I got married on the 27th April 2024 to my gorgeous (now) husband. It was genuinely one of the best days of my life.

We did a wedding weekend:

Friday night family dinner

Saturday wedding day and reception

Sunday recovery breakfast

For anyone considering a wedding weekend, I cannot recommend highly enough! We got to spend some genuine time with our guests and it really took the pressure off on our wedding day. Just for my own study, I set a challenge for myself to say hello to everyone at their tables throughout the night. I had four rows of tables and only got through one… it was so hard!

Here are the top five things that helped my wedding planning and I hope can help you as well!

your engagement is the shortest label your relationship will have, enjoy it!

Wedding planning might take up most of your brain space during your engagement, but make sure you allow space for you two. After all, the wedding is just one day. Your marriage is for the rest of your lives.

One of my cousins gave me this advice, and honestly, it grounded me when planning felt a little overwhelming. It’s easy to get swept up in the whirlwind of decisions and to-do lists, but taking a breather can make all the difference.

It’s so hard to do, but take some time when you can to just be together and not talk about the wedding. These wedding-free moments are a great way to reconnect, and they remind you why you’re getting married in the first place.

Obviously if something is really pressing talk about it, but otherwise consider writing down what’s on your mind wedding-wise on a list in your phone and you can come back to it later. For that moment, spend some time talking about the now and the future.

write everything down… yes everything!

You won’t remember that detail on the day.

You’ll see me mention this lots, but I so strongly believe that as the newly married couple, you should be the Guests of Honour and not the Host. Let everyone else do the running around and thinking so you can leave your brain free to absorb one of the most special days of your life.

You don’t want to end up being the go-to for questions around napkin placement, when the florals are being delivered, where the cake knife needs to go.

WRITE EVERYTHING DOWN!

My run sheet for the 3 days ended up being 8 pages (it’s a little excessive I know). It had details such as the food and drinks menus, when the ceremony signage needed to be moved to the reception space (and that it needed to be changed to the seating chart), who is assigned for what task and arrival & departure times for every supplier.

Guess who got almost no questions thrown my way on the wedding day? It’s me… (if you didn’t guess me then go back and read that paragraph again).

I cannot stress enough how much people want to help you, but aren’t sure how. Write it down exactly how you’d do it, draw images, take pictures, create a whole wedding brief of images and descriptions (yep I definitely did this too…) and bring everyone onboard to a trip to what’s in your brain.

Delegation is your friend on your Wedding Day, and the people around you will be so happy to have a job!

the internet is equally overwhelming and a fantastic resource

The second you get engaged it feels like the social media algorithm is targeting your every waking nightmare about what might go wrong on the day, how you’re doing your wedding wrong and stunning Vogue-level weddings that are completely out of budget. A lot of it can be overwhelming, but the internet is not always evil.

A good way to navigate the content and work out if it’s for you is to literally ask myself “Is this content for me?”. If you’ve already locked in your florals or colour scheme and one person says “[insert colour scheme here] is now so out of date, try this instead” ask yourself whether that piece of content is for you. It might have been for pre-decision you, but post-decision you has locked it in, loves it and wouldn’t have even thought about changing it until seeing that reel.

There is plenty of inspo out there and the want to make everything about your day perfect makes these ‘helpful’ suggestions sometimes overwhelming.

If you love a suggestion but you’ve already finalised 90% of the decision in a slightly different direction, write it down and work out how you can incorporate it if you still love it down the line. Tweaks take a lot less energy than a complete re-write.

Some super helpful resources from the internet are things like “Which flowers are in bloom for my wedding month?” and “How do I write vows / a speech?”. For anything that’s less factual than flower blooming times, make sure you read lots of options. Speeches and vows were the hardest thing for us because it seemed everyone had a different opinion on how you HAD to write them - like a resume. Pluck out the bits of advice you like and ignore the bits you dont and craft it into something that feels right for you.

write a pack list

This also continues on from my point about writing everything down, but make a pack list. You won’t be packing your bags or boxes months prior, but if you think of something you MUST pack, write it on a list. You can then go through and check it off when it comes time to packing everything.

There’s nothing worse than getting to the point of packing, thinking you’ll remember it and then don’t until you’re 3 hrs away from home with your chosen wedding perfume sitting on your night stand.

The week that you most likely will be packing is the week that you have to remember literally everything else. You’ll have vendors asking for their final deposits or forms as well as your family sending you questions such as “what time is the ceremony?” (gosh, hopefully not though… but there’s always one!!).

Here’s an example:

Details Photos

Ring Box

Invitations
Save the Date
Envelopes
Any extras items you used to make your invites pretty (stamps, ribbons, wax seals etc.)
Perfume / Cologne
Your something old / new / borrowed / blue

Emergency Kit

Needle and white thread (also throw in some thread colours that match bridesmaids and the groom / groomsmen)
Bleach pen
Baby wipes
Tissues
Comb
Bandaids
Panadol
Bobby Pins
Mints
Toothbrush / paste

Hot tip: make sure you pack a smaller bag with everything you want to bring to the reception - touch up makeup, flat shoes, comfy socks, speeches etc. and delegate one of your bridesmaids or parents bringing this to the reception

the best decision I made as a professional event manager was for someone else to be a day-of coordinator

Yes, I know you probably expected this to be my final thing I learned, but my goodness it made the biggest difference.

I was fortunate enough to have a past colleague (and good friend) be my day-of coordinator, so she already knew how I ticked and which details I would care about, and which details wouldn’t concern me too much if a decision had to be made on my behalf.

Even the most organised brides (reference above where my run sheet was 8 pages and I had a design brief for my wedding…) forget things or make mistakes. Case in point - ME! I had completely misread my cake baker’s invoice to double check the date she’d locked in and she had written down the month after mine as the wedding date… 27th May 2024. About 30 minutes after she was supposed to arrive with the cake, Rachel asked me if I’d heard from her. I hadn’t, but she took the phone number from me and sorted it out. Point is, I didn’t even know that the baker had the wrong date until the day after the wedding because she sorted it out for me!

I know there were countless other small decisions she made on my behalf that day, but I am just so grateful she was there to make them for me so I could concentrate on my most important role that day - being a Bride.

tldr;

Write everything down
Take some time for your relationship
Make sure your day is about you love and not just what’s trendy
A day-of coordinator might be the best thing you do for your day!

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our wedding day