Beautiful wedding storytelling - guaranteed

Stress Free Wedding Planning for Beginners.

http://www.photographyatlightworks.co.uk/

Stress Free Wedding Planning for Beginners

Planning a wedding is a major undertaking and should be a fun and enjoyable process. It is a great adventure in organisation, decision making and negotiation and is one of the first big statements a couple can publicly make about their style and personalities. Inevitably it can also be a stressful process and, after ten years as a wedding professional, I have compiled a few hints and tips on how to make the whole process less stressful below. I hope you find it helpful and enjoy the read!

It's only one of the biggest days in your lifeI got married nearly twenty years ago and, with the benefit of hindsight, it was only one of the most important days in my life so far. Realising this, and not believing in and bowing to the pressure of it being the most important day in your life can be quite liberating!

Your wedding day doesn't have to be perfect. You and your guests will, more than likely, have a great time even if a few things do go wrong. I've been to weddings where cars have broken down, dress zips won't do up, cakes have been lost, marquees have been flooded and actually, everyone has had a fantastic time! In fact a bit of adversity is great for bringing out the English fighting spirit and can often help things go with a swing!

It's your day to do with as you please. Many couples still get a bit bogged down and stressed out about wedding etiquette; who should sit with who, what order the speeches should go in etc. There are a large number of websites and books available that are a little too keen on dishing out this kind of “vital” information. In my experience very few people at a modern wedding are actually really bothered by correct etiquette so anything goes! In fact the best weddings are the ones where the couple have broken a few of the “rules” and made the day completely personal to them. You don't actually have to have a photographer, a band, a caterer, a dress etc etc etc....all you really need is love (sounds like a great song lyric!) and the wedding ceremony itself – the rest is completely up to you!

Sort out budget. The wedding budget can be a big sticking point and I know a number of couples who, in the early stages of planning the wedding, blow all the budget on the venue, photographer, cars etc and then run out of money later when it comes to planning the finer details. You really need to sort out a realistic budget FIRST and then plan around it! Many couples today consciously prioritise where the budget should be spent – some will feel that having a less grand venue but amazing food is a priority, some will prioritise travelling in a fantastic car or helicopter and others will just use their own. To some couples the photography, as a lasting memory, takes priority, other couples are simply not that bothered about photographs and might spend the budget on a great band or DJ. Decide where your priorities lie and plan your budget accordingly.

Hire a wedding planner. Hiring a wedding planner can save you a huge amount of stress and, as they can usually negotiate a good discount from each supplier, may not be as expensive as you might think. It could save you a huge amount of time and energy. In a similar vein, many hotels and venues will have planners that will help and advise you from things like timings to recommending suppliers. Use them as much as possible, they will be a great source of useful information and advice and will save you a great deal of time, stress and money. A marquee wedding with home made decor may sound idyllic but are you realistically going to be able to project manage all of this yourselves? I have lost count of the number of times I have arrived a couple of hours before the wedding to photograph the bride's preparations to find her still in her pyjamas laying place settings in the marquee! Be realistic, what can you take on, how much time do you really have?

Have wedding time out. I have had planning meetings with couples a few weeks before their weddings where they have freely admitted to be suffering from “wedding burn out”! As a couple it becomes far too easy to talk about nothing but the wedding! It can become all consuming, all your free time becomes wedding time, all your conversations are weddingy and it absorbs all your energy. Making the wedding a banned topic of conversation for the weekend can work wonders! Set times for wedding planning and stick to them, plan your planning and don't let every weekend be a wedding show, every internet browse be weddingy, every conversation be weddingy and every penny be spent on weddingy stuff! Remember all the other cool things you used to enjoy doing together? Actually they are far more interesting than planning a wedding – that's why you got together in the first place!

Delegate. It often seems to me that all of those bridesmaids, ushers and best men are often a bit under used and are a fantastic potential resource in terms of relieving wedding planning stress! Allow yourselves to delegate! Let the attendants have responsibility for organising, choosing and and sorting stuff out! They are likely to be close to you and know you pretty well, you will no doubt love them and trust them so give them some real work to do! This has the double advantage of also making them feel much more involved, the wedding has a more of a “team effort” feel and will be even better for it!

Parent management. Your parents will desperately want you to have a fantastic wedding day. This is also, obviously, what you want as well so you will at least both have a common purpose in mind. However, the means by which you achieve this common purpose may not be agreed at all! Your parents may have very different ideas about the day from your own and, as they may well have some financial as well as serious emotional involvement, this can be a tricky one to balance. The main thing is to keep clear and calm channels of communication open at all times; this doesn't necessarily mean that you have to be in agreement all the time but it does mean that everyone's expectations are understood and solutions can be worked out. Parents are also great when it comes to booking suppliers. From my own point of view I know that parents often ask much more searching questions than couples do, they are often much more concerned with the practicalities and details and will drive a much harder bargain! This is a good thing! Trust their years of judgement and let them do some of the hard work for you.

