My top 4 wedding planning tips!
- Zoe Louise Throup
- Sep 2, 2018
- 10 min read
Welcome to my, what I’d like to call, first ‘proper’ blog! For the many months of time I spent contemplating creating my own blog, the first idea I always had was to share my experience of wedding planning by giving some no-bullshit wedding advice and tips!
First of all, lets set the scene of this blog and give you the background story of my… sorry, ah-hem, our wedding planning journey! This is something I would regularly have to correct myself on as I would repeatedly forget that I was sharing the wedding day with another person… that person being my, now, husband. Told you this blog was going to be honest. The truth is, I did most of the planning and that’s because I wanted it that way. I’m a bit of a control freak and if I had left it up to my husband to plan, the groomsmen would have ended up wearing black suits with brown shoes, I mean.. urgh no. Anyway, I have digressed…back to the point. Setting the scene….
Tom proposed to me in June 2016, not going to lie, best day of my god damn life (except from the actual wedding of course). We were dressed as Tweedledum and Tweedledee from Alice in Wonderland for a family party amongst my mad family also dressed as various Disney characters. My 6ft 5 brother pulled off a Flyn Rider look from Tangled and my sister fully committed to the role of Jack Sparrow from pirates of the Caribbean-bloody brilliant. Anyhow.. I was totally shocked at the proposal, I had no idea it was going to happen that night and I guess that’s what made it so perfect.
Fast forward 2 years and 3 months later, we are now married having tied the knot on March 24th of this year. Our day was utterly amazing in every way, I wish I could re live it every single day. However, what I wouldn’t want to relive is the planning! Yes, there were fun parts to it but mostly it was… STRESSFUL! So.. because of this I wanted to share with you all my 4 top tips to aid you in the wedding planning journey that really helped me and could really help other bride to be’s.
Before I begin with the ‘tips’, I do not claim to be an expert in wedding planning.. I don’t want to be. I’m just here to give you some honest advice to help you avoid getting into a shit storm of wedding chaos. Also.. I’m a pretty reliable source to take tips from because we managed to pull off an epic day! So here we go… here are my 4 top tips…
TIP 1- Allow yourself plenty of time
Ok, so first tip is a bit mundane, but this is SOO true. Tom and I started planning our wedding a week after he proposed (mainly because I’m an eager beaver that just CANNOT wait). So in June 2016 we started our search for the perfect venue hoping to set a date for summer 2018. A summer wedding was always what I thought would be perfect, so I was pretty set on this idea. Turns out, the venue that we absolutely loved had no chuffing dates for summer 2018… AT ALL! Panick stations…. My thought process was as followed-
''The wedding is ruined''
''No-one wants to go to a wedding if it’s not in summer''
''I ain’t getting married in cold weather''
''My life is over''… and so on.
Once Tom brought me back down to reality (as he usually does), we set the date for March 2018. Having found the perfect venue, we then began to search for everything else, entertainment, food, photographer, the list goes on! In doing this we began to realise that suppliers such as these were also booked up or could only offer limited dates.
The moral of this story is, you need to allow yourself plenty of time to book a wedding or more than likely you will end up booking a venue that you ‘kind of’ like or having a band play that you think is ‘just alright’ and gals…. that just ain’t good enough and you know it.. you gotta love that shit or it ain’t making the cut, and the stuff you usually love is the most popular bringing me back to the first point of allowing yourself plenty of time.
Genuinely, having time to plan your wedding allows you to get what you really want and ultimately make your special day as perfect as possible. I would use each month to focus upon a couple of elements of the wedding and this really helped as it took away any stress or panic of leaving things to the last minute and seeing your bank account take an absolute beating. I mean, people thought I was crazy when I bought the bridesmaid dresses 13 months before the wedding, but I viewed this as checking off one more thing on the ‘to do list’. Probably was a crazy move in hindsight, considering my sister (the maid of honour) fell pregnant a month before the wedding… luckily the dress still fit… THANK THE LORD, ain’t nobody got time for searching for the exact same dress, now a year old, 4 weeks before the big day!
