Wedding planning is a full-time job that you didn’t really apply for and definitely aren’t getting paid for. With a full-time job, comes full-time responsibilities and decisions that need to be made. When it comes to planning your wedding, there are big things to worry about and there are small things that you just can’t sweat. This is when your maid of honor, bridesmaids, and your mommy come to the rescue! The best thing about having a maid of honor and your mom to help you is they can take some of the responsibilities off your plate, relieve your stress, and help sort through details while you focus on the bigger aspects of planning.
Things you shouldn’t stress over
Bridal Shower
For me, figuring out the wedding favors, planning the bachelorette party, and the bridal shower were just too many things for me to figure out. Thankfully, with the help of my maid of honor, bridesmaids, and mom I didn’t have to worry about those details. The bridal shower is something that your maid of honor and mom get to have fun planning, ensuring that every woman you love is invited to shower you with love and anticipate the big day!
Out of town guests and their accommodations
Hotel room blocks work for some people, but for us, we have people flying in from so many different places, with different budgets, and groups that making a list of recommendations for hotels nearby was the best bet. It’s not worth stressing over where your guests will stay. Your job ends at sending out the invite, the rest is up to them to get there. Going into wedding planning, I thought I wanted to do hotel room blocks and welcome bags for my guests when they arrived because I thought that was the norm. Then I thought, with everyone staying in different hotels, it would be too much of a hassle and they’re probably going to throw the gift bag on the floor and never look at it again anyway. I decided to save the money and forget about welcome bags. I made it easier on myself and let the adults make their own decisions.
Making your registry
For some reason, making our registry was such a grueling thought. I couldn’t get myself to register anywhere or search endlessly through a website trying to figure out what we needed as newlyweds. Since we live together already, we have the everyday essentials to get by, so that makes creating a registry a little more difficult. We are still in the process of decorating our home, so I figured we should register somewhere where we could get both appliances and furniture. After I started navigating through Crate and Barrel, I found things I loved and things I thought we needed like more towels, bedsheets, a dinner set, etc. and all of a sudden making our registry became fun. It was something I stressed about in the beginning, but realized I shouldn’t of. After all, it is just shopping online and I’m good at that 🙂
Favors
How many people are actually going to remember to take their favor on the way out? Let alone use it again, or want to stare at something that says “Raquel and Devin 2018” on it in their home. I’m not a big fan of favors that have our names on them like a mug, candle, etc. that someone has to take home and will shove in a pantry or drawer. Having an edible favor was more up my alley. Something our guests could enjoy and throw out when they were done with it. Favors are something that I think guests usually overlook so I don’t think it’s something that a lot of time or money should be spent on.
Guest List
“It’s not personal, it’s realistic”
When we started planning our wedding almost two years ago, we started with the guest list. Do we want a big wedding or a small wedding? Who do we want there? Friends of family? Have we spoken to this person in the last year? What’s our relationship with this person? No matter what you do, you can’t invite EVERYONE and you can’t stress over offending someone. At the end of the day, weddings are expensive, it’s not personal, it’s realistic. It’s important to have people that know both you and your partner and have been in your lives throughout your relationship. We knew a majority of the people we for sure wanted to be there off of the top of our heads and we knew we didn’t want more than 150 guests. You and your future spouse can jot down names and cut down the list as you go. Don’t put too much emphasis on caring about what people think, it is about you and your partner on that day and no one else.
I hope you found this post to be helpful! Check out my other post on how to stay sane while planning your wedding here.
xx Raquel