Congratulations on choosing your lifelong adventure buddy!
I love keeping things simple, so the way I see weddings is this: It is a life milestone of finding your permanent adventure buddy. Your entire community of everyone who loves you will be there to do two things:
- Witness your vows so they can hold you accountable to them
- Celebrate with you because you found your person (and that is so exciting!)
So: Ceremony, Party
With those two things in mind, you can now make this as simple or as complicated as you’d like.
the Macro-Perspective:
One Special Day
It's one day, but it's also a special day that you will tell everyone about and have pictures to cherish and show people for the rest of your lives together.
Plan and party accordingly.
Other advice from yours truly
I am of the philosophy that if you are going to do something, do it WELL. Therefore, I suggest picking the details that you know you want and don’t worry about the rest. Remember, things such as the venue BECOME your photos, AND also: the amount of stress that I have seen couples spend on weddings is wild. Pick what you can put your time and effort into between the two of you and have fun riding with the flow for the rest.
Download several “ultimate wedding checklists” from Pinterest- combine them all into one document, delete out things you know you aren’t doing. Get rolling now that you know everything is covered on that list, including things you didn’t think about.
Create a wedding binder to hold all the contracts for each vendor, your invite list, extra notes and pictures. This way all your contact information for each company, person, detail, and timeline are all in one place.
Consider premarital counseling for ONE reason: A lot of people plan everything up until the wedding, like marriage is the end goal. Reality is: marriage is where it starts. It will be new for both of you, so talk about the hard things now. Talk about the things you never thought were rude, your love languages, what you need from each other when you're stressed, which direction the toilet paper roll goes on the hanger. All the things so you can start this new journey together stress free.
Last but not least: Consider eloping (and bring me along to capture the memories)
- I love the great outdoors- so if you’re down to roll your white dress and suit and tie in a backpack and hike the Tetons, let me know- I’ll be there with my camera ready to capture your memories.
- Love to keep it simple? I do courthouse wedding sessions too!
