The Most Important Wedding Planning Decisions

The Top 4 Most Important Planning Decisions:

What are the Most Important Decisions you should make when planning your dream wedding? Planning your wedding is the greatest time in your life! It’s a time to dream, plan, grow closer to your fiancé’ & enjoy the entire experience, but it can also be extremely stressful & overwhelming! Putting everything together can seem so difficult, but once you have the main parts of your fairy tale taken care of, the rest usually falls into place!

So, today we are going to share the most important wedding planning decisions you should make first & our advice on how to make them easier. Leave a comment at the end if you have any further questions & we’ll be happy to answer.

Budget is definitely important & we could probably make it 5 instead of 4, but once you have your base budget figured out, looking at the big 4 will help you plan everything else & whether the overall budget needs to be adjusted.

1.) Venue:

“Ugh! I waited too long! The only venues left that have my wedding date open are all rustic or barn themes & I wanted a more modern look!” Your Venue, in our opinion, is the first & one of the most important wedding planning decisions. The reason is simple, they can only book one wedding per date & there are hundreds of other brides all competing for your day at their venue.

All of the Venues we partner with or have worked at all have one thing in common: they love our couples & want to give you the wedding of your dreams! Sadly, they can’t accommodate everyone on the same day! Venues, like us as Wedding Photographers, usually book 1 – 1 1/2 years in advance. So this means either finding another venue to accommodate your date, or looking at a different date. With weekdays & Sundays becoming more popular for weddings, many venues will even offer a discount to fill their open spots. Check to see if the venue you love offers an incentive to fill one of their “not as busy” days. Fridays are a gorgeous day to get married!

Style:

Venues come in all shapes & sizes as well as themes from rustic, to Victorian, to urban, to modern. There is a venue to fit the style you’ve always dreamed of. So first decide what style you want, then do a search for that kind of style online. Find a few that you’d like to see & book a tour as soon as you can. Once you know…..BOOK! Have your deposit ready & find the place that speaks to your heart.

(Photographer’s Sidenote: We always tell our couples to text us when they find the venue they love so they can verify the open dates to make sure we are also available. There’s nothing as sad as having an amazing couple tell us they just booked their dream venue but we are already booked for another wedding! Checking with us helps ensure we have your date or the date you’re considering available as well! We want to serve you well!)

2.) Photographers/Videographer:

Whew! Step 1 complete! The venue determines so much. It nails down your date which means you have a finish line in view! YAY!! 🎉🎉🥂 Second, we are definitely biased, is your Wedding Photography Team. Also one of the most important wedding planning decisions are the people who will capture your day, your new journey into happily ever after, & who you are as a couple. Let’s face it, there are as many Photographers as there are realtors out there! Anyone can go to Costco, buy a camera, & try to charge money, but finding a photography team that you trust & cares about who you are is more difficult.

There are a lot of different things to consider when searching for your Photography Team. Style, color, personalization, albums, etc. Do they do engagements, bridal sessions, bridal boudoir, video? You are not like any other couple! You don’t want cookie cutter, you want a personalized wedding photography experience that matches who you are! You want photos that are genuine & authentic to your relationship. You want a Wedding Photography team who looks for moments & tell a story of your day & not just someone who stands around & “snaps pics”

Connection:

Because of this, you need to choose a Photography Team based on how you connect with them & how they personalize your wedding photography experience. This is far more important than choosing a photographer based simply on price.

Once you connect with your photography team, we tell our couples to book quickly. Like we stated above, we only serve one couple a day to make sure we focus on them & because of this dates fill up quickly.

Once you have the perfect venue & we are booked to capture your day, ALOT of pressure comes off! For us, we get to focus on your engagement session & all the fun of getting to know you. For you, it’s now time to dip into your “Princess Style” & choose your dress.

3.) The Wedding Dress:

Ok, you’ve got your venue & we are officially booked to capture your day, now it’s time to wrap yourself in some wedding dress goodness! There are as many different styles of wedding dresses as there are brides who wear them! The dress sets the tone for the style of your wedding. That’s why it’s big number 3 on our list of the most important wedding planning decisions you need to make!

Some brides pick more than one dress for the different parts of their day! One more formal for the photos & ceremony & another for the reception. The thing to remember here is there’s no right or wrong decision when it comes to your wedding dress! What matters is that you feel beautiful.

We go into a ton of more detail to help you find your dream dress in our post: Choosing Your Dream Wedding Dress

4.) Cake:

Ok here’s where the rubber meets the road. This decision involves more than just look, it involves taste, design, size, tiers, number of guests, on & on! Wait what if we did cupcakes!? Wait, what about the groom’s cake!? Most cake shops recommend planning cake for about 75% of the people that RSVP to attend your wedding.

How do you even know how big your cake should be!? We’re glad you asked! To help with your cake queries, see our recent blog post where we interview one of Oklahoma’s Wedding Cake Greats:

How Much Wedding Cake do I Need?

You’re on the last point of the most important wedding planning decisions! No matter what else happens, your day will be perfect! You have your castle to get married in, we’ll be there to capture it, & Cinderella tweeted you to express her jealousy of the dress you’re going to wear! It’s going really well!

Stay calm & cake on!

Today we discussed our advice on the Most Important Wedding Planning Decisions you need to make to ensure your day is stress free! Comment below any questions you have.