Ask these 7 questions before you pick a wedding date
Congratulations on your engagement! The next step: when the hell will this thang happen? Setting the date sounds easy, right? If you set it, they will come. Let me tell you, it’s a little more complicated than that. Here are the questions you’ll want to ask when setting the wedding date.
Own that shit! 6 ways to help vendors understand your offbeat wedding
Your wedding can be a thousand times more amazing if all of your wedding vendors get on board with your less-traditional plans. It can be really tough for wedding vendors to shake off their traditional ideas of what a wedding should be and embrace your wedding’s uniqueness instead. I’ve been to many weddings where a vendor or two force their ideas on the clients. (It’s not fun being forced to do a first dance or parent dance by your DJ when you don’t want to.) Getting your wedding vendors on board with your offbeat wedding can definitely help your day be happier and smoother. Here are a few ideas to help you get those wedding vendors jiving with your offbeat wedding…
“Downloading your wedding brain”: what is wedding day management and why do you need it?
We’ve already waxed poetic about how event planners can save you money, save your ass, and be your wedding savoir, right? But maybe you’re still thinking it’s just too expensive or you have someone on your guest list who can wing it. To play devil’s advocate, we talked to one of our own Offbeat Brides and beloved vendors, LA-based Jessica Carrillo of Art & Soul Events, to see why hiring a wedding planner (or in this case, a “wedding day manager!”) may be the decision you’ll totally be happy you made. Let’s talk about what the heck wedding day management even is and why you might totally need it.
Safeguard your important details with an “oh shit list”
Rebecca and Bryan’s rock opera wedding is now legend around these parts, but this little tidbit of advice may just go overlooked with all the razzle dazzle of the wedding itself. And boy, did it dazzle. Rebecca had lots of little details that were important to her and wished that she had listed them out and delegated them to someone to make sure they happened. Much like an “oh shit kit,” which pulls together all your most necessary items, this “oh shit list” is a list of the most important things you want to make sure go down as planned.
How to plan your wedding using active wedding brainstorming
If you’ve ever worked in corporate America (or the equivalent in other countries), you’ve probably been involved in some fancy-pants organized brainstorming sessions. They’re all about goal-making and no answers are wrong and generally being really structured. I figured that since these sessions can end up pretty useful, that they could probably be applied to wedding planning. And you know what? they totally can. Let’s see how we’d do some high-level wedding planning brainstorming.
What happened when we put OUR wedding needs first…
Somehow, it is portrayed as perfectly normal to make huge exceptions for your wedding day, from going into debt to inviting too many people, to having melt-downs over canapés. Of the traditional wedding “must-haves,” we didn’t want most, don’t need many, and can’t have some. We said “no” over and over — feeling like rather fussy inconsiderate people. But here’s what’s happened since we’ve put our wedding planning needs first…