It's stressful putting on a wedding. It's also a real learning process. Of course, once you've figured everything out, the wedding is over and you have nowhere to apply your newfound knowledge. And so, because there will be no "next time we get married", we pass our hard-earned wisdom on to you. Here's our list of tips, tricks and cocktail recipes that got us through to our current state of married bliss!
Make a Photo List
Because we were having a non-traditional wedding, we were happy to kind of "wing it" when it came to planning photos. We met with the photographer ahead of time to let her know what key things we wanted and we set up a "photo booth" area with some fun props at our reception so that people would be sure to pose. We got plenty of fantastic pictures, but a few things got missed, because our photographer isn't psychic and we didn't make a photo list. This photo list from TheKnot.com sure would have come in handy when we were planning.
Meet Your On-site Coordinator Beforehand
It turns out that your contact at the catering company isn't always the person who's going to be there running the show at your event! When you get together with the caterers for the first planning session or tasting, find out who will be coordinating your event on the day and make sure they're included in the meetings or correspondence leading up to the wedding. Because when your big gay wedding is in full swing, the last thing you want to deal with is whether the food stations are set up stupidly or the wedding favours haven't been set out like you asked.
Embrace the Spreadsheet
We used the spreadsheet function in Google Docs to keep our guest list , budget and other things organized. It was particularly handy for the guest list - I kept track of who we invited, their address, their RSVP and what lovely gifts they gave all in one place, which made it very easy when it came time to send thank you cards. We felt quite smug.
Hair Flowers - Ask Your Florist to Wire Them!
One of the things that enabled both of us to have such great wedding hair is that our florist took the time to take each individual flower and put the bud on floral wire. This made it super easy for our stylists to do our hair style and then easily insert the flowers and tiara. She said she had never seen this before but was going to ask all her brides to ask their florist to do it because it makes putting flowers in hair really easy!
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