How to Plan a Wedding Without Losing Your Mind
The 7 Keys to Wedding Planning Success

If you are researching how to plan a wedding, no doubt you've found countless pages of advice on choosing your vendors, purchasing favors and finding the perfect dress.

While that's good information to have, keeping wedding planning stress in-check depends on your ability to step back and see the big picture before getting caught up in the details.

The seven points outlined below may not be the fun part of wedding planning, but they are key to your success.

1: Make a Budget. 50% of engaged couples start planning their wedding without a budget. This is the biggest mistake you can make. Couples who do not make a working budget suffer a great deal of stress and risk going into debt.

2: Frontload the Process. Hustle the most at the beginning, do not make the mistake of thinking "oh, we've got time." The first 6 weeks of the wedding planning process should be busier than all the others combined.

3: Vet Your Vendors. This is a very, very important planning step frequently skipped by engaged couples. You can avoid some real wedding horror stories by being thorough in your search for vendors.

4: Stick With Your Decisions. Small tweaks to the menu and to flower arrangements can be made up to a few weeks before the wedding, but making major changes because you feel stressed and are second guessing your decisions will do nothing but create more chaos and potentially open your wedding day up to a lot of problems.

5: Use Your Time Wisely. Become an efficient wedding planning machine. Set aside structured time each week to to teach yourself how to plan a wedding and work on planning tasks. As soon as possible you should get in the habit of scheduling weekly time to work on wedding tasks. Think of it as a part-time job.

6: Take the Long View. Think about the relationship you want to have with your relatives beyond your wedding day. Do the best you can to keep the peace with family on both sides while planning your wedding. You may have to make compromises you are not thrilled about, but remember you and your fiance will have a long life together. Don't start it with family resentment and drama.

7: Have Realistic Expectations. Be very, very realistic about your ability to put the time and effort into wedding planning. Don't set yourself up to fail by planning a DIY wedding or an overly complicated event you can't handle.

The most important tip for how to plan a wedding without losing your mind?

It is better to have a simple but well executed wedding than an extravagant but disastrous day.

Michelle Ellingsworth is a writer, a sometimes wedding vendor and runs http://www.sane-wedding-planning.com/index.html

by Michelle Ellingsworth -

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