Tips For Planning Your Ideal Wedding

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Last month John and I celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary and my sister is currently planning her wedding. John and I didn’t really have a traditional wedding as we got married in Florida with just the two of us. We purposely didn’t invite any friends or family as we knew some could afford it and some couldn’t and we thought that this was a fair way of doing things. As we had our wedding exactly the way we wanted it I thought I would share some tips about how to plan your ideal wedding:

The dress

To start with, I had planned on buying something thin and easy from somewhere like Monsoon. Florida in September is pretty hot and I didn’t want the stress of having a big dress and having to transport it there as well. However, I actually ended up with a very traditional wedding dress and while I loved it, I wish I’d stuck to my original plans.

My dress was beautiful and I absolutely loved it but it was far from practical. John had to attempt to lace it himself and I couldn’t even sit down in it. When shopping for a dress keep in mind the location of your wedding, season of the wedding date and what you’re going to need to do in the dress. You can find a really beautiful range of wedding dresses at styleaisle.

Stick to a budget

It’s very easy for things to get out of hand when it comes to wedding and finances. You might think that because John and I got married in Florida it cost us a fortune. It didn’t. Well, it did cost a lot of money but we’d had the holiday book before we decided to get married there. The wedding aspect really didn’t cost that much.

In order to save money where we could we shopped in sales a lot and had an amount to spend to start with. My not so ideal wedding dress was half price, John’s wore a suit bought for over 50% off in the M&S sale and we also bought all of our rings during the after Christmas sales as well. As we splashed out on the location it made sense to save anywhere else we possibly could.

Be selfish

I firmly believe that a wedding should be about what the bride and groom want. If we had planned our wedding thinking about what everyone else wanted us to do, or who we needed to invite, I think I probably would have ended up hating my wedding day. A lot of the time, too much time is spent thinking about the guests, other people’s needs and what they want. It’s obviously lovely to celebrate such a happy day with your friends and family but take time to remember who the wedding is really about.

Wedding planning can be a very stressful time and if all else fails, write a list and stick to it. There are websites designed to help with everything wedding related and they really do help.

Click here for more wedding inspiration and tips!