Things I learnt from planning my own wedding

Ah where do I begin? I have SO much content for all of you that I am very excited to share. 

I got married back in 2014 where picking a theme was “the thing to do”. Not that it is not now, but it’s not as important anymore. You don’t HAVE to pick a theme as long as you have a color palette in mind that you would like to see at your wedding. I would be lying if I said that I hadn’t already planned this million dollar Pinterest wedding.

I’ll tell you a little secret- I LOVE Pinterest and I would suggest having a mood board to gather your ideas/ colour palette/ kind of pictures you want/ your bridal bouquet design etc, but having something EXACTLY like what you see on Pinterest might not be realistic. I suggest leaving that to professionals. Let them make that dream of yours a reality.

Now I was really lucky to have 2 wedding ceremonies. A Hindu wedding and a Catholic Church wedding- Yes, 2 different varieties of gowns AND 2 venues and so many 2’s!! I was really excited to get the planning going.

One thing I had really wanted from the time we started our wedding planning was to work primarily with upcoming vendors. I never once looked at the likes and followers of any of the vendors I selected nor did I once compare them to any of the big names in the industry. If their style matched with my vision, I hired them. To be honest, I couldn’t have been happier with the team I picked.

You know what was my most favorite part about planning my own wedding even though it was stressful? Being as creative as I possibly could. I was lucky enough that my parents paid for the wedding (thank you mom and dad- I will always be grateful for that) and Jason (my fiancé) who paid for the catholic wedding. 

We did our wedding shopping mostly in India - we got our garba (a Hindu pre-wedding celebration filled with music and dance) and reception outfits from Rajasthan. I wore my moms wedding lengha (Indian wedding gown) for my Hindu wedding and I made some alterations to the lengha in Mumbai to add a modern twist to it. My church wedding was a gift from my MIL and it was from David’s bridal in Toronto.

Fun fact: My sister and I decided to get married a week apart (my parents were incredibly excited and stressed at the same time, who wouldn’t be right?).
In the Hindu culture, it is considered bad luck for sisters to get married in the same Mandap (holy fire) and hence we decided to get married a week apart BUT we had our garba and reception TOGETHER!! Crazy right?

We decided to have a very intimate wedding with close family and friends (100 people) followed by a grand reception (400 guests). I couldn't have made a better decision. Our celebrations lasted for 3 full weeks!!! LOVED every bit of it. I truly believe that weddings are supposed to be really private and it's completely OK if you invite just your close family and friends. Thankfully, our parents were supportive of our decision.

The day after our Hindu wedding, we had our church wedding! We invited 80 guests and decided to go really low key on this one. Jason’s family wanted it that way and we respected their decision. After the ceremony, we had lunch organized at the banquet hall in the Church itself.

Our finale week was filled with sooo much laughter and fun. We had family fly in from all over the world to celebrate us! For our garba, we had a live band with live singers that kept us dancing on our toes till 2am!
Overall, we had a blast planning these events. Our vendors were so intrigued by this concept and we were surely the first of our kind. My sister and me had matched our outfits for both the events we shared - ofcourse in different colours. We shared our venues, photographers, florists, baker, decor and every single vendor!!!

Garba Evening

Another fun fact about our centrepiece for the reception - instead of picking florals, we decided to have a fish in one of the three vases and provided fish food so people gladly took them home and actually even fought for it when we played the centrepiece game!

One of the BEST decisions we made as a family was to space out our events. Its OK to get married on a weekday and have your reception on the weekend.

Throughout the planning process, there were quite a few things I learnt.

1. Set a budget and mostly importantly, stick to it. When you are planning a wedding it is very easy to over spend. Thankfully we were able to keep the budget set by our parents in control.

2. Make a list of things that are an ‘absolute necessary’ for you and your family to have at the wedding. For example, we wanted to make our own centrepieces for the wedding and reception and so we did spend quite a chunk of our budget on it but it was something we really wanted. Another example I can think of is having a big cake for the reception. We did not mind spending on that, because it was important to us - plus I am a HUGE fan of cake. I won’t lie- I usually go to weddings and birthday parties just to eat cake ;). Oh, and a seating chart. With the help of some of my family members, we created a seating chart together which turned out really beautiful ☺

3. Set a budget on florals and discuss that with your floral vendor- This one is important. It is one of those areas where you can easily get carried away. Give the florist and the decor company your budget and let their professional heads figure out a way to stick within that. For example, my bridal bouquet, bridesmaids bouquet and aisle flowers were very important to me for our church wedding and so Jason was kind enough to budget more on florals.

4. Don’t let anyone’s opinions get in the way of what you want- It’s YOUR day and that’s what matters

5. Pick a handful of people whose suggestion matters and is important to you and involve them in the planning process. You'll have a long line up of people ready to comment on anything and everything. Choose your critics carefully

6. Read vendor contracts carefully. If you don't understand something, reach out to them and clarify. If you have a wedding planner, they will always be available to help

7. Start working on the guest list way ahead of time as well as guest seating at the reception- most disagreements will be on this topic or at least that was in my case. So plan ahead

8. If you don't have a wedding planner, pick a family member you trust that is available to run any last minute errands (trust me, there will be plenty so it's always good to pick a couple of family members that you absolutely trust)

9. Enjoy your day and go with the flow. I know it can be stressful, especially on the day off and I wish now that I had hired a wedding planner so I wouldn't be worried about vendor organizing, vendor payments, admin work and all the other 100+ things that might not go as planned on the day off. Oh well! That's how you learn right?
   

I did have a few mishaps at my wedding. Ready for a laugh?

1. In my excitement of walk down the aisle at the Church Wedding, I forgot to unclip my train :( Believe it or not, I paid $160 to add that clip for AFTER the ceremony and an extra $200 to add embroidery on my train. I was sooo BUMMED but that's ok. For all the brides-to-be out there, remember this CAN happen. I would suggest having your makeup artist unclip it for you to avoid any mishaps ;)

2. While having my grand entrance at the reception, I SLIPPED! I blame the dance floor, my heels and a few too many shots we may have had in the bridal suite before the entrance. So yea, I had a good laugh but again, things HAPPEN. Just smile, bow and carry on with your evening :)

3. At our reception we paid quite a bit for petals to cover the cake table and bought 50 votive candles that we forgot to lit in all the craziness. Now if we had a wedding planner, this wouldn’t have been the case. ;)

You all must be wondering where our big reveal on the theme was that we picked for the reception. Well, a little suspense did not hurt anyone! We will soon have a blog post up on what theme we picked and how we pulled it off! Stay tuned and watch our space to get more info on it.

To end, let me ask you this - Are you guys excited to plan your wedding? What are some things you are concerned of? Something you think may not go as planned? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Pause. Breathe. Take it all in and let the adventure begin.