We talk a lot about marriage and the importance of planning for more than the wedding.
Buuuut… the wedding is still important!It’s the first day of your marriage and it’s a celebration of your union to each other. While you’re preparing for your marriage, it’s totally cool to plan for the wedding.
We had an awesome wedding day and wanted to share a few things we did that you should consider doing, too. These were the small things we planned ahead of time that we’re so grateful for now.
1. Spend money on videos and photos, cut corners other places
Cake, flowers, food, and decorations are cool, but once the day is over, they’re gone. We regularly look at our wedding photos and videos and are so glad we spent a little extra in these areas.
2. Make sure you plan for lunch
Our wedding festivities started in the morning (bridal party came to the venue at 9am, wedding was at 3pm), so we made sure to have some sandwiches catered to the venue for the bridal party and family.
3. Do a first look
If you want to go traditional and see each other for the first time as she’s walking down the aisle, you do you. We did a “first look” around 12pm where we saw each other privately (plus our videographer and photographer). This allowed us to spend more of the day together, take lots of photos before the wedding, and enjoy the evening with guests instead of taking photos.
4. Greet all of your guests
The “old school” way of greeting guests is getting in a line after the ceremony. Instead of doing that, we ate dinner first and then got to say hello to all of our guests after. It was a really sweet time to hug the people who care about us and thank them for coming.
5. Get a wedding planner or a day-of coordinator
This could almost be #1 on our list. You need to minimize the things you’re worried about and taking care of on your wedding day. If you don’t want someone to help you plan the wedding, be sure to at least get a day-of coordinator who will make sure vendors show up, execute your vision, and keep things running smoothly. This eliminated an incredible amount of stress for us.
6. Stick together
Throughout the day, you’ll get tons of people who want to grab a picture with one of you, introduce one of you, or grab one of you for a minute. We made a rule going into the day that we would stick together for everything. If a friend wanted a picture with one of us, the other went, too. It’s YOUR wedding day. Spend as much of the day with each other as you can.
7. Pack a to-go dinner
This is a pretty common one you may have heard, but have someone pack you to-go dinners. During the reception, you may not have time to eat, or if you do eat, it won’t be much. Pack a couple of meals that you can eat on the way to the honeymoon. (Don’t forget the cake!)
8. Write letters to your future in-laws
We wrote letters to individual members of each others’ families (parents and siblings). This was just a cool way to honor our new family and share our gratitude with them.Here's to a wedding you remember forever!
