Hire a professional wedding planner Deciding on whether or not to use a wedding planner to help you with your ceremony is not a difficult decision; in fact the mitigating factors are fairly straightforward and easy to assess. It is important, however, that you make this assessment very early on in the initial stages of your wedding planning. After all, how useful is a wedding planner after you have already made all of the decisions? In fact the only thing you’re going to want to come up with first is a rough budget that includes a total number of how much you want to spend, as well as estimates about how much of that money you wish to spend on individual categories, such as the caterer, music, the reception hall etc.

Your total budget will largely influence whether or not you choose to hire a wedding planner. In fact this is the first criteria you will use to see whether or not you will be hiring one. To put it simply, if you cannot afford a wedding planner there is no way that you can even think about hiring one; and since all of the functions of a wedding planner can be performed by yourself they are by no means necessary, just generally good to have.

The second criteria you will use to decide whether or not to hire a wedding planner is the total number of people you have helping you with the actual wedding. If you have a large group of friends or relatives who will be helping you, and they are fully committed to helping you with the entire process, then a wedding planner may be unnecessary because you already have a lot of extra hands to help you with the tough work. Keep in mind however that their commitment to the process is crucial; having people drop out halfway through the planning process can be very difficult on you, so make sure that they are in it for the long haul.

Lastly, you will want to decide whether or not you need to have absolute and intimate control over the entire ceremony. If you are a control freak, then chances are you will not be getting the biggest bang for your buck out of a wedding planner because you will be undermining their every decision and wanting to do things your own way instead of using the methods they recommend. But if you are okay with letting go of a little bit of your control, than a wedding planner will work well for you. Hiring a wedding planner can be a great way to make sure your wedding goes smoothly, as well as reducing some of the stresses that you would otherwise have to deal with. A wedding planner is not for everyone, but if you meet the above criteria then chances are good that you will enjoy the experience of hiring a wedding planner and truly gain the most that they have to offer. If you do not meet the above criteria then don’t feel bad, a wedding planner is not right for everybody and it is still possible to plan a fantastic and meaningful ceremony either on your own or with the help of friends and family.

Wedding Planning software

A quick search on the Internet is all you need to find a good selection of software applications that are designed to help people plan their weddings. They are much less expensive than hiring someone, and can be useful both for the organizing aspect and also to remind you of details that you might not have thought of.

Making your own checklist

At the outset of planning your wedding, creating a checklist is a great way to help manage the sometimes overwhelming task of bringing all the seemingly disparate details into order. Obviously no checklist will ever be entirely complete, as in real life things can change at a moment’s notice. However, even with the occasional unexpected occurrence a checklist is a great way to not only manage your time but also help preserve a little bit of your sanity.

A good tip for making your wedding checklist is to start with big categories and then fill in smaller details. Start by planning the larger overarching goals that you will need fulfilled for your wedding, such as the caterer, florist, church, reception area, and any other large task or categories that need to be filled.

Once you have created this list of large categories, then start filling in the details. For the caterer you will want to come up with a list of potential caterers, schedule different dates to meet with all of them and sample their food, and whatever other details you deem necessary such as headcount etc. For the reception area you will want to break this down into smaller tasks such as renting tables and chairs, booking a band or DJ, any decorations, and so on.

By starting with large overarching categories and then breaking those categories into smaller more specific detail-orientated checkboxes, you will be able to have a firmer grasp on your entire wedding process and will find yourself less likely to forget a small detail that would otherwise be overlooked if you just try to create one long list of everything.

Be sure to have a time line as well, to know how far in advance each task needs to be accomplished. For example, a lot will depend on the number of guests, so you will need to attend to your guest list and sending out invitations in order to get people's responses in time to inform the caterer of how many meals should be prepared. And never assume that the reception hall you want will be free at the date you wish or that the caterer will be free to work for you on that particular day. All of these things have to be determined in advance, sometimes quite far in advance.

Of course this list is only as good as the people you have helping you, so make sure that you plan the list with people who will be involved in the production of your wedding. Even if you make the initial list by yourself, you will want to run it by a couple of other people just to make sure you’re not forgetting anything. This is also a good time to start delegating responsibility to individuals. Remember, they are there to help so don’t be afraid to give them tasks.

For a bit of practicality you will want to have many copies of the list available, as well as a highlighter, so you can highlight individual sections of the list that different people will be attending to and then give them their own copies of the list while keeping a master copy for yourself.

You should definitely check things off as you go along. However, on the big day you need a brand new list that you can look over from start to finish and make sure everything has indeed been finished, although ideally this checklist should be completed the day before the wedding just to keep the actual day as stress-free as possible. The degree of organization you wish to have with your checklist is entirely up to you and should reflect the degree of complexity you plan on having for your wedding. However any checklist is better than no checklist so at a minimum use a small checklist to make sure that you stay on track.