Month One: Wedding Planning with Maddie
This is the third post in a new series about me, a professional wedding planner, planning my own wedding. If you’ve been following along on the blog, or on Instagram, you know that back in March, I got engaged to the most amazing man that I know! It has been a very busy and exciting last few months. In my last engagement post, I also announced a new blog series to share my own personal wedding planning process and decisions along the way. It's one thing to be a wedding planner planning other people's weddings, but when it comes to my own wedding, people have had so many questions. “Is it more stressful,” yes. “Is it going to be a huge wedding,” not really. “I bet it's already planned and finished, right?”, not even close.” But the question I get asked the most is, “What have you done since getting engaged?” To answer all of your questions and help you know what to do when you get engaged, here is what I did the first month of being engaged:
Photography by Lisa Joy Photography.
This post may include affiliate links. Disclaimer.
1. Budget and Discuss Who is Paying for What
After it set in that we were engaged and getting married, we both realized we are about to spend a lot of money. We had multiple discussions on how much we wanted to spend on our wedding from our own savings. We also had discussions with each of our families about whether or not they were going to contribute to our wedding fund, and how they wanted their money to be spent. This was really helpful in determining what we could afford and how we were going to proceed with planning our wedding. We did all of this before spending a dime or booking any of our vendors. The next thing we did was apply for a joint credit card. We chose the Capital One Venture card because it has good travel rewards that we can apply to our honeymoon. The money we spend on our wedding is helping pay for our honeymoon!
2. Get Ring Insurance
After getting engaged, the most common thing I hear is “Show me the ring!”, and it is almost always followed with, “It’s so pretty, did you get ring insurance.” Embarrassingly, I wasn’t really familiar with the concept of ring insurance, but I quickly saw the need for it. I will share our ring shopping experience with you all soon, but to summarize, Nick and I customized my ring and I would be absolutely devastated if anything ever happened to it. I did a lot of research, and decided to purchase ring insurance for both my ring and his through Jewelry Mutual. This is not an advertisement, and I am not affiliated with Jewelry Mutual, in any way. They made their insurance options simple to understand and it was so easy to apply. They had a lot of really encouraging reviews, and I feel confident that our rings are backed by a great company. If anything were to happen to my ring, or if I were to lose it, I know that I will be able to get it fixed or replaced because of Jewelry Mutual.
3. Choose our Bridal Party People
Choosing our bridal party was pretty easy, and very exciting. We spent time discussing how many bridesmaids and groomsmen we wanted to have, and when it came down to it, numbers didn’t matter, our people did. We had so much fun finding cute gifts for each of our friends and siblings to make asking them to stand beside us on our wedding day, exciting. We really wanted to honor those friends who have supported us as individuals and as a couple. I purchased each of my bridesmaids a cosmetic bag from Target that was the same color as our wedding color, neutral colored nail polish, keychains with phone chargers, personal tissues, and I wrote each of them a personal note asking them to be my bridesmaids. I took all of them out for brunch at First Watch the morning after our engagement party and gave them each their gifts. This was one of the first times that all of them had spent time together, so it was sweet seeing them all talk about how they knew me and Nick, and sharing stories. We had a blast brainstorming for bridal showers, bachelorette parties, and the wedding details. Nick found some customizable flasks on Etsy that he purchased for each of his groomsmen. He had each of their initials engraved on them, and took them each out to lunch individually to ask them to be his groomsmen. This was a really special part of getting engaged, and allowed us to share these moments with some of our best friends.
4. Go Dress Shopping
Wedding dress shopping was enjoyable, but there were so many options from styles, fits, fabrics, and designers that I became a little overwhelmed. I have never been one for glitz and glam, so I knew going into it that I wanted a dress with minimal frills. I actually went dress shopping two times, once with just my mother to try on some dresses and narrow down what I was looking for in a dress. We went to several bridal shops including Tesori Bridal, Joon Bridal, and David's Bridal. A few weeks later, I went back to Joon Bridal with my bridesmaids, mother, and future mother-in-law to look at my top three dresses. Us girls had the entire shop to ourselves, enjoyed mimosas, and found my dream dress. I plan to share a more detailed post about my experience wedding dress shopping and more about the dress I decided on after our wedding.
5. Start Premarital Counseling
Participating in premarital counseling was an easy decision for me and Nick. We had been attending the same college ministry, and going through a devotional book called Together With Christ that talked a lot about the importance of having a safe place to talk about important topics that will affect us both now and in the future when we are married. These early conversations drove both of us to want to participate in premarital counseling. There are many different ways you can go about counseling, either with a professional counselor or therapist, with a married couple that you admire, through a church, or with the person who will be officiating your wedding. We chose to do our premarital counseling with the pastor of our college ministry who will also be officiating our wedding. We have talked about our families, our childhoods, our parents relationships, roles of both the husband and the wife as it relates to the bible, money, sex, and many more things. Premarital counseling has been a great way to encourage us to think about these topics, and has allowed us to start having these conversations and make decisions for our married relationships before we have made our vows. I highly recommend every couple participate in some sort of premarital counseling and will write a whole post on our experience eventually.
This has been a very exciting time of our lives full of family, friends, and anticipation for the next phase of our lives to start together. This was just the first month, and there are still so many decisions for us to make before the big day comes. Subscribe below to get a reminder for next week’s post about what else we’ve been up to. If you have any questions about wedding planning and how I’m planning my own wedding, leave a comment below.
Cheers!
