Wedding planning is pretty well a full time job. Simple tasks like choosing flowers and reception centerpieces can easily eat up your entire day.
How’s a future bride supposed to achieve all of this while not losing sight of her job, family, and social life?
Read on for the wedding planning help you need to keep a balanced life.
Start Early and Stay Organized
Planning a wedding by yourself can seem overwhelming under regular circumstances. Trying to pull it off in a matter of weeks is humanly impossible.
Do yourself a favor and leave yourself at least 12 months to put all your pieces together.
This allows you to shop around a little longer to save money and to break your entire wedding into bite-sized tasks.
Having enough time and staying organized won’t interfere with your job and busy lifestyle. You can reserve your phone calls for lunchtime and send a few emails during your coffee break. Major research and planning can be done in the evening.
One thing to be sure of is saving a little time for yourself.
We’ve all heard of the dreaded Bridezilla. She exists because of wedding planning fatigue. Taking the night off just to relax or maybe catch up with some friends will keep your sanity in check.
Assemble The Team
One of the important steps to planning a wedding is segmenting critical tasks that are best left to you and other tasks that are best left to others.
Choosing the venue? That’s all you. Selecting the menu? You again. Trying to figure out who to invite to the reception? Let the mothers take care of that one.
Between the 2 of them, they’ll know most of the friends and family. And, they’re smart enough to know who to ask for clarification without having to bother you. This is just one example.
You trust your team. Rely on them to tackle a few projects on their own. You’ll save tons of time and effort.
Here’s how:
Step 1: Make a solid list of projects that you and your fiance can tackle, and what can be farmed out.
Step 2: Create a clear outline of the project. Include checklists and how-to’s when possible.
Step 3: Create deadlines and hold them to it.
Step 4: Use a wedding planning app to keep track of everything in one place.
We’ve seen brides take advantage of this opportunity in a lot of ways. Some brides have had their bridesmaids create short lists of vendors. The result was saving hours of research time and skipping straight to the interviews.
Other brides send their friends off with a shopping list and budget, and approve the questionable choices through text.
All of these hours add up.
DIY Projects
If your priority is time, DIY projects are not recommended. Without fail, they take more time than you think and they cost more than you plan for.
However, if you’re fixed on saving a couple dollars, follow this advice first.
- Calculate ALL of your DIY expenses.
- Add 15% to account for “do-overs” and waste.
- Estimate how many hours you’ll spend crafting.
- Add 15% to account for the fact that you’ll be slower than the YouTube tutorial.
Running through this practice will reveal a) How much money you’ll actually save and b) How much time you can save. Would you really invest 5 hours of your time to save $10?
If the numbers check out and you’re convinced that DIY is for you, take advantage of your circumstances.
Bridal parties can be a fun way to quickly reach the end of a DIY project. You can set up an assembly line and get the entire job done in no time at all.
Plan In Bulk
A successful self wedding planner makes the most of her time.
You can rush to the caterers after work. Then you can take another couple hours in the weekend to meet your florist. And another few hours in the evening to meet your photographer. Instead, line them all up on a single day.
You’ll have to plan ahead and juggle multiple schedules to pull this off, but the hours you’ll save will take a lot of stress off your shoulders.
Consult Professionals
Your last tip for preparing for a wedding is to seek help when needed.
Hiring a professional wedding planner is never a bad idea and a great way to save time. Even if you’re not, there are plenty of tools at your disposal.
Read planning books to plot your wedding steps. Download wedding planning apps and distribute them to your team so that everyone’s always on the same page.
Choose wedding planning books to plot your wedding. Give yourself plenty of time. Break your to-do list into bite-sized tasks.
Delegate when possible, and make the most of your time when you have to tackle things yourself.
If you can manage this, there’ll be no need to lose focus at your job and you’ll have plenty of time to relax or hang out with your social circle.