Real Life Wedding Planning Pt. 2

Real Life Wedding Advice (Pt. 2 of 4)

2 tips from my wedding that will help you plan for your big day

Ermahgerd, you’re engaged!

(Or you are mentally preparing to be engaged, in which case, WAY TO GO OVERACHIEVER!)

Real life wedding planning can be so fun. You’ll laugh, you’ll jump for joy, you’ll also convince your fiancé to put his English bulldog in a doggy tuxedo.

 

 

You’ll cherish the memories of cake tasting, and interviewing DJ’s. Don’t forget to read Real Life Wedding Advice Pt. 1 HERE before you go crazy “researching” the real life wedding photo galleries for hours on the World Wide Web in your state of bliss.

More Than A Ring. Better Than a Facebook Status 

Being engaged is more than just a ring on your finger. And finding your one true love and starting a family just you two is better than anything Facebook related. Engagement is a marker of the level of commitment and depth of your relationship. By definition the word engaged means to hold someone’s attention, not just agreeing to marry them.

When Ricky and I got engaged it was pretty difficult to hold each other’s attention! We were suddenly thrust into planning a cross-country move, and a wedding for nearly 300 people. The time difference from Phoenix to Philadelphia didn’t help either. One night, I was so excited to show Rick the wedding menu’s I designed myself, when I noticed his eyes were closed for a very long time during one of our Facetime calls.

My real life wedding advice after setting a realistic budget, and choosing your top 2 wants for the wedding is this:

BE FULLY ENGAGED.

There’s a level of detail you can’t imagine will need your attention. For us, it truly felt like a part-time job coordinating schedules with vendors, family, and looking for all the right decorations.

My advice is to take one day out of the week to be engaged. Talk to one another. Try to have conversations about other things, not including the family drama or the first dance song. Play a board game, take a walk in the park, make out. Just remember to plan time for one another every week so you don’t lose sight of WHY you’re actually committing the rest of your lives to each other.

We were burned out. From the picture above you’d never know that Rick and I stayed up until 4am the morning of our wedding to reorganize the seating chart because of some family drama and the RSVP’s. We spent so much time on other details that this last chore plagued us on the last night of our engagement. It stole precious time we could have used to connect with one another OR SLEEP! For the generous souls who offer to help you and really mean it, delegate a task or two. Let others handle errands that are eating into your time and taking you away from your main squeeze.

There will be some folks who might want to help too much. Their to-do’s can be as simple as: Please pick up 300 stamps, please scope out Target for sales on bridal shower invites. Checking in with them once a week will save you time and stress – keeping you emotionally available for your fiancé. In addition, it helps build that sense of excitement with others for the big day!

The most fun wedding planning days were the days we didn’t plan.

We already had little time considering most of our engagement was long distance. Every minute outside of planning was precious. The days we played UNO on Skype, or we visited each other and went on donut runs were the days Ricky and I felt most happily engaged. Those were the days we could beam and tell our waiter “my fiancé want’s the lobster. Ok, no just kidding, she’ll have the chicken.”

Set a budget, stick to it, commit to 2 things on your top want-it list, delegate some tasks, and enjoy hanging out with the one you love most.

Happy Planning, Not-Planning,

Meg