Overwhelmed with Wedding Planning? 5 Starting Tips

For a lot of newly engaged couples, it's difficult to know even where to start with the wedding planning process. And so we at WeddingUp have come up with 5 tips to get the ball rolling on planning your special day.

1. Pinterest and Wedding Ideas

Pinterest is a great resource to browse and collect potential wedding ideas. From venues, colours, decorations to potential dresses, organize your ideas in an easy to find place. Pinterest is also a great tool to explore other people's ideas to get inspiration. Check out Pinterest's wedding subcategory to get started.

2. Determine your Wedding Size

For a lot of people, the reception is going to take up a bulk of the budget. Check out our post on wedding budget calculations to see a breakdown of the major costs in a wedding. Receptions usually range from 40-50% of the total wedding cost, and so figuring out the price-per-head of your reception x the number of attendees will give you a ballpark number. From that, you can estimate your total wedding budget. On the topic of wedding budgets, it's also important to figure out who is paying for the wedding. If you accept outside help, be prepared to accept outside opinions. Financial help is always great, but too many cooks in the kitchen can add stress to the entire process.

3. Talk to Friends who share your style

Friends are always going to be a great resource, especially if they've been through the process before. Ask people you trust to help, or for advice. Their ideas could really help you solidify your vision for your big day

4. Pick a Date

This is the first major decision in the wedding planning process, as everything else is dependent on this. Venues, Photographers, Caterers, Invitations etc, all need the wedding date to be firmed up before you can proceed. Weddings usually take a year to plan, and so take that into account when going through your process. Most other couples take that long, and so vendors can start getting booked up for your dates. Don't pick something too soon, otherwise you may need to compromise on certain aspects.

5. Get Organized

Find a method that works for you to keep everything organized and sharable. If spreadsheets work for you, then great. If not, find a planning tool like WeddingUp to help. There are a bunch of different resources out there, but you need something.

This list should help you get started. If you leave yourself enough time, you shouldn't get too stressed. Remember, this is your special day, and so make sure you enjoy it.

{ Photo Credit: jamesallen.com }

Wedding Budget Spreadsheet

For a lot of people, staying on budget for their wedding is critical. And given the economic situation we're in these days, spending money wisely is a must. At WeddingUp, we've gone through a bunch of different resources to find the best distribution of your budget to you wedding items. These are just guidelines of course, but should get you started for your planning. The goal here is to make sure that money is allocated to everything that you might need for your big day.

The biggest expense that you'll likely come across will be funding the reception. Most of the guides that we've looked at have 40-50% of the budget allocated to that. The reception expenses usually include: venue, food, alcohol, entertainment, decor and service. And so if you're worried about going over budget, taking a look at the items in your reception will give you the greatest impact when you're looking to get back on track. For a lot of the costs of the reception, it will depend on the number of people you're inviting as most venues/caterers etc will charge per head. The more people attending, the quicker your costs are going to skyrocket. Having been through the wedding process, determining who makes the cut is an extremely difficult situation (especially if parents are helping out with the budget, and have their lists of guest that must be included), and so you may need to look at other items within the Reception category to find relief. In the end, it's never easy, but hopefully our breakdown of wedding categories will help in your planning. If you'd like help managing your budget, you can always check out WeddingUp's free wedding budget spreadsheet tool. It will use the following wedding budget percentages.

The WeddingUp Sample Budget:

Ceremony: 4% (Church, Officiant, Musicians, Decor)

Attire and Beauty: 11% (Gown, Tuxes, Accessories, Hair and Makeup)

Favours and Gifts: 2.5%

Flowers: 5% (Bouquets, Centerpieces etc.)

Stationary: 4% (Invitations, Guestbooks, Thank you notes)

Rings: 3%

Photography and Videography: 13%

Reception: 54% (Venue, Food, Beverages, Cake, Decor, Entertainment)

Transportation and Lodging: 3%

Miscellaneous: 0.5% (Rehearsal Dinner etc.)

And if you'd like a second and third opinion, you can check out the sample budgets at Mint and TheKnot.

Manage Your Wedding RSVP List for Free!

From time to time, I will be outlining some useful online resources to help make wedding planning easier. Everyone is moving online these days, and so it makes sense to be where your guests are. 

Today, we'll be going through the steps to get an online form to attach to an email invitation, or to put on your wedding site for free.

Before we get started, you'll need to make sure you have a Google Account.

1. Login to Google: We'll be using Google Docs to set up your form, and so you'll need to create an account if you don't already have one.

2. Go to drive.google.com, and select Create > Form

3. You should see an editable form like the screenshot below. You can feel free add your questions

4. Modify the Theme: On the top left, click the Theme link to select a theme. There is one called the "Wedding Cake," which I've selected that makes a lot of sense for a wedding RSVP form.

And you're done! You should see something like this:

You can now send this link to all your guests to submit their answers, or you can embed the form on your own wedding site. On the edit form, on the top right, click More Actions > Embed. This will give you a snippet of code to add to your own website. Guests can then reply directly from your site! 

As guests respond, their information will automatically get populated into a Google Spreadsheet of the same name as your form. Here is the beginning of my form's data:

And there you have it, you're all set. A simple and free way to manage RSVPs without headaches!

Wedding Planning is Hard

Congratulations on getting engaged! Now what? The toughest part about wedding planning is knowing what you don't know. There are a lot of resources out there to help, but they have to be a good fit for you. The first things you need to figure out are:

- What is your planned budget?

- When do you want to ideally get married?

Once you have this, the next steps are to make sure your timelines and budget stay on track. It's always helpful to find a budget tracker and a checklist so you know what exactly needs to happen. The internet is full of different checklists and budgets, which is the right one for you? At WeddingUp, we've pulled together all the budgets and checklists we could find, and put together a comprehensive list to make sure that you can be confident that everything is accounted for on your big day. 

Here are a couple major features:

- Wedding Budget Spreadsheet: Based on your planned budget, we will divide up what you have to spend over the most common items for weddings. This way, you'll know how much you can spend on each item, and stay on track. We also track what you've spent so you can instantly see where you're money is going.

- Wedding Checklist Tool: Based on your wedding date, we'll create a customized list of things that need to get done, as well as an estimated completion date. No more worrying if you're forgetting to do something, or if something is late. We take care of everything for you.

- Mobile, Tablet or Desktop: We know you're busy. We know that you'll be on the road when visiting different vendors and getting stuff done. You can easily access WeddingUp from your phone or tablet to make updates on the spot. We go where you go.

Wedding planning is hard. We've been through it, and could've used all the help we can get. Hopefully weddingup.com is one resource that will save you time and stress. Try it today, completely free!

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