Use your suppliers. All good wedding suppliers will be more than happy to freely give help and advice. Even before booking it's a good idea to talk about ideas and ask for information, not only will these types of conversations help you decide who really knows their stuff and who doesn't, they will all help save you time and money. Once you have your supplier team on board keep in touch with them and ask for, help, recommendations and expert opinions!

Use a folder. Get a wedding folder so that you can keep everything all in one place. There is nothing more time wasting and frustrating than having to look for bits of paper, contact details and information all the time because they are scattered around several places. The folder should have several dividers or subsections eg dress, venues, catering etc to help you keep organised! Also make a wedding time line – you know what your goal is (ie to have a fantastic wedding on a particular day!) so work back from this and calculate what needs to be done and when to allow you to achieve this goal. This could take the form of a broad monthly outline followed by a weekly plan, perhaps created at the start of each month as you get there, followed by daily plans as the big day approaches. This type of detailed planning really does work and writing down all the details, rather than trying to hold them and juggle them around in your head can release your “brain space” for more creative and imaginative thinking!

Finding the time. People often say “if you can't find the time, make the time” but this is much more easily said than done! Planning a wedding is a major undertaking in terms of the amount of time required, most of us already have increasingly busy lives and simply finding more time isn't easy. However, in a recent survey people admitted to “wasting” 2.09 hours per working day daydreaming, surfing the internet and procrastinating so maybe it is possible despite the fact that personally I think the above “time wasting” activities are actually quite important (within reason!) as I think our brains (mine at least!) need time to free wheel and play and this in itself can be mentally refreshing and rejuvenating.

My number one time saving tip though is to work in bulk. This means not doing lots of little odds and ends but setting yourself a task and working through it without being distracted by emails, texts or the phone etc. Once distracted from a task it takes an average of 20 mins to get fully back into it and this is a waste of time – I know that I get through things much more quickly with bursts of focussed activity. I then set aside say 30 mins for emailing, texting etc. I also am a great list maker and will, almost on a daily basis, make a list of “must do”, “should do” and “could do” things – this is great for setting priorities and working out where time has to be spent.

However, my greatest time wasters are indecision and procrastination! I have lost count of the number of times I have wasted hours and hours making a decision only to come to the same conclusion I did perhaps days before. I was always told “put your first thoughts first” meaning that your first instinctive gut reaction is usually right and it is often a waste of time and effort to endlessly wade through all of the possibilities over and over again. I guess this just comes down to trusting ones own judgement. I also find, for myself at least, I am noticeably more productive early in the morning than in the evening – if it is

necessary to burn the candle at one end of the day then the morning is by far the best, late nights are frequently less productive than they could be. Procrastination is also a big time waster for me and I will often find anything to do rather than address the task in hand – this just simply comes down to self motivation, having the end goal or result in mind; you want to have a fantastic wedding so you just need to get on, stop wasting time and make it happen!!

Finally we get round to what my partner refers to as “faffing”. She is a past master at faffing and we have two distinct types; free faff and focussed faff! If we define faffing as being “rushing around doing a million things at once in a bit of a panic” then focussed faff is OK because there is some sense of control and a goal in sight and, what externally looks like a bit of a stress and a rush, actually will achieve things and be mildly productive but “free faff” is not OK! Free faff is a a waste of time and energy and doesn't really achieve much at all, its faffing for the sake of faffing and must be reduced to an absolute minimum! So basically don't panic! “Stay calm and carry on” - no matter how much there is to do or how bad things get they are always worse if you panic, get stressed and your brain gets grid locked in rather than keeping an objective problem solving perspective. (I am typing all of this with a wry smile on my face as I acknowledge to myself how much of this I know in theory but don't necessarily put into practice!)

I hope the above has given you some new ideas! If you would like to read more this guide is the first of a series:

1. Stress Free wedding Planning for Beginners

2. Great Ideas to Personalise Your Wedding

3. Top 12 wedding Mistakes to Avoid

4. The Bride's Guide to Looking Great in Wedding Photographs

5. How to Take Great Photographs at a Wedding

6. Ten Questions to Ask Your Wedding Photographer Apart From Price

CLICK HERE to have the series emailed to you, two articles a week over the next three weeks.

Happy, stress free planning!

Please feel free to contact us here

or give us a call on 01223 440596 / 07949 545773

You can also like us on Facebook here

or visit our website and blog hereWww.photographyatlightworks.co.uk