Are you struggling to find the time (and energy) to go out, meet planners, vendors, and face all the struggles, all that you need to do to plan a wedding? Are you looking for the best way to plan it all from the comfort of your home office? Here’s our guide on wedding planning at home; what you need to do, know, and tips on how to do it right.
Wedding Planning at Home: 10 Things You Can Do at Home
As much as it may feel like a disadvantage to be limited to your house, it isn’t. It’s an advantage in so many ways. You can take your time doing adequate research on a lot of what’s on your wedding planning checklist. You’ll be able to make well-informed decisions and discuss the different elements of your wedding with your partner and wedding planner. This is the ultimate guide to wedding planning at home.
1. Get Your Guest List Sorted
One of the hardest challenges of wedding planning is trying to narrow down your guest list into the right number. Before you can move forward with anything to do with your wedding, you need to be able to have a guest list to prepare for. Your wedding planning at home will allow you to have the time and the quiet you need to plan your guest list out the way you want to.
Tips for planning your guest list:
- Consider the volume of guests your preferred venue can accommodate – You wouldn’t want to have a guest list set and ready, only to find out that this is too big or too small for your wedding venue. Find out a good quantity that you are aiming for, according to the requirements of the venues that are on top of your priority list.
- Get your Partner and Wedding Planner involved – You want your partner to have a say in all of this as you both will need to create the guest list together. You both have your relationships with the parties you are planning to invite, and this needs to be discussed. Your wedding planner will be the one to help you decide on the more difficult decisions for your guest list. As well as keep you on track with the details of what you need to consider when creating your guest list.
- Categorize your list – Categorize your guests on who is a priority and who isn’t. This will be very helpful later on if you are forced to cut a number of your guests off your wedding list. This is also valuable information for your wedding planner. The list of ‘who isn’t a priority’, are the guests who you wouldn’t mind removing if required.
2. Plan and Book Your Honeymoon
You must not forget to plan and book one of the most important part of the wedding. The honeymoon. It’s a time where you can truly relax and digest everything that had just happened to you. Unfortunately, a lot of brides and grooms-to-be do not have this on the top of their priority list, and more often than not, it isn’t planned out too well.
What to look for in a honeymoon location:
- Somewhere easy to access– Unless you’re willing to brave the long flights and challenges of traveling right after your wedding, it’s best to plan for a honeymoon location that’s closer to home. Maybe a destination that requires just one (short) flight to get to.
- Consider your budget – You would have exhausted a lot of your budget on your wedding. You need to consider how much you’re willing to spend on your honeymoon, and base your decision on this.
- Consider immigration laws – It will be a lot easier to plan your honeymoon at a destination that doesn’t require a Visa to enter. Otherwise, it will just be paperwork you won’t have the time to do.
Once you have a location in mind, it’s time to start booking. You can do all of your honeymoon bookings over the internet. Here are helpful tips to find affordable flights online. Look for the perfect hotel that can accommodate you, and make the entire experience for you, as relaxed as possible.
3. Find the Perfect Entertainment for Your Wedding
A lot of the time, you can’t just rely on the reputation or the opinion of others when it comes to choosing your musical entertainment for your wedding. The music you have at your wedding will mold the entire feel and mood of your event.
You have to listen to their performances and see for yourself if you think they can create the atmosphere you want, and perform the music you are hoping for. You can take your time at home to do your research on the local entertainment that you can hire for your wedding. This will be one less task that you can tick-off on your wedding planning checklist if you do this as part of your wedding planning at home.
Tips for researching for wedding entertainment:
- Watch their live performances – The first thing you should do is check their live performances. In most cases, wedding performers, bands, or even orchestras, have some form of video that captured live performances. You’d want to see that they are very capable of performing in big events such as your wedding.
- Look for reviews – See what other people have had to say about their music. It’s good to read what people’s experiences are if there’s the opportunity to do so.
- Ask if they have experiences performing at weddings – Performing in a bar or at a concert is completely different from performing at weddings. It’s a good idea to see if they have adequate experience performing live at weddings. If they do, it’ll be a load taken off of your wedding planner’s shoulders as they will be able to handle themselves and their equipment on the day of the wedding.
