You Said Yes, Now What?

So, he finally popped the question and you said YES! You’ve told the family, you posted it online to share with all your friends and loved ones and now you get to start thinking about the wedding, ekkk!

So exciting!!!!

Let me be one of the first to congratulate you on the first steps to getting married!

Well, today, Carole and I want to give you some great advice on where to start with thinking about the wedding and what steps you should be doing in order to stay a step ahead of everything.

Sure, there are PLENTY of websites with wedding advice and whatnot but I’m going to share with you some truth in reality in what you need to be doing.

First thing to do before Wedding Planning?

Perhaps the biggest part of your wedding is sitting down and creating a wedding budget. Well, if you’ve read just about on any wedding blog, you’ll see that weddings can cost a lot of money with the average national cost being about $34,000.

Let’s be real for a moment, that’s a lot of money to most, you could literally buy a new car for that kind of cash and most people don’t have that kind of money just laying around.

In fact, many couples will ask their parents or family for help, some will take out various wedding loans or max out credit cards and a few will save and pay for the wedding themselves.

But no matter what your budget is, don’t let that upset you.

Having a wedding is much like trying to orchestrate a music group, there are lots of smaller pieces to the puzzle and it all starts with the overall number, the budget.

Average Wedding Costs in the US?

About $34,000.

Truth be told, that number, $34,000 isn’t quite right according to the Knot.

Sure, here in the mid-Atlantic people do spend that kind of money, but not everyone. In fact, the average number in Virginia is more like $25,000-$27,500 (depending on the source) for the same level of wedding, head up to NOVA and DC and that number is more like $44,000 for the average wedding.

In the Carolina’s where we often work, that number is about $26,000.

In Kentucky and Tennessee we also do some weddings and the rate is even cheaper just under the $20,000 mark.

You can see my point here, don’t assume you need to hit that $34,000 number.

One of the things that we’ve developed for our region is an online tool, a wedding budget calculator that is designed to be for the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States.

This is how it works; just plug in the overall amount you want to spend and it will give you guidelines on how much you need to be spending for the various wedding vendors in our area.

Just remember, this is a guide, you can always adjust it as needed but this is what most couples tend to spend within their respective categories.

The tool is based on 100 people at the wedding and that number can greatly effect your wedding budget.

Size Does Matter, to Your Pocketbook

One thing I can tell you is that the less people at the wedding, the less it will cost you and your pocketbook.

In a recent article, I talked about to actually pay for the wedding and how having 75 wedding guests vs. 150 wedding guests can effect the cost of the wedding by as much at $4,000 or more.

Well, it’s true and the main reason for that is the catering, cake and alcohol. The more guests you have, the more food, cake and booze you will need to purchase to cover the evening.

I highly recommend that you sit down and make a guest list of people that MUST be at the wedding and a second list of those you’d like to have but don’t necessarily need to have at the wedding.

I will tell you an alternative method is to have a professional like me Live Stream the wedding ceremony and you provide links to those that you want to see the wedding in real time but don’t want to pay $30-100 a head for them to be there.

The Best Tool for Your Wedding Planning?

One thing that most couples overlook is hiring a wedding planner for the entire wedding process. I want you to do yourself a favor, as a professional wedding vendor, hire one of them.

Wedding Planners (sometimes called wedding managers or consultants) are perhaps the BEST advocates for you and the best insider secrets I can tell couples getting married.

Wedding planners may cost you more if you hire them to help with everything, BUT in return, you will recoup all your money, save even more money and have a much less stressful day in the process.

Here’s how.

Wedding Planners know how to best negotiate with vendors such as myself. If you want to hire me as an example, you’ll pay my online rates.

But, if you have a planner come to me and explain that they want to hire me but they’re looking for the best possible rate, I’m much more likely to work with a planner and provide a small discount in the process.

5% here, 10% there and 7% savings from another vendor will add up quickly.

In addition to helping negotiate rates, they are going to help put everything together for your, both for the wedding day, the timeline of the day, they’ll push vendors if they are behind on things and they’re going to help tie the day together for you.

TRUST me when I say that if you’re only hiring them for what couples call the “day of” coordination, you’re missing out and most likely you’ve paid full rates for your vendors.

I’m not a planner but I’m telling you THIS IS THE BEST INVESTMENT YOU WILL MAKE IN YOUR WEDDING PLANNING PROCESS.

How to Find the Right Wedding Vendors?

When it comes to finding the right vendors, I suggest looking around and doing your homework.

Find vendors that are first in the price range that you setup earlier in the process and try to find 2-3 of them within that range if possible.

