Here’s a good website that my fiancee uses to plan and keep track of everything.
This is good advice. There are only three things I ever remember about a good wedding: the music, food and booze. They don’t necessarily have to be the most expensive choices, but definitely take the time to think about what your guests will enjoy.
Oh, and one other thing that I say in every wedding thread: don’t waste money on a lot of bridal magazines. They will only make you think you need to spend a ton of money on useless crap. Use them for dress ideas only.
From someone who waits on for, on average, 3 wedding breakfast functions (the 1st meal the bride and groom have as a married couple, not actual breakfast) of a weekend, I’ll suggest something that often gets overlooked. Remember not only is it ‘your day’ but you’re also in some part playing hostess.
If you’re having the wedding breakfast at a hotel or restaurant, where people have a choice of meals etc, please please account for special diets, and kids meals etc. I am sick and fucking tired of pissy parents whose kids won’t eat a full meal, Muslims without Halal meat or vegetarians without a vegetarian option complaining to me. IT IS NOT MY FAULT!
It’s theirs! However most people won’t check up on if they’re being provided for, so you’re going to have to do that for them.
Plan what time you want things like your 1st dance, cake cutting photo’s etc. Stick to it, or you’ll fuck up our schedule.
And most of all, do NOT be bridezilla. This will influence how you are treat. If you want something changed last minute, be polite about it and people will go out of there way to help you.
Think about entertainment. Do any friends or relatives play in a band? You might be able to hire the DJ for a shorter length of time and save cash.
Don’t spend money on expensive name cards, order of ceremonies etc. People want to know when to stand up and sit down, they don’t want collectors items. Spend a little more on the food instead, it’s normally the most memorable part for the guests.
First, congratulations.
We never have regretted anything about ours, and our daughter had one last year which was great also. So, we have some track record.
First, and most important, budget and invite list. Budget for 10% or 20% less than you can afford, since there will be cost overruns. Compare with invite list. You can’t have a $5,000 wedding and invite 100 people. You do not want to start off married life deep in debt.
We had 25 people, we only invited very close relatives and our friends, almost all of whom had to fly in. We kept it small so that we could actually talk to everyone there. Our “rehearsal dinner” included all guests who were in town the night before, and after the actual reception my in-laws, who lived in town, had everyone over to their house for a backyard party, which we went back to. It did piss off our not so close relatives, but that was their problem.
My daughter’s wedding was a destination wedding, in a small town in Georgia. It clearly limited the guest list, but it was a lot of fun. it also kept the costs down. They had a wedding planner, being far away, and they wound up paying her double her price because her prices was so absurdly low that they were embarrassed. (Well under $500.)
The main advice is to please yourself and not your relatives, and to stay fiscally prudent - and you won’t regret it. Anyone thinking that their wedding is going to be the biggest day of their lives must be planning to have a very boring life.
Congratulations!
As others have said, don’t fall into the bridal industry trap (and they’re extremely good at doing this) of thinking everything has to be coordinated and perfect. No one will actually notice or remember your centerpieces (unless you invite my mom, which I assume you’re not planning to do 
)
Also, something I did that I highly recommend is making a spreadsheet of all the people we were inviting with their names, addresses, emails and phone numbers if I had them, the probability I thought that person would come, and (once we started getting presents) the present they sent us. This spreadsheet saved me so much time I can’t even tell you. When we addressed envelopes, all that information was right in one place. When my bridesmaids wanted to send emails about the bridal shower, I had all that information right there. Putting down all the probabilities resulted in our being accurate to within 5 people as to how many would show up (out of about 150 invited) – yay the law of large numbers! And, as a bonus, now we use it (suitably updated) as a Christmas card list to print out envelopes.
Oh, definitely! Fiancé and I love to throw parties, so we both see getting married as the best ever excuse to throw a great party for our friends and family. Thanks for the reminder about providing some kid-friendly food; I know we need to have decent vegetarian/vegan food for a couple guests, but I hadn’t thought about kids.
My step-sister got married two years ago, and her advice was not to let my mom arrive more than a day in advance. Step-sis threw a beautiful, laid-back wedding and was on top of everything, but Mom (God love her) made everything way more stressful than it needed to be, simply by stressing out about it herself. Thankfully, she lives in Panama, so her interference is limited. I’m worried that she’ll want to arrive well before the wedding, though, to “help me get ready.” I think I need to set aside some specific last-minute tasks to put her in charge of, just to give her a diversion.
