You're engaged!!....Where the hell do you start planning?

The start is always the most daunting! Do you start with the venue, guest list, budget, dress, timeline? The list just seems never ending and the amount of advice from friends and family that will come your way can be incredibly overwhelming. ( Also keep a look out for those pesky family members who are all of a sudden making an effort). I joked through my own wedding planning about creating a quiz for the guest list and in order to accept the invitation our guests would have to get a certain amount of questions about us correct.... sounds petty now but my biggest rule was quantity over quality.

Now I wont lecture you on what you should or shouldn't do, or try and force unwanted advice your way but simply share a few ideas and you can see which resinate with you.

Our non negotable started with not wanting too many opinions clouding our judgement. Everyone and I mean everyone will have an opinion and they all mean well but it can cause doubt and alter our decisions based on out gut feeling. Much to my mums joy (sorry mum) this meant keeping lots of the details to ourselves and just focussing on working our way through our list and this really helped us enjoy the process more. Loads less stress and it was lovely to have all the guests experience all the little touches as surprises on the day, our family included.

If this sounds like something you would benefit from then good for you and a little tip that we found was that your loved ones want to be included, helpful and celebrate the day with you. To ensure no one felt left out we gave everyone a role either leading upto the day or for on the day. I made this a little more fun for my bridal party by creating personalised lanyards with funny photos of them and the roles printed on. I wasn't sure what they would make of them but they loved them! Turns out everyone loves a lanyard, makes them feel important and the girls wore them for the hen and brought the to the wedding for the morning of.

Anyway, back to the planning...my husband would stay start with the budget, me being more creative would say to start with the vision, are you thinking a rustic barn, manor house, english garden, family home, village hall? Do you want a big wedding, small wedding, small ceremony and big party? Once you have that vision in mind jot it down in the best way for you, mine was a seletion of pinterest photos and a google folder with notes and inspiration jotted down. We then combined the two, vision and the budget and this really helped narrow down our options and then worked from there on the other costs, availability and from there our to do list began.....