We are officially a year away from our wedding!
I see a lot of brides on TikTok and Instagram talk about how stressed they are and how “unfun” the whole process is for them. Which is sad to think about. THAT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE YOU.
I couldn’t be having an easier time.
It helps having a fiance who is excited to do every step with you, and having more than a year before your wedding to get everything in a row.
So, how can you make your wedding planning LESS stressful? By doing the below things as soon as you get engaged:
CREATE A ROUGH DRAFT OF YOUR GUEST LIST:
Your wedding guest list is one of the first things you’re really able to do, and it’s the most important place to start.
This is like freestyle writing our your first draft for your middle school essay. Throw in everyone you can think of in google sheets, and get a rough count. Now you know what to look for when it comes to venue space and size.
PICK A VENUE TO MINIMIZE YOUR GUEST LIST RELATED STRESS
If you plan on getting married 1.5 -2 years after getting engaged, your ideal date will most likely be available in any venue you chose, so don’t stress about forcing a venue search solely for that reason. Though it is better to do it sooner than later.
Choosing your venue and putting a cap limit (and minimum) on the amount of guests you are able to have will make the decisions for you when it comes to the guests you’re not too sure about.
For example, our wedding venue is limited to 140 people, however, our food and bar package has a required minimum. This helps limit the people we feel obligated to invite from our B list, but also encourages us to be a bit more liberal with the amount of invitations we send knowing we need to hit that minimum and that there will be a percentage of people that don’t come.
“NO SAVE THE DATE; POTENTIAL INVITATION ONLY” LIST:
If you’re a year or so out and you’re really torn on certain people, don’t just create a B list, but a “Potential Invite Only” list.
A “B list” still makes you feel like you have to make a decision a year out when you’re sending your save the dates.
A lot can change in the next 6-9 months before you send your invitation. So make a list of people that you’re not ready to make the decision on just yet and won’t send save the dates to, but you may want to send invitations to 3 months before your wedding date.
Yay! You can now stop stressing about that great aunt who always fights with your grandma and called you fat that one time.
… for now at least.
START THE FUN STUFF EARLY ! (DESIGNING)
Starting certain things earlier than you feel you have to is a great thing so you can make adjustments along the way, instead of starting things from scratch a week before they need to get done.
Wedding website, save the dates, wedding invitations, signage, etc etc.
Both me and my fiancé are creatives, so we enjoy working on these things. We started well before we even had anything concrete to contribute.
I created our withjoy.com account, secured a domain for us, and created the layout of the whole thing. I chose the colors, put in any info that I know, and set up for any info I will have in the future.
I created a page in Lithuanian for all my family members that will be invited from Europe.
Once our venue was booked, I plugged in all the venue and hotel info, the scheduled transportation, etc. (It was easy to have all that info since we are getting married at a resort, and all the accommodations and information was provided altogether)
All I had left was to plug in our photos once we got them done, and we went live!
We also jumped ahead and worked on our save the date and invitation designs. We’re big Canva users and had a lot of fun working on them together. Again, once we got our engagement photos back, we threw it all together and placed our save the date order on Canva.
(Our save-the-dates were completed and ordered within 2 hours of getting our engagement photos back from our photographer).
CHOOSE YOUR COLORS
When you start your “designing” process early, you’re forced to choose your colors, font, etc. This is great because you get to revisit your initial ideas, really sit with them and change your mind if you want to before anything is live, and confirmed. You don’t want to chose all of that a week before you send you invites and your wedding aesthetic is locked in.
To recap – here is what you can you as early as possible to make you wedding less stressful (and added bonus – actually fun!)
- Create a rough draft of your guest list
- Lock down a venue, and use that guest limit/minimum to your decision making advantage
- Create a Save the Date list, a B list, and a “Potential Invite Only List”
- Research and create your wedding website
- Create a Canva account and start designing your wedding save the dates, invitations, signage
- Choose your colors and adjust throughout the next few months
These are the most simple (and fun) things you and you fiancé can do to get started on your wedding planning journey. The earlier you begin, the less pressure you feel to make any decisions that will be set in stone.
What are the first few things you got a head of that made your wedding process much easier in the long run?