Wedding Wednesday: How I am Planning Our Wedding

Wednesday, July 1, 2020


I feel like this is a pretty important one since we are not using a traditional "wedding planner". A lot of people recommended to me that we use one, but when I emailed to get quotes I could not justify the cost of a wedding planner. Some were upwards of $10,000 for a full wedding planner and for just a day-of planner I have already done all the work myself I may as well just do the whole thing. I am very fortunate that I have LOVED the wedding planning process, but I know for some people it is a million times worth it to use a planner. I have a friend who is going to be my coordinator the day of so that my family and I do not have to worry about making sure vendors and everything else is in place.

This may be a common question for any of you who are planning your own wedding: you may have been told that vendors would not talk to you unless you were going through a planner, but so far this is not the case. And a little known tip that no-one told me is that some venues come with a "day-of" planner. Which they typically actually help with month of coordination.

So how am I planning?
  • One of the FIRST and most important things we did was to decide on how many guests we would invite. This affects pretty much every other part of the wedding because there is essentially a 'cost per guest' and almost every vendor and venue needs to know how many guests you are having to give you accurate information.
  • Sean and I then set a budget and broke down all the 'pieces' we would need for a wedding. We then guesstimated the cost of each of those pieces.
  • After that I looked up wedding timelines on Pinterest to give me an idea of when things should be booked.
  • Once we had time estimates done I started emailing vendors to get better price estimates and we adjusted budgets as necessary. 
  • One of the first vendors I started emailing is photographers since we want engagement photos as well.
  • One we picked a photographer, she and I made a tentative wedding day timeline so I had an idea of when things should happen such as: hair and makeup, deciding if a first look right for us due to the time of the wedding, and how many hours of coverage would we like.
  • I also started making appointments to go to venues in person. We knew what we wanted in a venue already so it was just a matter of finding the right fit.
What parts have we done already?
  • Photographer
  • Venue for both the wedding and reception
  • Wedding dress
  • Bridesmaids dresses
  • Plates and silverware for the reception
  • Wedding invitations (we decided to skip Save the Dates because it just felt like an unnecessary extra expense for us)
  • Bridal hair and makeup artist
  • Hotel: we are just finalizing how many out of town guests we will have before we make the reservation
  • Cake: we are not doing a traditional cake, we are having a macaroon tower
  • Bride and bridesmaids' bouquets
What parts am I currently working on?
  • Picking linens
  • Deciding on overall reception decor
  • Finalizing the caterers we are interested in
  • Picking a DJ (this is Sean's job though haha)
Some tips:
  • Pinterest has been a life saver for us. We wanted a clear picture of how the wedding day would look so that we always had that vision in mind while making decisions. It has given us such great ideas and kept us on track.
  • Etsy has been absolutely amazing as well. We have found things at such great prices and we know our money is going to a small business. 
  • We found tons of amazing photographers by searching hashtags on Instagram related to photography in our area. 
  • There are also tons of apps to help with wedding planning, vendors, and budgeting.
This all is just to show you that planning it yourself is totally possible and actually pretty fun. Thanks for reading!


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