And thanks to everyone for the reminders not to get worked up about the small details. I’m a fairly laid-back person by nature, but I’m also a graphic designer, so I’m very focused on visual details. I could probably get lost in trying to make everything look perfect and lose sight of the larger picture. Must remember not to do that.
Congratulations! (Love the ring.)
Don’t be afraid to look to your friends’ and families’ talents for help. Two of my best friends just got married–one friend designed the invitations, a grandfather decorated the cake, an aunt altered the bridesmaids’ dresses and did the floral stuff, the groom made the table decorations, a friend was the photographer, another friend arranged and performed the music at the ceremony with her twin sister…
You don’t need attendants, fancy dresses, expensive venues, fancy food, or anything else. You need you and your fiance, the people that matter to you, and a celebrant. I got married in my MIL’s back yard, with no bridesmaids, local grocery store food and cake, paper plates and napkins, a few potluck dishes, brand new clothes for myself and my husband (which weren’t tuxes or bridal dresses, but just nice clothes), all our friends and some family, and a few bottles of various alcohols. A wonderful time was had by all, and it was a very low-stress, low-cost thing. I originally wanted a back yard BBQ, but the MIL didn’t want to have anyone standing over a hot grill. shrug It was her house. It was fun, memorable, and a beautiful ceremony. Less than $1,000 all around, it was. Decide what’s important, and abandon the rest.
Woohooo! Wishing you both a lifetime of joy and happiness together. 
Sounds like you all are going to have a great time.
Sure you can. People around here do it all the time.
Granted, you can’t have a big fancy catered sit-down dinner and dance with a DJ open bar and all that crapola for 100 people and keep it under $5K, no. But you can have a perfectly lovely afternoon reception with appetizers and such for those numbers, and it is in fact the norm in some areas of the country. Actually, most of them don’t cost nearly that much, because the family does most of the food and decorations and such. My favorite memories of my best friend’s wedding are of spending evenings with her and her family learning to make flower arrangements and cut radish roses.
TWO, this sort of thing is exactly why you shouldn’t listen to most of the advice you get about budget and tradition and what you just gotta have or not have. Mileage on those things varies wildly by geography and culture, and most of that mileage will vary from what you actually want.
There are three things you just gotta have at a wedding, and everything else is gravy. 1) You. 2) Your fiance. 3) The people who have to sign the paperwork. That’s it. Every single other arrangement is totally optional, and the vast majority of it is just window dressing so don’t take it too seriously.
My best advice is for both of you to sit down separately someplace quiet when you have time to think and make a couple of lists. Things that are really majorly important to you, and things that aren’t really important but would be really nice to have. Get together later and combine your lists. These are your priorities–spend your time, energy, and money on this stuff, and let the rest go hang.
As for the visual stuff, keep in mind the most glorious thing about designing something yourself–if you keep your trap shut, nobody else knows that something wasn’t a deliberate design choice. Also, nobody is going to be critiquing the details of whether you should have used solid pink lilies instead of the Stargazers. They’re just impressed you made something so nice yourself because they’re quite sure they could never make anything like that. If all else fails, you can always fall back on my quilt-making mantra–anybody doesn’t like it is welcome to make their own damn quilt.
I agree with CrazyCatLady on this. My wedding reception was held in my mother-in-law’s backyard, and catered for by a couple of her friends, with my father buying the alcoholic drinks. This was 30 years ago, so there’s been inflation since then, but I doubt if in today’s terms they spent $50 per head on food and drink.
And I agree with others that you have only a short list of essentials. My list would be:
(1) You must get married legally;
(2) You must invite the friends and relatives that you want to be with you on that day; and
(3) You must all have a good time.
Everything else is optional.
I’ll second this.
Elope, go to Vegas and get married by the Elvis impersonator. I’m told he puts on a helluva show and you don’t have to kill yourselves doing a bunch of planning for the wedding.
However you wind up doing it, best of luck to you both!!
Hah! No, he’s already had a Vegas wedding, so that’s definitely off the table.
