Wedding planning 101

The season of weddings have begun! Wedding planning can be a real headache, but don’t worry with this step-by-step guide you won’t even need to consider a wedding planner. It’ll be easy and stress-free. The most important part when planning a wedding is budgeting your time and your money, set a goal for each week of what needs to get done. Here is your easy step-by-step guide to your happily ever after.

1. Look at your budget. See how much money you have saved up for your big day. Now traditionally, the bride’s family pays for the wedding. However, now it's a brilliant idea for both partners to save up for your wedding. Once you have a budget, a reasonable budget is usually between $5,000, and $10,000. You can proceed to The next step. If you want to take it a step further, you can make a spreadsheet of where the money will go by categorizing: photography, decor, activities, cake, catering, wedding dress, gifts (party favours), and venue rental.

2. Guestlist. This can be the most significant pain you need to choose which family members you're inviting to attend your wedding or which friends or co-workers to invite. Write out a list and call your parents to see if there's anyone you should invite to your special day.

3. Choose your date. Find a season which you both love. However, it could depend on your venue and what they have available.

4. Find a venue. This can be a lot of fun. Websites such as wedding wire can help you decide where you want your wedding. You can message venues directly from wedding wire. There are a couple of things to ask the venue: Such as what is the capacity? Do you provide catering? Is there a cake-cutting fee? Can I plug in an iPod or iPhone to play music? Is there room for a DJ? Are there any extra fees? What decorations do you provide? What colours do you have that we can use? And once you're satisfied with a venue, you can move on to the next planning stage.

4. Booking your photographer. This is a fun one to do. Most photographers are on Instagram, so look up some local photographers and follow them for a week and if you like their work then book them got your day. Some people like having a videographer but in my opinion you are never going to watch it. It’s better to get a photo album printed.

5. Color schemes! This is the fun part of the wedding! You and your fiance need to come up with a good wedding theme. This can be tricky because each of you will have your own ideas of what to do. But, if you are a man and have ideas that don't measure up to your fiance. Please let her have the dream wedding she has dreamed of since she was seven years old.

6. Flowers and centre pieces. Many people get their flowers from Costco but lately their flowers have not been fresh for your wedding. Look up some local flower shops and see the beautiful arrangements they make in store before committing to them. Centrepieces are easy and do not have to be too expensive you can easily come up with something from your dollar store or ikea.

7. Cake. A lot of venues don’t make cake, so you get to go to bakeries and try all sorts of flavours from vanilla cream to merlot. Then send in your design and let them take care of the rest. Crave cupcakes makes wedding cupcakes too and that’s another option to do.

8. Create a registry. If you already live together then there might be no point unless you want something fun. You can even create a registry with Amazon!

9. Create a wedding website! This is so much fun to do wedding wire has really great free options to create it. This is so your guests can rsvp to your wedding and check out your registry as well.

10. Send out your invitations. It’s time to tell everyone you’re getting married. Vistaprint and Shutterfly are great for wedding invites.

11. Wedding dress shopping! It’s time to try on beautiful wedding dresses and get your girls together for fittings! A great cheap option for your bridesmaids and maids of honour is Azazie and I recommend doing the custom as it does not cost extra but be sure to add an inch to get extract. Also, this step I recommend doing right when you get engaged and during the entire process. Wedding dresses take forever to get to your house and you need time to do alterations.

12. Delegate tasks. Bridesmaids, groomsmen, best man and maid of honours are there to help you. Assign tasks to each person for your big day so you can have a stress free time.

There you go all 12 steps to a successful wedding. You can do each step every month or you can accomplish two tasks per month. Hopefully, this list has helped you to get some perspective and get it all done in time for your special day.