So my advice is, aim to give yourself atleast a year to plan your wedding, time is your friend in this game ladies. Trying to plan everything last minute is a slippery slope into a pool of stress and chaos. Use the time you have effectively by taking one step at a time. Doing this will make the process a lot more pleasant and easy to manage. I actually used an app on my phone to help guide me in what I should be doing each month and it allowed me to check things off the list as I went along. I also bought myself a wedding planner, which i would highly recommend to any bride to be. Having a planner allows you to keep all the wedding 'bits'' in one place and is a great little companion to take along with you to venue viewings or meetings with your florist as it can be very easy to forget what you have discussed or agreed upon with your suppliers at every meeting, therefore always a good idea to keep a track of that shit! One more thing- recruit family, friends and that wonderful fiance of yours (don't give him an easy ride gals- get him wrapping those jars with some hessian- Tom bloody loved it....lol) to help you. My family were bloody gems, we would regularly spend Sunday afternoons forming a production line, brother printing, dad cutting, mum sticking and sister decorating. They may want to kill you after sitting and doing it for 6 hours, but its all about that quality family time... right? Shout-out to the fam for putting up with me.
TIP 2- You don’t have to stick to traditions
Galss, the year is 2018 which means we are living in modern times where you can pretty much do whatever the hell you want for your wedding, within reason of course!
When we first started planning our wedding, Tom wanted to get married in a church. Something I was not up for… nope. First of all, we aren’t religious, and I don’t particularly enjoy singing hymns to an organ in an echo’y environment. Nothing wrong with it if you do enjoy that, but that just ain’t me. When we explored the idea of getting married onsite at our wedding venue, it was definitely not traditional, and the decision to do this had potential to ruffle some feathers shall we say. However, we went with it and even Tom realised that although not the traditional way, it was our way. When I say ‘’our way’’, that really depicts our ceremony. We were able to have family readings that harboured elements personalised for myself and Tom and we even had Disney music played as we walked down the aisle which was BLOODY BRILLIANT!
Another tradition is the cake. Everytime I think of a wedding cake, fruit cake always springs to mind… who really likes fruit cake? I feel like its very rare for people to exclaim their favourite type of cake is fruit cake… hey, who am I to judge. Anyway, we see it all the time on the internet and TV, a pristine white cake with 3 tiers sitting perfectly for all the guests to admire. Every single wedding I have ever been to with a traditional cake, I have noticed it does not get eaten..like.. ever! It gets cut but no-one eats it. People are too busy having Jager bombs at the bar or posing infront of a las vegas backdrop in the photobooth. All that money spent on a wedding cake and nobody bloody eats it! As you can probably tell, this displeases me quite a lot. I was adamant that this would not be the case at our wedding so, we opted for donuts, not just any donuts, krispy bloody kremes!! My thought process for this was, donuts are so easy to eat, they are easily grab-able, people could carry on dancing whilst scoffing on the glazed goodness. The result of my master mind thinking=there was not one single donut left the next morning, they went down an absolute treat. Not the traditional choice but a choice that cost a lot less, proved a lot more successful and tasted, mmm delicious!
So, don’t let traditions tie you down to a narrow range of choices, like I said its 2018, thinking outside of the box and avoiding traditions brings out some really unique ideas. So if you want your cousin Dave to do a speech, then bloody well have him do one! It’s your day and you should have it exactly the way you both want it despite what anyone thinks you should be doing. For our wedding, I had my maid of honour and chief bridesmaid do a speech aswell as the traditional speeches and I do not regret it at all. Sometimes the traditional way is not always the best way and doing something different can create some amazing memories that make you remember the day as something you were able to get really creative with.
