The planning of your special day can be part of the fun, but it can’t be denied that it can get a little stressful from time to time, especially on top of your day-to- day duties. Therefore it’s worth trying to reduce some of this strain wherever possible so you can enjoy the whole wedding process, from start to finish. With that in mind, here are a few tips to help you on your way.
Leaving Little Room for Error
Plan everything in only one location; this will help to minimize error and everything going awry. To make sure that everything shows up at the right location, including your guests, one location makes things so much easier. It will be helpful for vendors – like your caterer or florist – and will give you peace of mind.
Make a “Plan B”! Seriously, there is nothing more disappointing on your wedding day than when the weather simply won’t agree and your once-in- a-life- time affair gets rained out. Of course you can’t control the weather, but you can plan for it. Make an indoor Plan B alongside your outside Plan A. Expect the best, but be prepared for the worst.
Here’s a handy tip. In case the cake gets slightly damaged in transit or during set up, keep a couple of flowers from your color scheme on hand. Place them on any damaged areas to keep your cake looking perfect. It will also look like it was ordered that way, because your cake will adhere to the wedding color scheme.
Keep it Organized
RSVPs are incredibly important in order to know how many people are actually coming to your wedding. Make your life easier by numbering on the back of each RSVP that corresponds to the guests in your list. Looking for a number instead of names will help you more quickly check them off the list. Furthermore, you should include self-addressed envelopes for guests to send the RSVPs back. This is made easier by printing them out, or buying a stamp or personalized stationary. This saves you the effort of hand writing the same address over and over again. It’s also a good idea to address two envelopes to each person right from the get-go: one for the invitation and one for the thank you card. This will help your post-wedding tasks go quicker and more smoothly as well.
Of course one way to keep everything organized is to throw it all into digital format. Instead of worrying about your guests mailing RSVPs back, why not make this a feature on your wedding website? This will keep your RSVPs organized and up to date, without waiting for them in the post and without risking any getting lost along the way. Aside from RSVPing, you can also have them picking their meals, sign up to the program schedule if they want to present something, and even allow them to tick things off your wedding registry. It’s incredibly easy to set up a site like this and there are a lot of free graphics, templates, and backgrounds out there to get you started – there are plenty of options discussed here. In the end, accumulating the info you need through a website will make your life so much easier. It also helps you to give your guests more information than is possible on the invite alone; for example, letting them know that the wedding will take place on a lawn and therefore they should probably not wear stilettos.
DIY Decision Making
Get other people to do some of the work for you. For example, once you know your color scheme, tell each bridesmaid and give them a link to a site in order to pick out their own dresses. This ensures that they find something that they like and that you have one less thing on your to-do list before you say your I do’s. Just be sure that everyone uses the same website so that the dresses are all the same shade of the color you told them to go with.
Let your guests seat themselves! Not only does this give them a bit of freedom and ensures that you don’t get blamed for seating someone at the wrong table, it also saves you from having to create a seating plan and place seating cards in each spot at the tables. This will save you a lot of time and planning hassle.