- Ask if you can make song requests – Some music bands may be great at performing their practiced set-list, but it’s always better to have musical entertainment at your wedding who can take song requests. You may have a specific song you want to play as you walk down the aisle, when you first enter your venue as husband and wife, when you do your first dance, and even when you cut your cake. Your wedding entertainment should be able to accommodate song requests, either planned or spontaneous, at your wedding.
4. Shopping for Your Wedding Rings
Your wedding is more than just something you wear when you’re married. It symbolizes your promise to one another. It is a piece of jewelry that can remind you of your wedding day, your vows, and your purpose for marriage. It should be a ring that both you and your partner will love to wear for the rest of your lives. And you’ll have all the with wedding planning at home, to get the right ring for both of you.
You can take this time at home to find the perfect wedding bands for you and your partner. Have a look at our Diamond Wedding Bands and the many designs you can choose from, at different price points. You can also choose to have your wedding bands custom made if you have a specific design or preference for your wedding rings. You have this chance to buy wedding bands that are unique and special for both you and your partner.
5. Look for Wedding Tokens for Your Guests
With so many different factors that you need to consider on your wedding planning checklist, you may just forget how important it is to find the perfect wedding tokens to give your guests as a gift for being part of your special day.
Take this time under quarantine to look for inspiration on what you can give your esteemed guests. If you don’t know where to start, find inspiration from other weddings. Take this time to do your research. If possible, you may already be able to order these online, have them shipped to you, giving you the chance to prepare them way ahead of time.
6. Do Your Research for the Right Photographer and Videographer
You can’t just simply hire a wedding photographer and videographer with little knowledge of their work or the other options you may have for your content. You should take this time to do good research on who is the right photographer and videographer for your wedding. You’d want to be able to hire a team that will capture exactly what you want to be captured on your big day.
There’s nothing worse than coming home from your honeymoon and seeing your wedding video and photos for the first time, and feeling underwhelmed by them. This is why you need to take your time doing the proper research.
Tips for researching for the photographer and videographer:
- Check their portfolio – You need to see what they are capable of doing, as good as they may seem at doing studio, landscape, or sports photographer, capturing the intimate moments at an event takes a completely different discipline. You’ll have to look at their portfolio to see their experience and confirm that they can capture moments at events, the same way you want it done at your wedding. Remember, artists have different styles, and you’d want to work with a photographer and videographer with the right style for your wedding.
- Ask for their rates – As incredible or as a photography and videography team maybe, if they are too expensive, they are just not worth it. It’s important to also check and ask for their rates early on into the discussion of what you want for your wedding. You don’t want to have everything arranged with them, only to realize that you will need to sacrifice a lot of your wedding to accommodate their service charge.
- See if they’ve done a wedding similar to yours – Every wedding is unique. Your wedding planning may be focused on a rustic theme, a wedding on a boat, a destination wedding, or even a wedding at a barn. You’d want to know that your photographers and videographers have had the experience of covering an event similar to yours. Or, at the very least, are capable of adapting the challenging factors that come with a unique setting. For example, it’s not easy shooting a wedding at a barn if the lighting is not right. Your team of photographers and videographers should have the experience and the equipment to solve this problem in regards to lighting.
- Check for reviews – Reviews can be very helpful with the decision of who you should be hiring. Much like your wedding planning, the experience of working with so many different people at such a big event can be stressful. You’d want to hire a wedding photographer and videographer who will be easy to work with. You’ll be able to determine this through the reviews that other people have given them.
7. Build Your Wedding Registry
This is another part of your long wedding planning checklist that may be overlooked amidst all the chaos. And it’s something you can really take your time on when you have the opportunity for wedding planning at home.
How to build your wedding registry online:
- Choose an online wedding registry site
- Consider just what you need for your home
- Consider having gifts given that you can donate to a charity or an orphanage.
- Choose gifts that range in prices
You’d want to have a good wedding registry to help your guests get you the perfect gift, as well as to guarantee that you are not receiving anything you don’t need or don’t want.
8. Write Your Wedding Vows
A lot of soon-to-be-weds leave their wedding vows to the last minute, underestimating how hard it is to write them. There’s a lot of thought and emotions that go into writing your wedding vows. If you want to be able to describe what your partner means to you, in a way that you are 100% happy with, you need to take your time with your wedding vows.
Having this time at home could give you this advantage. You can sit down and contemplate what you want to say as you marry the person you love. The time a home will allow you to edit and re-write your vows until they are just as you imagine them to be. This is another advantage of wedding planning at home.
