The Local Savvy Bride - Planning
Q: “I have absolutely no direction when planning a wedding. I’m clueless. Where should I begin?”
–Anonymous
A: In the initial stages of planning my daughter’s wedding, I had no idea where to begin either. When most people think of planning a wedding, numbers, costs and dates are plagued in one’s head. Our logical minds tend to take over when we actually begin the planning of big events. The magical day of flowers, dancing and a fabulous cake suddenly becomes bombarded by…well, reality. A wedding is YOUR big day. Try not to let the seeming impossibilities of a beautiful and affordable wedding stifle your ability to get creative and form the right plan of attack.
Together, my daughter and I quickly improvised to come up with some sort of strategy. I guess we could break down her wedding planning journey to the following three topics:
Prioritize
If you don’t know already, a bride could spend thousands of dollars on each element of a wedding. The details of a wedding are endless and can really send a bride into overdrive. First, you need to decide which aspects of a wedding are most important to you. Invest your time, money and energy toward the details that, in your opinion, matter most. Perhaps it’s location, location, location, or your perfect gown and the experience of saying, “Yes to the dress!” Maybe a primary concern is your guests and the family and friends that will attend, or maybe it’s the food and the cake. If you don’t really care about a particular category, then spend little to no money on that aspect.
Sacrifice
While many brides have the wedding of their dreams already in mind, down the road, life happens and plenty of expectations change. Once a bride establishes her priorities, she can quickly throw out details that remain unimportant. However, other aspects of the wedding might not fit into the budget, timeline, location or any part of a realistic plan. What now? Don’t be afraid to let things go, and be flexible where you can. In the long run, you will have avoided unnecessary stress because you followed this particular piece of advice.
Budget
Are you surprised this wasn’t first? Because we did not have time to save and account for a wedding, a budget was not the starting point in our situation. I was clueless to any sort of ceremonial costs. Naturally, I was on the hunt for things that best suited our needs at an affordable price. Rather than selecting an initial budget, breaking down costs and throwing money at each category, we referred back to our prioritized list and gave proper attention and money accordingly. Honestly, it does not matter how much money you have to spend. Your budget should match your priorities, and this is when you will discover you are able to get the most joy out of this experience.
Ultimately, these are the general guidelines I followed as the mother of the bride. I don’t expect anyone else’s experiences will look like mine. My only hope is that you can take some pieces from my journey and apply them to your planning to become a savvy Central Texas bride.
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