• Plan your day around what you as a couple love and don’t worry too much about tradition if that’s not important to you. At the end of the day, you’re just throwing a big party for your friends and family… it’s a celebration of your love and that can look however you want. There are literally NO RULES, it’s up to you. 

• Ceremony programs honestly aren’t necessary if you’re wanting to save somewhere (but neither are menus, and I printed one for every guest soooo… set your priorities lol)

• Utilize family with talents that might be useful! Everyone wants to help if they can, so don’t be afraid to ask for it! My dad designed our invites, my mom made all of our handmade candle wedding favors, my sister-in-law did my hair and makeup, my mother-in-law dropped off all of the glassware to our florist after the wedding when we were on our honeymoon. 

• Even if your fiancé doesn’t seem super into the planning, they WILL have opinions on some things, so be sure to listen when they do! In my dream world, I would have had my husband in some cool jewel tone colored suit, but that’s so not him, and what he picked looked great. He really wanted us to write our own vows, which I was terrrrrified to do, but in the end it was so special because they were more personal, and I knew it was important to him. 

• Set aside time for sunset photos. About 30 minutes before sunset, plan to sneak out for some time to just get away from the craziness of the reception, and (hopefully depending on the weather of course!) capture some magical photos in some of my faaaavorite kind of light. This was so important to me on our wedding day, and those photos are some of my favorite from the entire day. 

• If you’re buying things, try and choose items that you will actually use again when possible. I went with some sandals that aren’t super fancy or really wedding-y (but they were comfy and a fun color!) and my earrings weren’t super bridal I just loved them, so now I can wear them whenever I want and it’s always fun when I do! I bought a lot of frames for signs and pictures, so I made sure they were really my style and now I have them all around the house! I did the same thing with other decor… we didn’t buy much because most of the decor was florals (a big ticket item that was pretty high on my priority list). 

• The MOST important thing I learned though, is that at the end of the day, no matter what it looks like, or how perfectly planned it is, what you will remember is how you felt and how much love was all around, so all that matters is that you say “I do” and know you get to spend forever with your favorite person. So be sure to pick an awesome photographer to capture all of that AND what it looked like, because it’s certainly fun to look back at it all once the memories start to fade!