First of all, CONGRATULATIONS!
What an exciting time in your life. I am sure you are soaking it all up and looking down at whatever lies on your left ring finger non stop.
I remember the overwhelming feeling of love and excitement (I am still living it... it kind of never goes away so beware) but more than anything, I remember just wanting to soak in all of the moments with my fiancé, Tyler.
The next day it felt like the whirlwind started. We called all of our close family and friends and shared the exciting news. Naturally, each call followed up with questions... lots and lots of questions.
Do you have a venue?
When are you getting married?
Now are you going to have so and so marry you?
Will these people be invited?
It felt like a lot. And as excited as I was to get to planning, it already started to feel like everyone else's opinions and priorities were going to play a factor (luckily we were wrong and we have been supported by so many people on our decisions).
My mom and sister had gotten me a Wedding Planning book (linked here, HIGHLY recommend) to help keep everything organized and to act as a checklist for all the things that needed to be done. We LOVE a checklist here.
The very page set the entire outlook of this wedding planning process for Tyler and I. It had us both individually come up with 3 priorities for our wedding day. Naturally, our individual ones kind of overlapped. In the end, we narrowed it down to 3 priorities that we were not willing to budge from.
1) We wanted to enjoy quality time together on or day without enduring any stress. This resulted in us choosing to eat dinner at a Sweetheart Table rather than with our party and us potentially looking into doing a first look. We also immediately hired a Day Of Coordinator to take care of everything for us on our big day.
2) We wanted really great music and photographers. This helped us narrow down a place where to start when it came to researching vendors. We started with the ones most important to us (music, venue, photos) and then went from there.
3) We wanted the day to reflect us. We did not want to do anything that felt fake to us. We did not want to invite people we didn't know just to please others. We wanted an officiant that knew us both personally to make our ceremony the perfect mix of personal, funny, sacred, and sweet. We wanted to have our favorite late night snack, White Castles, delivered in the last hour of the reception because it is on brand for us. We wanted to do a nontraditional guest book because we love photo booths and wanted to capture raw moments of our guests as our guest book. Everything you will see at our wedding is genuine and authentic to us.
Picking your priorities for the day will naturally help set up your planning process. We also chose to make sure we didn't forget the reason behind the day. It can be so easy to get caught up in the creating the "perfect" floral arrangements, signage, etc. but at the end of the day it is about starting your forever with your best friend.. and THAT is huge!
So yay - you're starting the most exciting chapter of your life! Soak it all up and choose what you want to focus on the most! Grab a wedding planner book (linked here) to help keep you on task and enjoy the process. Congratulations again, bride to be!