Budgets, Calendars and the Well Planned Wedding

thedecisivemoment.com One of my favorite ceremony designs for Brooke and Tom's wedding.

I am a Twitter follower of many of the wedding industry movers and shakers. You know them – Martha Stewart Weddings (@marthaweddings), Colin Cowie (@colincowie), Preston Bailey (@prestonbailey), Style Me Pretty (@stylemepretty) and others (FYI – follow Invision at @invisionwedding. Do it. Now). Come to find out, many of them were attending the Engage!11 conference this past week and I got to read all their fun tweets from the events. This conference focuses on the luxury wedding market. We are talking large budgets. And, it got me thinking. While any wedding vendor will tell you that they would love to have luxury wedding clients all the time (and I’ve had my share), I want to let brides know that they don’t have to spend a fortune to have a beautiful, gorgeous, personal wedding. Let me try to define the difference.

I’ll be honest. A wedding that has a large budget is really fun to work on. Why? Because. It’s a fantasy. It’s where you can fine tune design. It becomes its own thing. It has a life of its own. I get the chance to get lost in the art of floral design, be the paper snob that I really am deep down and marvel at exquisite designer gowns.

But I have also found that the beauty of a wedding has less to do with the amount of money you are spending and everything to do with the amount of time you have to plan it. There are lots of tricks to finessing a budget to get the things you want at your wedding. Plenty of DIY options on various wedding projects. But, regardless of what you are spending on it, if given the right amount of attention, even a budget wedding can be perfectly designed and executed. These are the weddings that are featured on wedding blogs. These are the weddings that are looked at for years and elements copied. These weddings might look simple and easy. But, believe me. Every single detail was thought about. It didn’t happen by accident.

I have planned weddings with all types of time frames and all types of budgets and I would say that to give really good attention to details, you need at least a year. Of my favorite weddings that I have done, I have had 15 months to plan. One thing that will help you a lot is knowing what you want and don’t want. That gives you the extra time and brain-space to be able to fine tune the minute details.

Regardless of how much time you have – hire a wedding planner! I know you would expect me to say that. But, it’s the truth. A planner/designer (and make sure they can do both) will help you keep all your elements working together. Give them the freedom to have an editing eye over the whole thing. Putting together the entire picture. That is where it all starts.

So, call me!