Five tips for brides-to-be

Photo by Olga Becker

It's spring and the time of year where new brides-to-be are planning their weddings so I thought I'd write a few words of advice for those of you that are newly engaged and embarking on the wedding planning process. As much as I love being married I'm a teeny bit jealous if I'm honest - you have so much to look forward to - not least the best day of your life.
So here, in no particular order, are my five tips for wedding planning.

1. Don't make any promises you can't keep.
   I don't mean to start on a negative but this is very important - especially at the beginning of the planning when your head is full of happiness and you're recounting the proposal story to anyone who will listen: do not promise that your distant cousin's daughter or best friend's child can be a bridesmaid. Or any other promises along those lines. Wait until you've got over the initial high and then...
2. Sit down with your betrothed and make the major decisions.
   Church or civil? Children or no children? How many bridesmaids? Budget (pretty important that one). Only once you've made the decisions between the two of you should you talk to anyone else about them.
3. So on to that budget thing: make one.
   Without a budget you have no idea how much you can spend on the venue, the dress, the cake, the food and so on. It's essential to making the decisions about pretty much everything else about the wedding (apart from the person you're marrying - I'm pretty certain you've made that decision by this stage).
4. Once you know your theme, colours, favours etc. stop looking for ideas.
   There are so many magazines, blogs (see the twenty or so over on the right of this blog for a start) and books out there that whilst they're great for getting you started and helping you choose the look for the wedding - they can overwhelm you if you don't stop once you've made your decisions. You'll keep seeing more great ideas and change your mind about things - potentially costly if you've already made all your invitations.
5. Just back to budgets for the last tip - work out where you want to splurge (for us, it was the breathtaking venue and a brilliant photographer); and where you want to save (stationery was all home-made and so was my veil).

So I hope that was interesting and useful - and it gave me a great excuse to show you another wedding photo.