How to plan your perfect wedding

Step 1: Brainstorm with fiance

The two most important people on your wedding day are the bride and groom. That means you have first-line responsibility for thinking about what sort of celebration will please the hosts, the guests, and of course yourselves. So planning starts by talking about what it might be practical, appropriate, and fun to do.

Some topics to cover include:

- What do the families expect from a wedding? Will there be major problems if you want to do something different?

- Do either of you have religious beliefs that affect your hopes for a wedding? Do you know what your faith requires?

- What kind of budget limitations do you expect to have? If the budget is really, really tight, what elements would be most important to each of you?

- When would you like to have the wedding?

- What were your favourite elements of other couples’ weddings? What have you sworn that you’d never, ever do yourself?

- How much time and effort are each of you willing to put into the project?

It can be very helpful to start this talk with one of the pocket-sized wedding planner books that wedding magazines and some bridal shops give away for free. These little books provide a list of every element that might possibly go into a formal wedding. Cross out the items that you don’t want to include, and make notes about the items where you agree on what you want, or where more research is needed.

Step 2: Reality check with outside world

Once the two of you have an idea of what might be feasible to do, you need to gather more information to make sure that your plan will really work. Don’t be surprised if you end up making a lot of changes at this stage! The work you need to do includes:

- Talk with parents. While it is not considered quite right to ask parents directly for financial help, it’s acceptable and practical to ask what sort of participation they want to have.

- Check into the legal and religious aspects. Make sure you know what is required to get a licence and have a legal ceremony. If you want a religious ceremony, talk with a minister now. Some churches book several months in advance.

- Do some preliminary shopping. Put your major effort into looking at the cost and availability of reception sites, as these vendors book the furthest in advance of all wedding vendors, and your decision here has the greatest impact on the style of your celebration. But also start collecting information on local florists, photographers, caterers, and any other vendors you may need.

Step 3: Start the wheels turning

Once you have a workable plan, it’s time to get real. Depending on how formal your wedding will be, and how great the competition for vendors in your area is, you may be looking at 18 months until your wedding day, or you may have just a few weeks to go. But you’ll have that part straightened out from your research in Step 2. Now you need to:

- Reserve ceremony and reception sites, making sure that the end time of the ceremony and the start time of the reception make sense together.

- Reserve other vendors. Photographers, videographers, caterers, and popular wedding musicians tend to book early, as do florists who handle really elaborate work. Start shopping as early as possible; you can always delay decisions with vendors who don’t need much lead time.

- Choose a wedding dress. The traditional order-ship-fit method takes about nine months. Even if you’re buying off the rack, it’s good to start shopping a few months before the wedding in case you have trouble finding something.

- Plan invitations. Invitations go out eight weeks before the wedding. Start your planning about four months before the wedding day.

- Get crafty. If you plan to make favours or other items yourself, start early. Making 200 favours takes a surprisingly long time, and you may just get busy in the intervening months.

- Register. If you’re going to register, you should do it before the invitations go out, as that’s the signal for people to start asking where you’re registered. There’s no point in doing it years in advance, as store inventories can change radically, forcing you to redo the whole list if your favourites are no longer in stock.

- Think honeymoon. A foreign honeymoon usually requires reservations made four to six months in advance. A local vacation can be planned much more quickly.

- Plan the ceremony. This is the part a surprising number of couples leave to the last minute! Start thinking about the ceremony as early as possible, making sure that you know about any religious requirements.