WEDDING TIPS

Having recently got married, in what was an absolutely magical affair on New Year's Eve, I thought I'd share with you some of the things I learnt along the way in the lead up to the big day.

To give you some context, we were engaged for just over a year and a half by the time the wedding came around which, for me, was definitely long enough. We got engaged in April 2015 and married in December 2016 meaning the entirety of 2016 was taken up with thinking about the wedding, talking about the wedding, planning for the wedding and EVERYTHING wedding. Don't get me wrong, it was an incredibly exciting time and one I wouldn't change, but personally I'm now finding it a relief to not have wedding-related things to think about.

So because of this, I'd like to share with you my top 5 tips if you're planning a wedding:

Tip One: Get people involved. Of course this does depend somewhat as to your type of personality, there are many people who want total control over everything, but for me having help from others made the whole process much easier. My mum in particular took control of the budget, making sure we weren't spending too much and keeping track of payments that needed making and when, and this was an incredible help. I was also intent on making the wedding cake from the outset (much to everyone's horror!) and, again my mum was a huge help with this, offering to make one of the tiers so it was one less thing for me to think about.

Tip Two: Make sure you only do what YOU want and only WITH who you want. I'm a people pleaser, I like to make sure people are happy and I often put others' happiness before my own. This meant that there were a couple of occasions throughout the planning process where I ended up crying to my now-husband because I was getting stressed out trying to make everyone happy. It was lovely to have people who were so keen to be involved in the planning and I'm so grateful to everyone who helped along the way, but if I could do it again there are a few things I would have changed. For example, when arranging the tasting for the wedding breakfast, we thought it would be a nice idea to invite both sets of our parents along so we could all enjoy a nice meal together. This was good in theory, however, I ended up leaving feeling very overwhelmed with everyone's opinions and unable to speak my mind when it came to discussing the options afterwards with our wedding coordinator at the venue, and overall feeling pretty frustrated and crap. In hindsight me and Nick should have gone along on our own, but you live and learn!

Tip Three: Stick to your guns. As I mentioned above, I was adamant from the beginning that I wanted to make the wedding cake and, despite repeated remarks from family and friends that it probably wasn't the best idea, that I'd be far too busy leading up to the wedding and why would I want to add any additional stress, I'm delighted to say that I did it. In the first stages of planning I did have grand plans to make the invitations as well, but this quite quickly went out of the window when I sat down to make some mock-ups and realised it would take me probably up until the wedding just to make them all (so, stick to your guns but know when to admit defeat as well). It makes me extremely happy and proud to say to people that I made the cake (with MASSIVE amounts of help from my mum) and it was a fun, challenging thing to do. If there's something you have your heart set on doing, or indeed if you want to hand every last thing over to someone else but you have people telling you to be more involved when you don't want to be, just STICK TO WHAT YOU WANT.

Tip Four: Don't leave your present buying until the last minute. (Especially if this means going into town the week in between Christmas and New Year!). Yes, we were quite disorganised when it came to gifts for mums, gifts for friends and family who had helped in the planning of the wedding and those that did our readings and gifts for our flower girl and page boy. We ended up spending way more than we should have because we panic bought and definitely felt pretty stressed about the fact that three days before the wedding we were still buying things for it! In the last month you'll find that even if you think you're all sorted, there will be things you've been putting off, or even planning to leave until closer to the time, but you'll suddenly feel like you have no time to do everything. Buy these sorts of things as you go in the months leading up to the big day, not the week before.

Tip Five: Have something fun planned. This doesn't have to be anything extravagant or expensive, but having something fun for guests to do, or something special planned in the evening really adds to the event. We were obviously lucky to have the countdown to New Year as a fantastic focal point to our evening and to add something extra special in the few minutes before midnight we handed out party horns to all the guests on the dance floor (they were black and gold to match our theme). It's only something small but it got people ready for the countdown and made for some really fun photos. We also had a large group photo after the wedding breakfast in which everyone had sparklers. We weren't too sure how it was going to work getting 70 sparklers lit at once, but it turned out to be really fun and was a great way to mark the start of the evening celebrations. The reason I would suggest having something like this planned (or a photo booth, silly glasses for photos, fireworks if your budget stretches) is that, firstly, it really helps people let their hair down and gives them a way to interact with other guests but also, we found that by about 11-11.30 some people were starting to flag a bit (dancing straight from 7.30-12.30 is pretty tiring!) so to have something up your sleeve to pep everybody up we found really worked for us.

I really hope these tips provide some inspiration and help to those of you out there planning your weddings! Of course each and every bride and groom is different so I think the most important tip is to just do what you both truly want. It's nice to think of others and of course you want them to be happy and have a great time, but try to listen to your heart and you'll have the best day!

If you've got any questions or comments please feel free to put them below - I'll be sharing some pictures form the wedding soon on here so keep an eye out!

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