no clue what to do here and I know depending on different cultures that some couples absorb all the costs for the bridal party (such as suits/dresses, shoes, hair & make up, accommodation etc) while others pass that onto the party. Being that both E.B and I are not religious or from a culture that heavily influences the wedding ceremony, this made things even harder to know what we were meant to do here. In the end we discussed it and decided that being a part of a wedding party can be expensive and we didn't want our friends to feel stressed over the event, so we asked that they simply cover the cost of their attire for the day and we would cover the cost of everything else. It was a very important conversation to have, both between E.B & myself and then again between us and our party to ensure that everyone was aware of the expectations and happy to partake in the celebrations.
One of the hardest things I probably had to learn and experience was that, just because I am excited because I am getting married, doesn't mean the vendors I contact are going to be excited - they deal with people getting married all the time so while I might be jumping up and down "eeeeeeppp"ing with excitement - most vendors really don't GAF. You think they would... they are in an industry of sharing one of the most special day's in peoples life... but nope! Most don't. ... consider yourself prewarned.
Also, yes! Everything is more expensive as soon as you say these 4 magical words: "its for a wedding"
Do what makes YOU happy
I must admit, for the most part, we have been lucky in that no-one has really tried to force their ideas and expectations on us for the big day - we expected a few to be upset by the fact that they didn't get an invite due to us wanting to keep our numbers small. And we expected a few to ark up over our "no kids invited" rule (I'm not paying $120 to have a child scream while I am walking down the isle or trying to say my vows and then have them eat fuck all, and run around under everyone else's feet while people are trying to drink and relax - that sounds like the opposite of relaxing!). Thankfully most people have been very understanding and happy to go with whatever flow we put down. The hardest part I have found is navigating complex family relationships. Having a Dad & Step-mum, and a Mum & Step-dad who, while they can act civil, they are far from what you would call a "blended family". Thankfully, they are all adults and while my anxiety surrounding their
BUDGETS
Firstly - pick a budget and STICK TO IT!! To work out the budget I HIGHLY recommend heading to brideonline and use their budget tool! My sister in law to be got me onto it and it has been my life saver!! It allows you to set a budget amount, then place a percentile value against various expected expenses to help you prioritize what is important and what you want to spend more money on. For example, the venue was REALLY important for us so we allocated 35% of our budget to it. The photographer is also really important so we allocated 10% of our budget. Our invites however, we felt were important but not worth spending money on something that was going to end up in most peoples bins, so we only allocated 2% of our budget to it. .... it might sound complicated but i highly recommend this spreadsheet. BEST. TOOL. EVER!
Anyways, I could honestly ramble on about this for hours but I will stop there. So much you get to learn when you go through this experience yourself. I am currently writing this 6 months, 28 days, 17 hours from my wedding day (the countdown is real!!!). I am still learning lots and have loads of fun in the process - I hope if you are reading this that you might have learnt a thing or 2 to help you when you go through this wonderful time in your life!
With Llove
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