TIP 3- Be open minded when dress shopping
Wedding dress shopping is legit, a magical experience making you feel like a Disney princess. There are so many amazing wedding boutiques now, meaning that the choice of dresses is huge and so diverse. If you are anything like me then you’ve been saving your favourite wedding dress styles on your pinterest board since your first date with your, now, fiancé. So by now, you pretty much know exactly what style of dress you want and your adamant you’re going to get it. That was me all over! If you end up going with a couple of family members then more than likely they will pick out a couple of gowns for you and you’re probably going to think you hate them, I remember looking at the gown my sister picked for me thinking ‘’absolutely not hun’’. But honestly the best thing you can do is just to try them on! Its not going to do any harm, you might hate it like you thought, but you might absolutely love it! The gown my sister picked for me, that I was absolutely not going to pick can be seen pictured below on my body on the wedding day… so there you go, I tried it on and I bloody loved it, I felt like a sass queen and the classiest bitch in the UK. If I hadn’t of had an open mind, it probably would have taken me months to find the perfect dress. I knew It was ‘’the one’’ because it gave me a warm fuzzy feeling and caused the tears to start flooding! You should 100% commit to the dress that gives you ‘’that feeling’’. I can’t really describe what ‘’that feeling’’ is as it will be different for every single bride, but when you feel it, you will know.
Tip 4- Remember why you are getting married
My final tip, if your reading this then it means you have read tips 1-3 so thanks for sticking with me, you’re a gem!
This is 100% my most important tip. In amongst wedding planning, there can be many contributing factors that can cause stress and problems. For example, family putting their six eggs in, who’s uncle Joe sitting next to and why is fourth cousin Bill only invited to the night do… that sort of thing. Another example- Money…do we have enough to pay the caterers deposit, how do we ask the groomsmen to pay for their own suits and so on. Having a no-bullshit approach to this post, I will admit that myself and Tom definitely had our fair share of squabbles during planning (usually over the table plan – this was nearly the death of me.. no joke.). It is SO SO when this happens to remember what it is all for, why you are actually putting yourself through the almighty task of planning a wedding. And it’s because (well it should be), you are marrying your best friend and love of your life. I would often get completely carried away with planning and lose all sight of what was important and that was… me and Tom and making a commitment to each other amongst all the people we love the most.
Having this mind set genuinely helped me in moments of stress and relieved some of the pressure of the situation, helping me to realise that no matter what happened on the day, whether it was running to schedule or not, or there was some awkward energy on table 7 between the guests, I was getting married to my love and that’s all that mattered. Hand on heart when you wake up on your wedding day, every single thing you ever panicked about will disappear and you won’t even think about it, you will be swept up in your perfect day, feeling like the belle of the ball, absolutely loving life.
In summary… happy wedding planning ladies, I hope my tips will help you in making the process a stress free and fun time… I do not envy you… been there, done that and bought the t-shirt!
All the photos used are from our wedding so I have included a list of all the suppliers we used here (they are all amazing and would highly highly recommend every single one of them) -
Venue- Hornington Manor- https://www.horningtonmanor.co.uk/
Photographer- Peter Boyd Photography- (Unfortunately does not do wedding photography anymore)
Videography- MacVean- http://macveanvideography.com/
Caterers- Poppy Caterers- https://www.poppymarquees.co.uk/
Band- Carly and the Kicks- https://www.facebook.com/carlyandthekicks
String Quartet- Kendal string quartet of Leeds- https://www.facebook.com/kendalstringquartet/
Magician- Mark Waddington- http://mark-waddington.co.uk/
Makeup artist- Alison Westaby- https://www.facebook.com/alisonwestabymakeupartist/
Flowers- Kelly Derbyshire
Cake (Donut cake)- Where the ribbon ends-https://www.facebook.com/wheretheribbonends/
Gown- Sassi Holford bought at the bridal collection in Harrogate- https://www.thebridalcollectionharrogate.com/
Personalised bridesmaid hangers- KC's Sparkling creations- https://www.facebook.com/kcssparklingcreations/
Thanks for reading.
You know love me xoxo..... Gossip Girl....
lolz, bring back gossip girl!
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