Wedding planning: getting started

As you might know from my previous post, I got engaged over Christmas.

Now the excitement has calmed down a little we’re allowing ourselves to start thinking about planning our wedding. Particularly as we recently received this beautiful picture of my engagement ring the wonderful Lucy Stendall Photography took for us. We love it so much. Thanks Lucy!

My engagement ring – ®Lucy Stendall Photography

We’re thinking of 2014 for a wedding date and whilst that seems quite a way away – I’m a firm believer that it’s never too soon to start. Oh and I love organising.

So, faced with the apparently insurmountable task of beginning to sort out our ideas and start looking for venues, dresses, cakes, photographers and more where do we begin?

Here’s what we’ve done. Let me know in the comments if you’ve got any other hints or tips.

Google, Google, Google

Our search history is a veritable who’s who of East Midlands Wedding venues at the minute.

Well organised, nice websites catch our eye, particularly those who are very up front about their prices and what’s included. I’m someone who likes to do the research myself before speaking to people/suppliers directly so if I can read about your venue and download/request an estimate of prices via email then I’m happy.

I bookmark everything too, which reminds me that I really need to organise them *addict*

Find it, Like it, Pin it

Image from someecards.com

So what do you do when you’ve found all these amazing ideas and suppliers online? Yes bookmark them by all means but what’s even better? Pinning them to your pinterest board, obviously!

Pinterest is a wonderful way of organising your ideas for your wedding and separating them by theme or type e.g. ‘book themed’, ‘lego themed’, ‘dresses’, ‘venues’ etc.

You can also have up to 3 secret boards if you want to keep your final ideas secret from friends and family.

I urge you to start pinning – who knows what else you’ll find?

Wedding Fayre

This is really where we officially kicked off our planning by visiting the Save the Date wedding open day at the beautiful Thrumpton Hall in Nottinghamshire.

We met a lot of lovely suppliers (I even bumped into an old school friend!) and had a nice nosey around the venue and the grounds which were stunning. Particularly great for a winter wedding, I think. We’re going to a friend’s wedding here in a month and can’t wait.

My mother-in-law-to-be and moi got carried away trying on beautiful fascinators and hatlette’s made by the very talented Amanda Caroline. I fell in love with her vintage rose hatlette (pictured below – modelled by yours truly).

I tried on this beautiful hatlette at Thrumpton Hall wedding fayre

I would recommend Save The Date magazine to any East Midlands Brides – it’s a wonderful magazine full of great ideas and suppliers from the region. We’ve booked tickets for their Wedding Event with a Difference on Sunday 14 April in Nottingham City Centre and can’t wait.

A Practical Wedding

A Practical Wedding by Meg Keene

I had read recommendations for this book on a few websites including Lucy Stendall Photography, so after getting engaged I decided to treat myself to a copy to see what the fuss was all about.

Well. I’ve only just started reading it in little sections but I can already see what makes it so popular. It’s just so amazingly sensible. Great advice on focusing on what’s important and suggestions on how to work out what what might be. It’s mostly American-weddings focused but still very interesting. I don’t think this book will be too far away from me over the next 18 months.

The book is based on the brilliant blog, A Practical Wedding.

Friends

If you’re getting married in your late 20s onwards you probably already know a whole host of people who have already undertaken the mammoth mission you are about to embark on. They, as I have found out, will be one of the most important and useful resources you can have.

I already have lots of great recommendations for DIY elements, suppliers, venues and lots more. Plus it’s been great for getting an idea of budgets and how to get started!

I have also inherited a HUGE pile of wedding magazines from a friend who in turn inherited it from another friend. I’m looking forward to passing them on again after our wedding (if there are any pages that haven’t been cut up or ripped out left by then!)

Getting organised – the geeky way

Spreadsheet

The first Christmas present I ever bought my fiance (when he was my boyfriend) was an ‘I heart Spreadsheets’ mug which he loves to this day. This is no more obvious than if you look at our current wedding organisational tool – the mammoth spreadsheet. Currently a work-in-progress it is destined to be an all-singing all dancing macro and conditional formatting wonder. Watch this space. Already it has about 7 workbooks covering everything from budget, quotes, guests, things we already have and theme ideas.

You can download excellent Spreadsheet workbooks from:

A Practical Wedding

Nottingham City Council

Folders

Our organisation isn’t restricted to electronic organisation though, following our first wedding fayre we realised we needed something to do with all the leaflets and brochures we’ve been given. Hence the wedding planning folder was born. Nothing special (just a simple A4 folder from Home Bargains – Paris themed (of course!) with document wallets), but an invaluable addition nonetheless.

Blogs

The wealth of wedding inspiration out there on the internet is… immense.

There are so many websites and blogs out there – checklists, inspiration boards, lists of suppliers, photographic features… You imagine it, it’s out there.

There are so many though that it can be hard to work out which ones to actually start with. I recommend the following for beautiful features and excellent down-to-earth articles.

Any Other Woman

A Practical Wedding

OMG! I’m Getting Married

Style Me Pretty

Rock n Roll Bride

Rock my Wedding

Love My Dress

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