wedding planning tips & tricks
5-6 months pre-wedding
In this article, you'll find some of our best tips & tricks that should be relevant to your wedding planning process around 5-6 months prior to your wedding date.
We've organized these tips into the following categories:
PRE-WEDDING EVENTS
Use a dress rental company for all of the white dress events you'll be having
Engagement pics, bachelorette party, bridal showers, rehearsal dinner, need I go on? That's a lot of white dresses!
If you don't feel the need to invest in that many pieces, some of my brides have recommended using dress rental companies like Nuuly or Rent the Runway to get beautiful dresses for a limited time.
For your ReGistry
If you don’t really need physical stuff, ask people to contribute towards specific funds!
(ex. Scuba diving on our honeymoon. Hotel for the honeymoon. 1 year anniversary trip.)
You’ll be shook at people’s generosity! If you do this through Zola, they can do all this for you, and all that money just goes into one big pot, that in the end you can use for whatever you need.
Thank You Notes
Tbh get started on your thank you notes as soon as you begin receiving gifts.
Doing them one or two at a time is a lot less overwhelming than having 150 to do after your wedding! Plus, taking intentional moments to be grateful for your family, friends, & their generosity before your wedding day can make seeing them on your wedding day feel all the more special.
general wedding day tips
Delegate, delegate, delegate!
As you think of events or details you'd like to see happen on your big day, put someone in charge of making sure these happen! Once your wedding day rolls around, it’s no longer your job to pay attention to the details of the day or to make things happen.
Often, there are so many people who want to help you out by taking things like these off of your shoulders, and this is a great way to include more people & make use of their talents.
For example: If you want a sparkler exit to happen, put 3-4 responsible people in charge of handing out sparklers to guests, giving directions, & passing around buckets to dispose of the sparklers. Remind them several times that this is their job! Same with tossing confetti or blowing bubbles after the ceremony.
Day-Of Coordinators
Often times, the bride is buried in questions and day-of decisions (Where are the flowers? When does the caterer show up? What time am I supposed to be at the church?) Even if you’ve given everyone a detailed schedule, on the day-of, the bride is typically the only one who knows the answers to everything, so you’ll be pounded with questioning!
A Day-Of Coordinator is a paid wedding professional who handles all the details of a wedding day, from the wedding day timeline to the table settings. Day-Of Coordinators can take so much of the mental load off of you. I have never heard someone regretting having a wedding coordinator. But I’ve heard plenty of brides wish they had one!
Day-of Coordinators vs Personal Attendants
While Day-Of Coordinators are paid professionals who handle the details of your wedding day, Personal Attendants are friends/family members of the couple who are asked to help handle the details of your wedding day.
If you’re having a friend take on the role of a Personal Attendant, just make your expectations for them very clear! Often, Personal Attendants are basically unpaid Day-Of Coordinators who end up working hard all day instead of just enjoying the day alongside you. It can be a relatively demanding job, so just make sure your Personal Attendant is genuinely up to the task & understands the commitment that this role takes.
Who Should Be a Personal Attendant?
Consider asking a friend or a small group of friends who have been in many weddings or who have deeper knowledge of the logistics that go into a wedding day. This role has the potential to be a lot for one person, though, so consider splitting up tasks between a group of friends who work well together.
We’ve also seen brides delegate specific Personal Attendants for each of the 3 biggest roles of the day - one Personal Attendant for the Bride, one for the Groom, and one for the Mother of the Bride. This guarantees that each of these people have someone they can turn to to make things happen for them!
If you’d rather have your close friends & family members just enjoy the day alongside you, I’d recommend hiring a Day-Of Coordinator to ease your mind about your wedding day!
When to Hire vs When to DIY
100% Hire a Professional
Wedding Coordinator
Photographer
Setup/Teardown
Food/Catering
Bridal bouquet, boutonnieres, corsages
Alterations
Bridal hair
DIY/Have a Friend DIY
I think a bride should take on as little DIY projects as possible, so if you want to DIY it, delegate that ish.
Flowers (bridesmaids, centerpieces)
Cake/dessert
Centerpieces
Videography **
MC
Bridesmaids’ hair and makeup
Bridal makeup
** DISCLAIMER: These greatly depend on your priorities! I.e. for Videography, it really depends on if you want high quality highlight reels (go with a professional) or just videos of you and your friends being silly (just have your friends take videos on their phones) **
Getting Ready
Rent a beautiful Airbnb or hotel room for you & your ladies to stay at the night before your wedding!