I’ll definitely be asking friends for help, or rather I’ll be asking them to provide labor in lieu of a wedding gift. I think we can cover the DJ, sound equipment, music for the ceremony, photography, officiant, part or all of the cake, and possibly get a break on a custom-made wedding dress. The big expenses are going to be the wedding and reception location (we’re considering a fall or early spring wedding to get off-season rates), food (buffet-style or stations), and alcohol (free beer and wine, cash bar for liquor) - which are the most important anyway. I can’t go into details, but as I mentioned, I’ll be receiving a sizable chunk of change in the next few months that should cover those expenses easily.
My opinion–forego the cash bar. Don’t charge your **guests **for anything. If you cannot afford something, simply do not provide it. If someone **needs **liquor to enjoy the wedding, you’re probably better off without them having access to it, anyway.
Include “the appropriate paperwork to be filled out” in that list, and I think you’ve got it. Find out in advance about your state’s rules on marriage licenses. Some states will let you get a marriage license on Friday afternoon and get married on Saturday, some won’t. That could be a very nasty surprise if you were planning on that and found out at the last minute that your state doesn’t allow it. There are often limits on how far in advance of the wedding you can get the marriage license, too. In some states, you both have to go to the court for the license. You will probably need picture ID and some money (cash only, in some states). You may need some other documentation as well, especially if one of you is divorced or widowed.
It’s probably also a good idea to make sure that your officiant can actually perform legal marriages in the state where you are getting married. Different states have different rules on this.
If you’re having an outdoor wedding, have a contingency plan for bad weather (unless you are getting married somewhere like California where the weather is extremely reliable, but places east of the Rockies don’t qualify here). Also have water and shade available for your guests if you’re having a summer outdoor wedding, in case of very hot weather. Fainting at weddings went out with Victorian corsets.
Don’t include animals or children under 5 in your wedding party. They will not understand what is going on, and are likely to act unpredictably and cause problems. If you do include children in the wedding party, make sure the kids really want to do it- make sure it’s not one of the parents, not the kid, who really wants the kid to be in your wedding. It’s not fair to anybody to have people in your wedding party who don’t really want to be there.
If you’re not superstitious about seeing each other before the ceremony, have the pictures taken then, not between the ceremony and reception. Guests don’t like waiting around during the break between the ceremony and reception that is necessary if you’re taking the pictures then. Another plus of taking the pictures before is that nobody’s hair, clothes, or makeup has had time to get messed up that way. If you do have to take a break between the ceremony and reception, make it as short as possible. This isn’t the time to hang out with the wedding party or go for a spin in the limo.
Make sure you have food available for any guests with special dietary needs. This would include vegetarians and kids who are picky eaters.
I’m mostly going to echo everybody’s advice, but I LOVED my own, small wedding and wanted to share:
- Don’t spend more than you can pay for. It’s an awesome day, but it’s one day. Don’t spend years paying for it.
- Try to spread some of the work. It’s a lot to take care of. Find some trusted people and share the load.
- I’m not religious, so this may not apply, but concentrate on the reception. That’s where everybody has the most fun.
- As others have said, it’s YOU and YOUR HUSBAND’s day. If you disagree with somebody over something, your opinion wins.
- One little hint, bring some comfortable shoes. Your dress will cover them for most of the reception, so get some fun, white flats/sneakers/whatever. My wife bought some nice heels and took them off when she got to the reception, cause they were KILLING her. It was pretty cute to see her in bare feet, but I think she would have liked some comfy shoes.
- Also, I recommend renting movies with wedding scenes of all kinds to get some ideas. Wedding Crashers, Rachel Getting Married, Four Wedding and Funeral, etc.
Congratulations on the engagement! Wedding advice - have one! 
I remember you posted this in another thread, and I immediately asked my fiancé if we could do our photos before the wedding. As a guest, I hate waiting for an hour or more before we can start the festivities. You shouldn’t invite everyone over for a party and then make them wait around for you!
This is another piece of advice I’m definitely taking. My feet don’t do well with high heels, and there’s NO WAY I’m wearing them through the reception as well as the wedding. I thought I’d get some nice red or white flats (my dress will be red and white) to change into for the reception.
This is where the wrangler comes in. She and the photographer coordinated about which pictures he wanted to get, and she kept everyone together, and into their poses. Of course, it helps that she was a part-time stage manager.
Our pictures took fifteen minutes.