Wedding Planning: Can You Be Too Organised?

I have admi­ra­tion and aston­ish­ment in equal mea­sure for cou­ples — and let’s face it, mainly brides-to-be — who plan their wed­dings. Co-ordinating every­thing from guest lists to menu choices, send­ing invi­ta­tions and remem­ber­ing to order every­thing from top hats to garters… I can’t even begin to imag­ine how you do it.

It takes 18 months to plan your per­fect day… or does it?

The aver­age time to plan a wed­ding in the UK is 18 months, I believe. Wed­ding mag­a­zines, web­sites and books offer wed­ding plan­ning check­lists and guides telling you what needs to be done when: have you taken out wed­ding insur­ance? ordered but­ton­holes for the ush­ers? Do you know when to order your wed­ding invitations?

Can you plan your wed­ding too far in advance?

I read a thread on the Hitched wed­ding forum this week, ask­ing how early was too early to book a wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher. My expe­ri­ence tells me that the very best get booked up any­where from two years in advance.

The best dates are hotly con­tested: I remem­ber the 7th of July 2007 being one of the busiest days for wed­dings when I started my cal­lig­ra­phy busi­ness! Any Sat­ur­day in July or August will get booked very early indeed.

So does it fol­low that if you’re get­ting mar­ried in the sum­mer months you should plan ear­lier? The check­list I linked to at the begin­ning of this blog post seems a lit­tle opti­mistic: book your venue “6 months or more” in advance? I’d have said 12 months… but per­haps this only applies to the most exclu­sive venues and sup­pli­ers, and for the sum­mer months.

Wed­ding plan­ning advice from the experts

I asked Kelly Chan­dler, expert wed­ding plan­ner and UK Alliance of Wed­ding Plan­ners direc­tor, if she thought cou­ples plan­ning peak sea­son wed­dings should plan and book sup­pli­ers fur­ther ahead.

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When to start plan­ning — for peak sea­son weddings

Kelly’s  advice is really helpful:

There is no doubt that peak Sat­ur­days in July do get snatched up for cer­tain key venues, but it’s not always the case.

If you are on a tighter bud­get or are very spe­cific with the venue you want it can be good to book in but if your bud­get is a lit­tle higher you shouldn’t find too many prob­lems find­ing a great venue with a year or less to plan.

Hand in hand goes the cel­e­brant, so that should be booked at the same time as the venue. As for sup­pli­ers, there are one or two worth book­ing early such as a pho­tog­ra­pher but then I would advise leav­ing lots of it to research­ing and book­ing to within a year.

I book a lot of sup­pli­ers around 6–9 months before the wed­ding date and never have an avail­abil­ity prob­lem. It also means that the details of the wed­ding are much more concrete.

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I also won­dered if there was a risk to being too organ­ised. If you pour your heart and soul into wed­ding plan­ning, can you get too bogged down in the lit­tle details? Is there per­haps a risk in plan­ning every­thing in minute detail, because things can and do go wrong on the day which are out­side of your control?

Can you be too organ­ised? An expert wed­ding plan­ner says…

Once again Kelly had expert advice to offer: You can be too organ­ised. I find that the brides who have over a year to plan get bom­barded with infor­ma­tion and can be prone to change their minds par­tic­u­larly on the look, theme and style of the wedding.

This can be time con­sum­ing for every­one involved and isn’t good if you want to keep your sup­pli­ers focused, ded­i­cated and excited about your wed­ding. It can become costly too as some­times changes can involve los­ing deposits etc.

It’s bet­ter to visit things later on and make sure, firm deci­sions. Addi­tion­ally, too much plan­ning can become obses­sive and there will be things which are out­side of your con­trol which can become more and more frus­trat­ing the more an event is planned.

As a wed­ding plan­ner, of course I dot all the Is and cross all the ts but I’ve learnt over the years that there will always be some­thing or some­body that doesn’t quite go to plan but it’s how you deal with it and resolve it that counts.

So there you go: the offi­cial ver­dict on how far in advance to start your wed­ding plan­ning! It’s good to be organ­ised, but it’s great to keep your focus. And if you book your wed­ding sup­pli­ers with 9 months or so to go, you’ll have a more fixed idea of your styling and colours — mak­ing the whole plan­ning and order­ing process run more smoothly.

There’s more wed­ding plan­ning advice on Eng­lish Wed­ding Blog — with every­thing from wed­ding plan­ning tools to wed­ding bud­gets cov­ered in the guides and arti­cles on the site. Please have a look at these — I hope you find them useful!

Claire x