Nick and I have now been engaged 7 months and those 7 months have absolutely flown by. I put “6 Months In” as the title for this post because we didn’t start planning straight away, we organised an engagement party and chose my ring etc etc. I haven’t really written about the wedding on here because a) I don’t want to give too much away before the big day and b) I found the first few months of organising the wedding quite stressful (I mean just take a look at these wedding statistics from Larsen’s – it’s scary), but I’ll come on to that in a bit. It’s only really in the last couple of months that I’ve felt more relaxed about the whole thing and I really want to focus on enjoying this short time in our lives where we get to plan our big day and be someone’s fiancé. But 6 months in I’ve learnt quite a bit with regards to the whole wedding planning so I thought I’d share some of my thoughts on the experience to date. Here goes..
I loved our engagement party
We were quite undecided as to whether or not we would have an engagement party but I’m SO pleased we did. Nick and I have very different families and they haven’t spent much time together, we also have different groups of friends. Our engagement party brought everyone together, gave everyone a chance to meet and and it was so lovely to celebrate with all of our nearest and dearest.
It’s stressful
I know a lot of girls plan their wedding from a young age but I never put much thought it until we got engaged. Coming from a Greek Orthodox background there was some pressure to have a Greek church wedding but Nick and I aren’t religious so it didn’t feel right for us to get married in a church. I think had I of known exactly what I wanted from the beginning it would have been less stressful as there are a lot of decisions that need to be made upfront, close together and I found that hard. I had been warned that it would be stressful, that there’s a lot to do and a lot to arrange but I hadn’t forseen that the decisions themselves would be as stressful as they have been. One thing that wasn’t stressful was finding the best wedding photographer for the job. We had so many recommendations from family and friends, that I’m confident we have made the right choice. The stresses of planning a wedding can be overwhelming, so it is no surprise that some people choose to elope. While planning our big day, one of our friends showed us this blog post about a 3m curve wedding in the Rocky Mountains. If you are planning to elope sometime soon, you should definitely take a look at the Adventure Instead website to find out more.
You can’t please everyone
Leading on from stress, I think quite a bit of that comes from not being able to please everyone. I didn’t want to disappoint members of my family but not getting married in a church but at the same time we had to arrange what is right for us. Wedding guest lists is another area that can cause conflict and for me it was most important to have the people on the list that matter to us most rather than friends or family we never see. I think with every weddding there will have to be a degree of compromise and as long as you can live with the compromises that are made then there’s no point in worrying over them.
You’ll be surprised by your friends and family
And by this I mean that some friends and family will be absolutely amazing, they will offer to help, be extremely supportive and just generally do all of the right things along the way to help out. Then others that you thought might be more involved and interested, take a bit more of a back seat, which is fine because as long as you have a close knit group of people you can rely on that’s all that matters.
Most things cost more than you predict
Before we started booking our suppliers or venue we drew up a spreadsheet with realistic estimated costs for everything. Well so far quite a few suppliers have cost more than we thought they would. Our photographer for example is more expensive, which is fine because I had a very specific style in mind and we absolutely adore her work so the additional cost is worth it, but it is something to bare in mind.
Choosing THE dress isn’t as easy as you might think
How many people do you hear saying that they found their wedding dress within the first few dresses that they tried on? Well it took me countless dresses. Bridal shops seem to stock small or very large sizes, it’s never inbetween which completely puzzled me considering the average dress size in the UK. How am I meant to know how a dress will look if it doesn’t even slightly do up or if it completely swamps me? I visited 5 bridal shops, in 3 of the 5 I found dresses I liked but I just couldn’t decide if they were the one. It wasn’t until the final shop that I actually tried on a dress that fitted me and could really see how it would look on the day that I knew it was the perfect dress for me. What turned the wedding dress shopping experience around was that the shop assistant in the final store knew exactly what she was doing, you can click here to view wedding dresses. I had a style of dress in mind, she let me try on the dresses that fitted that style, and when I thought I had tried on the last dress, she said she had something else she’d like to see me in. Well, THAT was my dress. She found it for me, based on my body shape and what she thought would suit me. Not only did it fit, did it make me feel amazing but I’m also having some adjutments made to the dress so that it is completely my own bespoke dress. I have to say that finding my dress has made me so excited for our big day. Have you planned a wedding? How did you find it? Also do let me know in the comments if you’d be interested in any specific wedding planning posts! Follow my blog with Bloglovin