From there, look at what they offer, their services and what they do. See what value added-services they have to offer and tell the planner which one you’d like to hire and let them reach out to vendors like me.

Again, having a full-time planner (well it’s more like a set number of hours a week) is great because they contact and deal with the vendors and negotiate for you.

There are three things you need to look for in hiring any wedding vendor, price, experience and value.

Make sure they are within the correct price range that best meets your budget (try to stay within 10% of your budget. For example, is your budget for the vendor is $1,000 and they have a rate of $1,100, then consider them in the lineup).

One common misconception is that price means something is cheap. There are vendors that can be affordable yet have great quality, you just need to look for them beyond social media.

Beyond price, see what experience they have.

The more experience, the better they will be at the wedding, that also means the less likely they will be at making a mistake or if there is one, they’ll fix it asap.

Someone with 12 years of wedding experience is going to do a better job than someone with a year of experience under their belt.

Finally, see what value they bring to the table with what they offer.

As you start to research, you’ll find many vendors tend to have baseline similarities, so see what makes them different. It could be in the service or value-added services. Look for value that’s important to you, not value that is just value.

What do I mean by that?

Here’s an example. Say a wedding photographer offers a value-added service of having free post wedding photo session if you book.

That might be great, but you’re already married, and they’ve already done the job. That’s value added that doesn’t give you value. Now, if the same photographer offered a free 8x10 print for your home, then that’s added value you can use.

Best way to Book a Wedding Photographer?

One of the best things that you can to when booking a wedding photographer is do these things in order to best narrow down the handful that will suit your needs.

I’m telling you this because wedding photographers (us included) have been saturated by the marketplace in recent years and you will find more wedding photographers than any other vendor. In fact, if you head over to Wedding wire and look at any wedding vendor, you’ll find that photographers usually outweigh even the number of venues in a given region.

First, you need to have you’re wedding photo and video budget down by using the wedding budget tool at the top. That number will be important in finding a company that can provide you the best services within that price.

Instead of just asking on a place like Facebook, use something like Google and pick out the first few pages of wedding photographers. If you don’t know what to search for, use something like your location and wedding photography, for example, “Roanoke Wedding Photography”.

Visit each one of the vendors websites and seek out the first line item, price.

If they are not within the budgeted price (plus or minus 10%-15%) then you can’t afford to hire them, so move onward.

You should be able to pick out about 7-10 wedding photographers within this first pass. It’s okay if you need to connect with them to get the starting price, some photographers don’t list the price so you will have to connect with them to get a dialog started.

Next, using the ones that match your budget, you will want to seek out their overall quality.

This can be done by looking at the sample images and video they do and see if it’s pleasing to you. Things to look for here, clarity, focus and color.

See if the samples look good, if they are clear, in focus and not blurry and for video, see what the audio sounds like, music and natural sound or voice over from the day.

Third, look at their overall experience. Usually this is by the number of years they’ve been in the industry, but it can also be the number of weddings they’ve covered or both.

Finally, see what they bring to the table. Does the price include the number of hours for your day? Do they include a limit on things like the number of images or do they offer value added services like warranty’s, payment plans and the like too?

Value is important, so see what they have to offer. By then, hopefully, you’ve been able to narrow your selection down to 1-4 vendors that you can pick from.

When and What to Start Booking

Most couples in the United States will be engaged for an average of about 14-16 months although, some will be much shorter and a few will be much longer.

When it comes to booking vendors, it usually comes in this order:

• Wedding Venue

• Wedding Planner

• Wedding Photographer/Videographer

• Wedding DJ

• Wedding Dress/Attire

• Wedding officiant

• Wedding Decor

• Wedding Florist

• Wedding Makeup and Hair Artist

• Wedding cake baker

• Wedding invites/save the dates

• Wedding catering

There are some smaller things in the mix and the order may change some and the like but we’ve generally speaking this is what couples book when doing the wedding.

My advice to you is to book the venue first and foremost because without the venue, you don’t have a wedding date. The date is by far the most important piece because you cannot book other vendors without one.

As for when you should start booking, 1-3 months after your wedding engagement tends to be the best bet. The longer you wait, the less likely you are to secure them.

After all, there are hundred, of not thousands of other couples pulling for the same resources.

Other Advice

Our final piece of pre-wedding planning advice is this, just ask a professional in the business.

Usually, the longer that a professional has been in the wedding industry, the more knowledge they will bring to the table and the more they’ll be able to help answer questions and provide advice.

Get advice on what you should ask and do research about that vendor category before you start looking at the vendors to hire. Get basic information on what to ask, what to look for and what to expect when hiring them.