The night before your wedding is a great opportunity to have a cute lil slumber party with your girlies. Plus, then you'll have a beautiful space to get ready for your big day, AND it'll look great in the pics ;)
When looking for a getting ready space to book, look for a space with LOTS of windows that'll let in natural morning light! Look for windows that face EAST!
Ceremony
Buy a Wedding Program Template
Are you having a Catholic Wedding Mass? Do you have guests who aren’t familiar with the Mass?
If so, save yourself 5 headaches & 12 hours of work by purchasing a Catholic Wedding Mass Program template!
You 100% could DIY your wedding program, but there are so many details about the Mass that, if included in your program, can really enhance an outsider’s experience of your wedding!
Other Catholic brides have already done the work of wording & designing Catholic Wedding Mass Program templates, 11/10 would recommend taking advantage of their hard work.
We highly recommend the template linked below!
wedding photos
Consider wearing comfy shoes all day & only wearing pretty shoes for the ceremony & formal pics
If you're going to have pretty shoes, definitely bring slide-on sandals that you can wear to easily walk around in during photos & your reception.
Here’s what I’d recommend:
Wear pretty shoes at: Ceremony + Portraits
Wear comfy shoes at: Walking to take pics + Reception/dancing
Overcommunicate to people who you want photos with!
If people are in the family/formal photos after your ceremony- tell them individually when and where to be more times than you think is necessary.
Ex. “Hey Aunt Carol! I am hoping to have you in a picture with me immediately after the wedding ceremony, so please stay in the church after! Can’t wait to see you!”
Pro tip: Make a simple master list of all the family/formal photos you’d like. Then highlight Aunt Carol’s name, take a pic/screenshot of the list, & send it to her as a visual reminder. Do this for each person/family who is in your formal photos!
wedding reception
Have whoever is giving speeches at your reception write or print out their speech on paper!
Reading off of a piece of paper is just a classier look than reading off of a phone.
tips to beautify your reception space
it’s all in the little details
ironed
not ironed
Make sure your tablecloths are ironed!
Ask whoever is in charge of the table settings (could be the coordinator at your reception venue or your caterer) if they usually iron their tablecloths. And if they normally do not, politely ask if they can do that for your wedding! Wrinkly tablecloths are just not it.
Keep your first dance lighting simple!
Skip the colorful lighting, like blue uplighting and flashing colored lights during first dances. Keep it simple (for the sake of the photos) warm, still, white lighting is ideal!
glassware
plastic cups
See if the bar can hand out real glassware instead of only plastic cups
Choose beautiful chairs!
Chairs can really make or break the cohesion of a reception space. If your budget allows, I highly recommend upgrading to lovely chairs!
post-wedding things to plan for now
Now is the time to begin thinking about how to preserve your wedding day memories!
Make plans to preserve your bouquet in a beautiful way
There are tons of ways to preserve wedding florals and many of them require you to book months ahead of time!
Here are a few of the methods/businesses I recommend:
To preserve them in resin blocks:
To preserve them in a rosary:
Make plans to preserve your Wedding Cards
It’s likely that after your wedding, you’ll end up with dozens of cards with sweet notes from your friends and family. While we love to cherish these gifts, it can be a lot to keep every single card - they can end up taking up lots of space floating around your new home or in your closet.
Artkive is a company that can preserve scans of all your wedding cards in one compact book! You literally just send them all your cards in one of their boxes & they compile it all themselves. So easy, right? Check em out below:
Make space in your budget to get your wedding photos printed right away!
Please, please, please get your wedding photos printed! It makes me so sad as a photographer to hear people never getting prints of their photos because they kept putting it off.
If you make a point to order high quality prints soon after receiving your full gallery, it’s more likely to happen!
make a beautiful, timeless wedding album right away
The memories & moments captured on your wedding day are ones you’ll carry with you for the rest of your life. Your children & grandchildren will likely ask about the details of your wedding day, and what better way to share your memories with them than in a beautiful wedding album?!
If you book me as your wedding photographer, you can make plans for us to create your album very soon after your gallery is finished! Check out the details for this add-on below: