Planning a wedding, some tips!

Our daughters are married! Both weddings were wonderful! Magical weekends!

Learnings?

Lots.

Advice worth sharing:

First and foremost, this is THEIR wedding not yours.

Download these templates from Google Docs: Wedding planner

These proved to be invaluable. If nothing more, they give you things to think about and then address. You can make them your own very simply and they can be shared with whomever you want and you can see any additions or subtractions, any changes. The budget template and the guest list template are "must-dos"! Best of all, it's all saved on Google's cloud, so they can be accessed from anywhere securely!

The best wedding book (in our opinion) to use is: The Wedding Book, by Mindy Weiss and Lisbeth Levine and the go-to wedding etiquette book is : Wedding Etiquette by Emily Post. Purchase a copy for both you and your bride. We found it was a great dissipator if questions arose or there was tension about something. There's always something to be said for a "neutral corner."

Have a frank discussion early on about the budget. As a friend, Jessie shared when our daughter got engaged, "when you know the total you can spend on the wedding, place it on the Excel spreadsheet budget template and as you add items (ie., gown, band, photographer, venue, flowers, transportation, etc.) with the possible cost, you watch that total "automatically" dwindle. Suddenly, prioritizing takes on a whole new meaning." "Picture a pie, slice it up with various size slices, each accounting for the whole." Good advice. For my daughter and her husband, the priority was the music and the Tony Boffa band. The next priority was the photographer, emilie. The other important piece was a "day of coordinator." My daughter said to me, "Mom, I want you to enjoy the weekend, so please hire someone to help you during that time."  So glad she did. Heather Quinn Cuzzi was fabulous! After that things fell into place. The other aspect to this discussion about money is who pays for what? If you think this is a slam dunk, au contraire. I've spoken to so many friends who have had children get married over the last several years and there's no one way to pay for the celebration. The biggest take-away I can offer is to have the bride and groom PRIORITIZE. When the research is being done and prices are being gathered, that "oh so important videographer, may not be so important. Not at that price tag." 

Blogs about both our couples: emilie inc. photography and Brian Wedge photography.

It's true, the time flies by! Enjoy and most of all, HAVE FUN! 

~Beppie