We Planned Our Wedding Part 1: 7 Tips for Planning Your Own Wedding

We Planned Our Wedding Part 1: 7 Tips for Planning Your Own Wedding

We planned our wedding, in the super expensive Bay Area, California, while living out of state, 1,400 miles apart from each other, 1 month after graduation (her), starting a new job (me), and buying a new house, and we did it without a wedding planner. I was living out of a suitcase at an AirBnB in Washington while she was packing stuff up in many suitcases to move out of Arizona. Long-story-short, we had a very busy and very stressful mid-2017 and I want to a share few tips that helped us in this arduous (word-of-the-day!) task of planning the quickest day of our lives.

1. Create a photo or video slideshow to play during your first dance!
Don’t have time for dance lessons or do not want people to stare at you during your first dance? Create a distraction! My wife and I were not confident about our dancing skills and did not have time to take dance lessons. Therefore, we created a slideshow to play during our first dance which helped us become less nervous about being the center of attention. Creating the slideshow itself was rather simple due to all the programs available out there; I personally used Apple iMovie but was also recommended Animoto. For a 2-minute-ish song, I’d recommend 20-40 pictures at 5 to 3 seconds per picture. Drag and drop the picture and a song into the program, arrange the pictures in the order you want and play with the transition types available in the software, and bam, a 2-minute first-dance video. It took me about 2 hours to select the pictures of us throughout our relationship and about 2-3 hours to create the video.

2. Split up multiple toasts/speeches throughout the night!
This advice was suggested to us by our MC since we had 6 planned speeches. The idea is that, not many hungry guests would want to sit through 6 speeches until dinner is served. Since we had Chinese catering (10-course meal!), we were able to split up the 6 speeches into three groups. Speech 1-2, then serve 1-2 courses, Speech 3-4, serve 1-2 more courses, Speech 5-6, and on with the meal.

3. Ask your friends for recommendations!
Yes, I know this might seem obvious but this helped us a LOT due to lack of time to plan. Our amazing DJ & MC were recommended to us and cost $500-$1000 less than the ones on Google search, plus their MC made our wedding run according to schedule. Our caterer was recommended and provided such amazing food that every guest’s first complement was about the food. Our videographer was also recommended, who gave us a discount. The video she created was the perfect summary of the whole day. We pretty much took the better vendors at other weddings and spliced them all together into an all-star wedding team.

4. Check on your purchases’ delivery schedule!
We saved money by purchasing all of the decorations except for the chairs and lights. Because of this, we needed to make sure everything arrived and guess what, they didn’t! 2 to 4 weeks before the wedding, you should call the vendors to check on your orders. For example, the ties that we purchased for the groomsmen and me did not deliver until 1 month after the wedding due to stocking issues! By checking early, we were able to purchase different ties and received them right before the wedding.

5. Be organized by creating schedules for each vendor
Letting a vendor (photographer, catering, venue, DJ, etc…) know your schedule may be required. I recommend creating a concise, specialized schedule for each of the vendors so they are not confused. A complicated schedule takes a while to understand and will waste time and cause confusion. I realized this after creating my schedule for the caterer and the photobooth vendor, who had totally different timelines. See samples below.

6. Keep Locations Close
Our wedding included the traditional ceremony, Chinese tea ceremony, and reception which all occured at the same location. Commuting is no bueno especially if you are constantly taking pictures and greeting guests. TBH, I don’t think we had time to even speak to our closest friends because we were running around getting pictures taken. On an already jam-packed schedule, you don’t have time to spend 10-15 minutes getting in and out of a car and driving out of a parking lot plus driving time to go from a barnyard ceremony to a downtown reception.

7. Assume that issues will happen at your wedding!
Last but not least, don’t worry about planning the perfect wedding! Be flexible and try not to affect your happiness on one of the most important days of your life! During our wedding day, my bride and I walked into the reception room to find out that the venue staff set up the wrong chairs up 1-hour before the ceremony. Our bridal party quickly switched out 200+ chairs and we don’t even remember that this was an issue at all when looking back less than a year ago. Also, we did not plan for traffic when commuting to the wedding from our homes and the bridal party missed their photoshoot which meant more picture time for the bride and groom. Additionally, during planning, we couldn’t find a videographer that we wanted for our wedding but literally, less than a month before our wedding, our friend recommended us her cousin who captured all of the details of the wedding that we wanted to remember. Things work out and if they don’t, something else may come along and make your wedding better than planned. If worse, then it is a memory of just one day that you can laugh about with your lover for the rest of your life.

If you are planning your wedding, best of luck to ya! And Congratulations! to you lucky couple! Part 2 and Part 3 of this post will be regarding cost saving ideas and what not to do.