Wedding season can be a wonderful time, but it is not without its challenges. Beautiful dresses, elaborate cakes, and personalised wedding decor aside, weddings also have huge potential for stress. Whether you’re the groom or the bride-to-be, we’ve put together our top ten tips for planning a wedding to help you through the process.
1. Start Your Planning Early
One of the easiest ways to reduce stress in the lead up to your wedding is by planning early. Late planning will drastically reduce your options and could end up costing you your perfect wedding venue, maybe a hotel in Malvern? As well as your favourite wedding band or the wedding dress of your dreams. We recommend booking in the key parts of your wedding day as early as possible to avoid disappointment. It’s also a good idea to have most of the smaller personal touches sorted 3-6 months before the big day.
2. Get Yourselves Organised
It’s a good idea to create a master document with all of your wedding information in one place. The document can include supplier details, a wedding budget, itineraries and wedding checklists. Not only will this reduce your stress and help you to feel in control, it also stops you or your partner from forgetting key elements of your wedding planning. A master document is easy to print, so you can always hand it out to the individuals involved in the planning.
3. Make It Fun!
Planning a wedding doesn’t need to be all stress – it should be a fun and exciting time for all those involved. Try to enjoy the journey and make a celebration out of as many of your wedding planning events as possible. Whether it’s your wedding dress or suit fitting, a wedding venue visit, or a wedding cake tasting, there are lots of opportunities to invite friends and family along, or celebrate with your fiance whilst planning.
4. Research Wedding Venues
When choosing a wedding venue, you’ll need to ask yourself two key questions: what kind of wedding are you hoping to have? and, how many guests will you be inviting to your big day? Once you know the answers to these questions, researching potential wedding venues and whittling down your choices will seem much more straightforward. We recommend that you meet with the venue, a couple of times in the lead up to the wedding, to make sure all of your questions are answered and you’ve thought of everything, when it comes to planning.
5. Don’t Forget to Take Notes
Whilst visiting wedding venues and suppliers, be sure to make notes. There can be a lot of information to take in and you’re bound to forget all of the details by the time you’ve visited a few. To help you with your decisions, you could even try giving marks out of ten for elements that are important to you such as budget, style, service and location.
6. Create a Menu for You
When it comes to food, many brides and grooms worry about the wedding breakfast menu and get caught up in the details of other peoples’ opinions and preferences. At Mount Pleasant Hotel, we always advise our couples to choose a menu that they would enjoy eating, and work from there. It is their big day after all.
7. Get Creative With Your Budget
If your budget is tight, we advise you to spend a little less on aspects such as wedding favours and wedding cars, in order to get the reception looking and feeling the way you want it to. This is where you and your guests will be spending most of your time and it’s the bit you’ll remember the most.
8. Consider Lighting
Speak to your wedding planner to make sure the lighting at your wedding venue is right. Lighting is crucial in setting the right mood for your big day. Candles, fairy lights and festoon lighting can be effective in introducing lighting at a low cost, but can make a huge difference to the mood on the day and to the photographs afterwards.
9. Relax Before the Big Day
It’s easy to get swept up in the stress of wedding planning, but sometimes the best thing to do is take a break. Treat yourself with a spa day or a weekend break. It’ll leave you feeling refreshed and ready to get married.
10. Enjoy Your Wedding Day
And finally, make sure you enjoy your big day. You’ve planned everything to a tee so whether it’s your wedding planner, wedding party, parents, family or friends, it’s time to hand the reins over to someone else, so you can focus on the important bit – getting married.
Planning a wedding? The Mount Pleasant Hotel team are here to help. Our expert wedding planners will ensure you have the wedding day you’ve been hoping for.
Mount Pleasant Hotel is also licensed to hold civil wedding ceremonies. Get in touch today to find out more information or book a wedding venue tour.