9. Find the Readings and Prayers You Want on Your Big Day
The big day often requires a few prayers and readings that commemorate your love and relationship. A lot of the time, the readings at wedding ceremonies are left to the planners to decide. But if you want to be able to create a more personal ceremony for you and your partner, you can take this time to look deep into literature catered for weddings, to find the perfect readings and prayers for your big day.
You’d want literature that accurately describes your relationship. You’d want it to feel personal as if it was written specifically for you and your big day. This makes the biggest impact on your ceremony as you, your partner, and your loved ones will be able to relate to what is said, making the entire event so much more memorable. Wedding planning at home will allow you to go through as many literature readings as possible.
10. Hunt for Affordable Entourage Dresses and Suits
As much as possible, you’d want to be able to save as much money as you can on your wedding. When everything from the venue, your dress, the entertainment, food and decorations add-up, it’s a big price to pay. If there’s one good way to save money on your wedding, it’s finding the perfect yet affordable clothes for your entourage.
You can take this time to look for cheaper attire options for your bridesmaids, flower girls, ring bearers, parents, and groomsmen. You’ll be surprised just what you can find with a little time researching. Find online boutiques or shops that cater to providing event attire, at friendly prices. This is far better than having your clothes customized, or buying from expensive wedding boutiques.
Tips on How to Plan a Wedding from Home
There’s a lot that you can do from home if you know just how to utilize and make the most out of your resources. You’d be surprised just how you can do to plan a wedding from home. These tips will help you do just that.
Make a List of What You Need to do: Work with Your Event Planner
If you want to plan a wedding from home, you’ll need to do a lot of research. But this is not as simple as just going online and reading a few wedding articles. There’s a lot to cover if you want to make sure that you’ll get everything you want for your wedding. Before starting any of your research, you first need to make a list of everything you’ll need for your wedding. Work with your event planner on this task to make sure that you cover all of the basis.
Here’s a basic checklist that you can work with:
- Wedding Theme
- Wedding Budget
- Wedding Date
- A guest list estimate
- Wedding Venues – Church and Reception
- Bride and Groom Dress and Suite
- Entourage Outfits
- Flowers
- Music – DJ and Band
- Food – Catering and Cake
- Photographer and Videographer
- Decorations
- Honeymoon plans
- Wedding Day Car
- Wedding Certificate
- Hairdresser and Makeup Artists
- Wedding day accommodations (for you, your entourage, and your guests)
Make a list of everything you’ll need to do research on to make sure that you don’t miss a thing amidst all of the information you’ll be dealing with. With all your time with wedding planning at home, you can really take your time on thinking everything over.
Make a Timeline
You can’t do this all at once. You’ll want to be able to make a timeline of what you need to do research on first, and what can be left to do closer to the date. For example, you have to be able to reserve a venue at least a year ahead of time as most venues that can accommodate weddings are commonly fully-booked in advance. This is something that should be at the top of your research list.
Tips on How to Do Your Research
When you have a good idea of where to start, it’s time to begin doing your research. There are a few ways you can go about filtering through the millions of articles on the Internet. For a little extra help, here are a few tips on doing research when you plan a wedding.
Have Your Budget in Mind
Have you ever gone to the grocery with just a handful of things you’re planning to buy, and leaving with a lot more? This situation can easily happen to you when you plan a wedding. There’s a lot that you will be deciding on. It’s really easy to just completely lose track of what you are agreeing to pay for. Before starting any research, it’s really important to have your budget set.
You need to discuss this with your partner and wedding planner. You’ll need a budget you’ll stick to, and a little emergency money set aside just in case you are forced to spend more than you’re expecting. This discussion can be easily made when wedding planning at home where you can really talk things over.
Look at Other Weddings for Inspiration
It’s hard to know what you want, or what you don’t want your wedding, without really having a good idea of what you can have for your wedding. You’ll want to be able to see what other people are doing for their weddings, to see if this is what you want for yours too. For example, if you’re aiming for a destination wedding, look at as many destination weddings as possible. By doing so, you’ll be able to point out exactly what you want at your wedding. Use other people’s events as an inspiration for your own wedding’s identity. Make the most of your time wedding planning at home by looking at all the inspiration that you can.
