Planning Your Wedding: Getting Started with Initial Alignment

Initial Alignment

Planning a wedding is often a lumpy process. The blessing and the curse of wedding planning are that some of the biggest pieces like budget, guest list, wedding date, and venue are all mostly decided up front. Then, depending on your engagement timeframe, there is often a lull where the big items have been completed, and you’re not close enough to do the details yet. Then there is often a big push as you get closer to the wedding and you realize just how many details there are. But right away, just to even start wedding planning, choosing those initial big pieces requires some serious conversations with the two of you surrounding your vision for the day as well as with your families surrounding their possible financial contributions.

In this post, we’ll first walk through questions and ideas surrounding this vision to help you both get on the same page. Then in the next post, we’ll discuss the money aspect of this vision before we close with some final tips to reconcile the two, as well as have these tough conversations with many of the other closest people in your life.

To start, walk through the questions in each section with your partner, and then take a look at some ideas on how you can go about having some of these conversations with other friends and family as well.

Vision

●      How big or small of a wedding do each of you want?

●      What is feasible for you both regarding internal and external expectations?

●      Which aspects of a wedding are important to one or both of you and which ones are not as important?

●      How involved do you each want to be in the planning? Are there any others who want to be more or less involved?

As you’re brainstorming, it can often be helpful to go through a list of wedding topics together (check out my wedding planning guide here, as well as others from websites like The Knot and elsewhere). Discuss at the outset what you’re excited and not excited about. This is the place where you and your partner should get on the same page and be honest with yourselves about what you do and do not care about. You can then prioritize what you care about and you can let go of what you don’t to manage the overall cost.

As you start having those conversations with others, these initial conversations with the two of you will help you both to present a united front when inevitable frustrations and disappointments arise with other friends and family members who may have a different perspective. Here are some examples.

Fun personal example: When my husband and I were planning our wedding, we realized that neither of us cared about buying expensive wedding rings for each other because we just cared about the symbolism of it. We also wanted to match them as much as possible. We ended up purchasing rings for about $12 each, and to this day, it’s one of the pieces of our wedding that I’m most proud of doing together because of how we were on the same page.

Another personal example: My husband and I both felt stronglyabout making our ceremony “us.” It was important to both of us that it be religious and incorporate both of our different backgrounds. So while most officiants we interviewed charged around $250 or so, we splurged more than ten times that to have both a rabbi and a pastor officiate (who also happened to be husband and wife) and included complete customization of the entire ceremony experience as well as multiple pre-marital counseling meetings.

We also printed programs with quite a bit of background, explanation, and a detailed ceremony outline for all wedding guests. Every word spoken during the ceremony had meaning for the two of us, and we still get comments to this day from guests who could tell we put in quite a bit of effort and loved it.

Here are a few tips to help if money is an issue (because it always is):

●      No one will know the venues you didn’t choose. Even though you, your partner, and maybe some close friends or family might tour a venue or help you pick decorations or designs, the vast majority of your guests will have absolutely zero concept of the options you didn’t choose. Use this to take heart as you’re going through big lists, having to make tough decisions, and feeling the pressure to make your wedding “you.”

●      Revisit your vision and review your list. Consider breaking your vision into smaller groups of “Must have,” “Nice to have,” “Probably don’t need to have,” “Definitely don’t need to have.” (You honestly might have to do this often and frequently as you get a new fun idea or a new vendor quote that’s more than you expected and you want to reorganize your priorities.)

Consider what about each piece of the vision is important to you and if there are alternative ways to make the important part happen. For example, if an outside ceremony is important to you, you could consider having it at a more nontraditional venue such as a park or an overlook instead of an all-inclusive/groomed venue (but maybe still think about a rain plan, just in case).

●      If some elements of your wedding are only important to one of you, consider how you might combine those elements in new ways. For example, a first dance may not be so important to one of you, but taking dance lessons is important to the other as a planning stress relief, so you could still take a lesson or two even if you don’t use the moves at your wedding. You could also just have one of you explicitly pay for that important piece as well.

●      Realize that weddings are often one of the times in life where people tend to give significant gifts to the couple. This is something to consider when planning your registry and realizing that you might get back some of the costs. A general guideline for guests is to gift the approximate cost of their dinner back to the couple. (Of course there are significant differences to this aspect of etiquette, but you can take it as a starting point.)

●      If someone has strong guest list opinions, consider asking them to help contribute more specifically to defray the cost of those additional guests. For example, having kids at the wedding may be important to parents, but you can consider how much extra that might cost based on how many kids are among the guests invited.

Here’s a link to get my free list of wedding visioning questions and budget planner to help you both through this. I’ve coached so many couples through this process and I know it can be quite the process! This should help:

Ultimately, the beginning of the wedding planning process when you start to attempt to compare venues, put a guest list together, and add up costs can be one of the most stressful times in the planning process. (And of course it’s right at the beginning.) Try not to let it sap your motivation and your enthusiasm for planning your big day and each other. You are getting married for a reason, so stay true to that throughout the planning process. You will get through it, and now you’re a few steps closer to having this tough part of wedding planning nailed down.

Looking for more financial advice? Check out what services and programs Momentum offers or schedule a free intro chat with Sarah!