You’re engaged. Enjoy this moment. Getting engaged is a magical thing and everyone you know will be as happy as you are. Well, mostly…. You will keep staring at your ring, and that’s okay. So is flashing it, and posting pictures of it on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. You may worry about being obnoxious, and you may even slip slightly into that territory but this is your moment. Getting engaged is a (hopefully) once-in-a-lifetime experience. Let yourself fully enjoy the moment. The people who love you will understand and also probably act that way when they get engaged too. Let yourself enjoy the moment without embarrassment.
When I got engaged I put something tentatively on Facebook and then promised everyone that I would shut up now. Next came comments from my amazing friends, ‘Are you kidding? You’re engaged. Milk this moment for everything it’s worth!’. So follow my friends’ advice and allow yourself to become fully and happily immersed in the moment. Especially as getting engaged is the happy, easy part of the entire thing. Next, up comes the wedding planning….
According to the UK Alliance of Wedding Planners these are the average costs of various weddings:
Venue & Catering : £9,500
Photography: £2,100
Flowers: £1,200
Entertainment : £1,220
Bridal dress, shoes, veil and groom's outfit : £1,680
Total, including other costs: £21,000
It may help to know that you are not alone. In the UK alone about a quarter of a million couples get married every year and on average they pay a whopping twenty-one thousand pounds for the privilege. Once it has sunk in the first thing to decide is when you are going to get married. Some people have long engagements and others get married quickly. Of course there will be a number of factors that help you decide. You may need to save so will wait a while, you may be pregnant and have a shotgun wedding (nothing wrong with that), you might want to get married in a specific season or just want to get married as soon as possible. Next you will want to put together a guest list. DO NOT TELL ANYONE THEY ARE INVITED YET. This is important. Weddings are expensive and the more people you have, the more expensive they are. Some people will rudely assume they are invited, just gently tell them that you have not done the guest list yet and if they are not invited then also point out that you are having a small wedding.
The first thing to do is decide on a rough date and year, after that you can start finding a venue. They will want possible dates obviously, and some book up years in advance. The venue is the building block, you can put everything else together after you have found the perfect one. I was originally going to call this book How To Plan The Perfect Wedding Without Breaking The Bank. It is still full of budget-saving tips and ideas but after my own wedding was over I realised that what I wish I had had was a survival guide. People will have different budgets and some lucky people will also have family members contributing. My fiancé and I were one of those: thank you family! But no matter your budget I am here to help and hold your hand. I am going to tell you everything I learned from planning my own wedding, everything I learned from the experts and all of the information I have gathered from my research. I have tried to cover everything and I have tried to give as much value to the book as possible. In short: I have tried to make it the book that would have saved me all of the stress and waste of time and money. I hope you enjoy it and you have the most amazing, magical wedding day.
There were a lot of things I thought might go wrong on my wedding day: a massive spot, a broken shoe, forgetting something, being late…in fact when it came to my wedding (almost) everything that could go wrong went wrong. The groom was so ill we never thought we would actually be able to get married. We even spent the night before the wedding in A&E, got home at 3:30am, got a few hours’ sleep and then the first thing my (then) fiancé said to me was, ‘I don’t know if I can get married today.’ Argh!
After a quick trip to the doctor for an emergency appointment and some prescription pills my wonderful groom managed to pull himself together through a sheer show of strength and willpower. He managed until after the speeches and then back off to the hospital we went!
But here is the thing: people loved our wedding. Apart from a sick groom and being late because my father wasn’t ready (yes, you read that right. The only bride who was late for her own wedding because her father hadn’t finished getting ready), our wedding went perfectly. Sure there were a few things that weren’t perfect but many people said that the wine and the food was the best wedding wine and food they ever tasted, they loved the venue, the flowers…everything. The fact is, many things will go wrong but what people really will remember is how much fun they had and how great the day was. Just take the disasters in your stride and know that sometimes perfection is sometimes imperfect. You will even be able to laugh about it further down the line. Comedy is tragedy plus time. As long as you manage to get married pretty much everything else will be fine. People will enjoy themselves and everyone will be on your side. Don’t stress because things will go wrong but it won’t matter as much as you think it does. Just take it in your stride, knowing that you have now gained a new spouse and that today is the first day of your new life together. Disasters only add to the spirit of the day and make people pull together.