Wedding Planner Book-Planning Your Ceremony

No matter how much you look forward to the wedding night, the ceremony is the main event of the day. You want it to be perfect. First you and your fiancé must decide what type of ceremony you want. Will you have a large or small guest list? Will the wedding be in a church, outdoors, or at a specific location such as the beach? Will the ceremony be formal or small and relaxed? Once you know the answers to these important questions, you can officially start planning.

Finding a venue for your ceremony is your most urgent task. You can’t plan anything until you have reserved a venue, so this should be one of your first priorities. Look at several venues in your area, or at your desired destination. You can look in the phone book or online, and sometimes the best wedding planner book will have information specific to your area. Once you have several venues in mind, you should make appointments to see them in person. Write down the phone numbers, addresses, and contact information of each venue in your wedding book planner. Since wedding planner books often include calendars, you can also write down the dates of your appointments. Take your book with you as you visit each venue. You can write down notes about each location that will help you compare later. Make sure you take note of what you like and dislike about each venue! It’s also a good idea to write down the price of each venue. This will help you determine if some venues are better for your budget than others. You may also want to take a list of questions with you. You need to know what times the venue is available, how many people it accommodates, how early you can set up for your ceremony, and if there are any extra fees.

Once you have chosen and reserved your venue, you can start organizing the rest of your ceremony. You should decide who will officiate at your ceremony as early as possible to make sure that he or she is available. The officiant will perform the ceremony. You can choose almost anyone to officiate at your wedding, as long as they have authority to legally marry you. Your officiant can be a priest or other church official, a government official, a judge, or a licensed family member. Once you have invited someone to perform the ceremony, write his or her contact information in your wedding planning book so that you can find it easily.

Now you can focus on the small details of your ceremony. You get to decide what you want and when you want it to happen. Many ceremonies follow a pattern; a processional followed by the marriage ceremony, a ring exchange, and the first kiss. If you are having a religious ceremony, you may have religious traditions to keep in mind as well. You can stick with tradition if you want to, but you can do things differently if it fits your personality better. You can skip the processional (though this might make dad unhappy, as it robs him of his chance to walk his daughter down the aisle) or include music, vows, or anything else you want. As long as the words “I do” make it into the ceremony somewhere, the choice is entirely yours! If you want to get creative, you can search through books, magazines, or websites to find inspiration and ideas. Reading about the unique things other brides included in their ceremonies can spark your own imagination and help you organize a ceremony that you and your fiancé will truly enjoy. As you decide on a schedule, be sure to write it down in your wedding planning book. This will help you keep the details of your ceremony organized in your mind and will allow you to show any vendors, performers, or speakers exactly where they fit into the program.

By now you know if your guest list for the ceremony will be large or small, and you should get your invitations out early so that your guests can make arrangements to be there. You should separate your guest list into three parts: your ceremony list, your rehearsal dinner or wedding breakfast list, and your reception list. Many of your guests may be invited to all three, but some might only make the list for one event. You and your fiancé need to make sure that all of your closest friends and family are on the list. Work together to make sure that the list is fair for both of you. Only after your list is complete should you allow others, such as your mothers or grandmothers, to make requests. Once you have the lists finalized, you can store them in your online wedding planner book. You will know right where they are and can see who gets invited to the ceremony and who gets invited to the reception.