Planning a wedding is a ton of work. It was more work than I could have imagined. A wedding planner was just not in the budget for us, and honestly I think I’m a bit too controlling to have let someone else plan the wedding with me. Which is probably why I ended up doing most things on my own. I included my mom and my sister on some of the fun stuff like dress shopping and cake tasting, but I handled all the researching, contacting vendors, making decisions, paying vendors, etc. I bounced everything off of Taylor (my husband), but he was so laid back about the whole thing he didn’t really mind what I did.
How Did I Do It (Without Losing My Mind)
When we got engaged I was in the middle of my first (and only) semester of graduate school and Taylor was in his second semester of Law School. Because of this we knew we’d have a longer engagement for financial reasons. We got engaged February 9, 2017 and got married October 27, 2018. So a year and a half to plan a wedding. This definitely helped because I was able to take my time and plan our perfect wedding.
The first thing I did after getting engaged was purchase The Knot wedding planner binder. Y’all should know that I definitely prefer to plan and write on actual paper instead of digitally, so although there’s plenty of great (free) resources online, I wanted a physical book. I truly believe The Knot Wedding Planner binder is the best out there. It is so comprehensive and goes over EVERYTHING you need to know. This helped me so much because I honestly knew nothing about planning a wedding. And I can give y’all this opinion because I also bought ANOTHER wedding binder. Yes, I had two wedding planner binders because I can’t control myself. I bought the Southern Wedding Planner because it was so pretty. It has a white linen cover with gold accents and the pages had pretty watercolors doodles, but it honestly wasn’t very functional. I still found myself using my Knot binder because it just went over so much more.
I was going to include in this post how to plan in your bullet journal, but I barely used a bullet journal when I was planning my wedding. I started my first bullet journal halfway through our engagement, and I definitely used it to help me keep track, but most of the big stuff was already planned. However, I will be doing a whole post of bullet journal wedding spreads! Everything I would do if I was planning my wedding now.
Tip #1
It’s easy to get overwhelmed in the beginning stages of wedding planning, so my first tip is to decide the 2-3 things that are MOST important to you. That means the things that you couldn’t picture your wedding without. For us, that was our venue, date, and photographer. I wasn’t going to think about anything else, until I had those taken care of.
Of course my first focus was the venue because you can’t know your date until you have your venue. I had always dreamed of a wedding in a plantation or a historical building. Unfortunately, plantation weddings are pretty pricey and so are most historical venues. We ended up picking The Old Governor’s Mansion because it wasn’t an all inclusive venue. You paid for an empty building, which meant we could control how much we spent and ideally come out cheaper. It’s also a beautiful building that was a perfect size for our wedding.
Since we knew we wanted our wedding to be in late fall, we had to work around the LSU football schedule if we wanted anyone to show up at our wedding. Also, since our venue was in downtown Baton Rouge it definitely couldn’t have been on a home game weekend, but we ended up picking the off weekend. This weekend is in HIGH demand for all venues in the area so it was important to book the venue (and everything) early.
After we had that locked in I started researching photographers like a mad woman. I knew photography is probably the most important aspect of a wedding, as the pictures are the only thing you’ll have to remember your day by. I knew this was an area where I would splurge a little, but it was difficult to find someone who had beautiful pictures within a reasonable price range. Overall, I LOVE how all of our pictures turned out. She took our engagement photos, bridal portraits, and wedding photos. However, I was very disappointed with how long it took to get our pictures back. i don’t know if I would choose differently because at the end of the day we got beautiful pictures that we’ll cherish forever.
Tip #2
You will very quickly realize that everyone has an opinion about your wedding. I think it’s important to take other people’s opinions with a grain of salt. When it comes down to it, this is you and your future husband’s wedding day. It’s not anyone else’s. With that being said, if someone (i.e. your parents) are helping out financially, you do need to take into consideration their opinions. This means you might end up with some of their friends you don’t really know, or they might really want a certain baker or musician, and that’s fine. This day is important for them too. It’s not easy for parents to “give away” their daughters and sons. However, when it comes to what’s most important for you and your fiance, stand your ground.
When it comes to everyone else’s opinions, they DON’T MATTER. At all. You can take it, or leave it. Sometimes you might need a recommendation on a good DJ, so you ask your friend who just got married, and that’s great! I definitely recommend asking people you trust about vendors. However, some people will provide unwarranted opinions. Like “You should have a band, NOT a DJ” or “You HAVE to invite children” or “why wouldn’t you have a flower girl and a ring bearer?” or “You really shouldn’t DIY your invitations.” You don’t have to explain your choices to anyone. Follow your gut. You made your decisions for a reason. Just because everyone else does it at their wedding, doesn’t mean you have to at yours.
Tip #3
Planning a wedding by yourself is a lot of work, and you can’t do it all. At least when it comes to the extras. That means anything that isn’t the wedding, like engagement parties, bridal showers, the rehearsal dinner, etc. If you’re like me and want to control every little detail, it will be hard to let these go, but you can’t worry about them. You have to trust your bridesmaids and families. My sister threw me an awesome bridal shower. All I did was gave her a list of who I wanted invited, and then I let her do her thing. I just showed up the day of and it turned out great. My sister-in-laws planned our rehearsal dinner. I didn’t know ANY details until the week of the wedding, but it came together so nicely. Was I a little worried there wouldn’t be a rehearsal dinner? Yeah. But I knew it didn’t matter. And I also trusted that they would come through for us.
Bridal Shower
Mimosa Bar 
Bridal Shower Favors
Rehearsal Dinner
Tip #4
It’s totally doable to plan our wedding by yourself, but you HAVE to stay organized. Whether you use The Knot wedding planner binder, your bullet journal, or an app, find something that works for you and track everything. Save all your vendor contracts, receipts, and copies of checks/payments in one place. You should have a master to-do list somewhere that you can refer to occasionally to make sure you aren’t forgetting something! You might think you’ll remember everything, but it’ll be hard to get married if you forget to pick up your marriage license (usually within a certain time-frame) or realize you never hired an officiant and it’s a week before your wedding. Any time you start feeling overwhelmed, look at your list and work on checking something off. It’s also so satisfying to check off tasks as you accomplish them.
You’ll also need to fill in your wedding party on all the details of the wedding. I typed up an itinerary for everyone (bridesmaids, groomsmen, and parents) for the day of the wedding. This way there was no confusion of where to be at what time.
Tip #5
This is the most important tip. You can ignore everything else I’ve said so far, but trust me on this. Don’t forget the real reason for the wedding. It’s not to throw the best party of all time, or to look amazing in a beautiful dress, it’s to marry the love of your life. The wedding is one day, but your marriage is forever. Don’t let the stress of wedding planning cause fights in your relationship. Don’t let it consume your whole lives. Take some time to be with your partner and remember why you’re marrying them. But also, ENJOY THE PROCESS. Being engaged is such a fun time in your relationship, and it goes by so quickly. So take some time to breathe and enjoy it.
BONUS TIPS
- Stick to your budget (as much as possible)
- Don’t tell EVERYONE you talk to EVERY detail- you want some details to be surprises for your guest; also they probably don’t care nearly as much as you think they do
- Talk about something other than the wedding; your friends and families still have things going on in their lives
- Take care of yourself- eat healthy, drink water, exercise
