Easy Steps For Planning A Wedding
Do It Yourself Or Hire A Wedding Planner

How do you begin to plan a wedding? There are steps for planning a wedding that are easy to follow. The steps below are a combination of what the experts say and based on my experiences with brides who I have worked with over the years.

There are 3 major decisions you must make first:

1. Set the date. Ideally you want to give yourself a 1 year or no less than 9 months to plan. If you are one who is planning a fast wedding in less than 4 to 6 months, you have to get started right away. You also have to be ready to compromise and know there will be a number of things you won't be able to acquire or do for your wedding because of the short period of time. With fast wedding planning, you have to be flexible!


2. Wedding ceremony and reception location. Will it be a religious ceremony or will it take place somewhere else like a grand ball room? Will you have a destination wedding? Will it be outdoors or indoors? Once you figure out where you will have the ceremony and reception this sets the tone for your wedding.


3. Wedding theme and formality. Will your wedding be a very formal or an informal event? Your wedding ceremony and reception site will have a bearing on choosing the formality you should have. Will your wedding and reception have a theme? Some popular themes are the beach wedding theme, hollywood-glam theme, and the Cinderella-fairytale theme. Vintage weddings and Medieval-Renaissance weddings are also popular.

It is a must that you figure out the answers to the questions above before you pick out your wedding dress and anything else dealing with your wedding.Why is this important?

Because if you don't take these steps for planning a wedding, you will find yourself making costly mistakes, like having to buy another wedding dress because you hadn't done the planning first. This happens to brides who pick the dress and then later decide on a theme or change the venue, which now doesn't work with the gown.

Now this brings us to.. should you hire a wedding planner or plan your own wedding? If you will be doing the wedding planning yourself, what tools do you need to do so?

Getting Help With Planning Your Own Wedding

Part of the steps for planning a wedding is to know where to go for help. Even though you are planning your own wedding you still need guidance to insure that everything goes smoothly and according to schedule. Having a wedding planning book as a guide, is a necessary part of the steps for planning a wedding. When planning a wedding on your own do this...

The DIY bride's wedding planning book... you can make up your own wedding planning book by getting a binder and then buy pocket folders and dividers to put in it. Then find free, printable wedding planning checklists online and wedding planning timelines to place in the binder. You can go to the library to check out books on wedding etiquette for additional information.

For the busy bride... it would be best to purchase a wedding planning book. The best planners have pocket folders, etiquette information and checklist in one convenient place. If you get a planner that is a loose leaf binder then you can put in additional pages of additional information you find. My experience has been that most brides who use these, say they found it helped them to stay on track and not forget to do something.

I know a lot of brides don't want to invest the time and the money in a wedding planning book and choose to wing it, so to speak. But guess what? They are the ones who I see coming apart at the seams and so stressed out the closer it gets to the wedding day. And most of the time they have a lot of little things they forget to do or run out of time for, days before the wedding.

Consider Hiring A Wedding Planner

For some... the first step for planning a wedding would be to find someone to help them. If you have the budget you can hire a wedding planner to help you. Depending on the help needed you can pay for a couple of hours of tips or have them working with you from beginning to end.

Wedding planners can save you a lot of time and money when you find a good one. They will keep you on track with your planning and can help you make decisions. They also can guide you in finding vendors who can work within your budget. A wedding planner's expertise is invaluable.

You can just hire a wedding planner or wedding consultant for "the day of" the wedding services. Whether you hire someone or appoint a family member or friend to direct your wedding on your wedding day, just don't try to do this yourself! It is hard to be the center of attention on your wedding day and direct what is going on. Put this job in someone's hands you can trust to do it right.

Wedding Attire

First you will pick your wedding dress. The next part of the steps for planning your wedding is to pick out the gowns and tuxes for all of those who are in the wedding party. But before you do that you must know your wedding colors in order to pick out your wedding party attire.

• The Bridesmaids Dresses
• Flower Girl Dress
• The Groom and Groomsmen Tuxedos
  

Once you know the colors for the wedding, you need to let the your mother and the grooms mother know so that they can start looking for their dresses. You may want to have the father's attire match the groomsmen attire.