Make a Mood Board for Everything You Want for Your Wedding
If you have a good idea of what you want for your wedding, it’s a good idea to create a mood board for yourself. A mood board is a visual representation of how you want your wedding to come out. This includes inspiration for your decor, your dress, your entourage, colors, and themes. This is used all throughout your research process, as something to refer to when you need to make decisions. You’ll be able to stick to your theme better with a mood board to go back to.
You can also choose to create a modern mood board where you have a collection of photos and screenshots of everything you want in an album on your phone or laptop. Collectively, these photos should represent the overall theme you want for your wedding. It should include all of the inspiration that you want to follow for your own wedding. This is the fun part of wedding planning at home.
Read as Many Wedding Blogs as Possible and Make Notes
If you have a good idea of what you want your wedding to look like, and how you want it to feel like, then you’re ready for the next step of your ‘plan a wedding from home’ research. This is when you need to start reading as many wedding blogs as possible.
Wedding blogs are dedicated to helping you, the bride, the groom, and the planner, when it comes to everything need to plan a wedding. If you have specific preferences for your wedding day, you need to read as many blogs as you can about this and note down all of the relevant information that will help you with your own wedding.
Take advantage of all of the information that’s out there as people are really open about sharing their experiences. For example, if you are planning to have a wedding during the autumn season, it’s best to read blogs that share people’s experiences with a wedding during this time of the year. The important part of this research process is learning as much as you can from other people’s experiences. Know what you can do and what you should avoid.
Search for Sources of Materials Online and Compare Prices
Once you’ve read as many blogs as you possibly can, and you feel confident in what it is you exactly want for your wedding day, then it’s time to start looking for the sources of your materials and services. It’s a good idea to search for everything online and note down all of the prices, to give you the opportunity to compare these later on.
Have your event planner involved with this part of the process. You’d want someone who has experience with handling different vendors and services, to tell you if this is a good idea. You may want specific details for your wedding, but your wedding planner will be able to tell you if this is both affordable and advisable to have on your wedding day. A good example of this is the choice of music entertainment. You might have a band or DJ in mind, but an event planner will be able to confirm if they will work well for your wedding day, your venue, and your location.
Work alongside your wedding planner and find as many sources online. Compare all of the prices, advantages, and disadvantages of each source, and make a well-informed decision when it comes to hiring both services and buying materials online.
Read Reviews
You can’t read a book by its cover. For wedding services, you can’t trust a website entirely on what is projected on their websites. You’ll want to get a real perception of what to expect from different services and vendors. You can do this by reading real reviews written by people. Honest reviews will help you a lot as people always explain both the positive and negative experiences they’ve had working with different vendors.
To help you decide on what vendors or services will work perfectly for you, you should take some time to read the reviews written about the ones you’re interested in. If you can, you should read these alongside your wedding planner. Reading reviews will make the biggest difference in all that you need to plan a wedding. You’ll have all the time to read reviews if you’re wedding planning at home.
Have a Plan B Ready
With so much going on at your wedding, and all you need to do to plan a wedding, not everything will go just as you have planned. For everything that you are deciding on and confirming, you’ll always want a ‘PLAN B’ just in case you’ll need it. Your second option should be something you have access to when you’ll need it. Take the opportunity you have wedding planning at home, to plan for problems that may encounter.
For example, you should have a second choice for car services on your actual wedding day just in case you have problems with the car you have booked. Having a safety net will eliminate many possible stressful scenarios that do commonly happen at weddings. Have a back-up for your dresses and clothes, for your band, for your photographers, and even your venue.
Take Advantage of Sale Dates and Holidays
If you want to be able to save money on your wedding plans, you should take note of all the dates that could get you a good bargain. These can be holidays or end of the season clearance sales that you know all shops often get involved with. Try to plan all of your purchasing around these dates to help you save a significant amount of money on your overall wedding.
The advantage of wedding planning at home is that you can buy everything from your decorations, your dresses, and even your invitations, for a lot cheaper if you plan for these sale dates. If you’re wedding planning at home, you can keep on top of all the sale dates without the concern of missing the opportunity for a discount.
“In all the world, there is no heart for me like yours. In all the world, there is no love for you like mine.” — Maya Angelou
Final Thoughts
This time you have with wedding planning at home is the perfect opportunity for you to create more beautiful memories for the wedding day. Click here to shop for Diamond Bridal Ring Sets, perfect for your wedding. But above all else, this will allow you to make your wedding uniquely planned to represent you and your love. There’s nothing more special than that.