24/07/2012
Wedding Planning by Jessica Haley
http://www.jessica-haley.com/wedding-planning-101-where-to-start
He got down on one knee. You squealed with delight. You can’t take your eyes off the sparkler on your ring finger. Now that the glow of the proposal has worn off a bit, it’s time to get to work planning the big day! With so many moving parts, it can be overwhelming trying to figure out how to put all the pieces together. My Wedding Planning 101 guides will help you navigate the tricky decisions on the road to wedded bliss.
From my own experience, figuring out the headcount before making any other choices was critical. Although many wedding planning guides will tell you to figure out your budget and location before anything else, I would argue that assessing your guest list is the first thing you should do! Put together an excel spreadsheet with input from your fiance´, your parents, and your future in-laws and create columns for the “must invite” guests, the “hope to invite” guests and the “optional invite” guests. Once you assess what the numbers are looking like and where they can be trimmed, your venue and location search will be that much easier because you’ll have a clear picture of how many will fit and what the final costs will be.
Dave and I got married in Arizona and had most of our guests traveling to the valley from all over the country. One of my top priorities for the venue was that it embrace the desert views and the nature of the location – it seemed silly to have everyone fly to such a unique destination only to book a windowless ballroom for our reception. Once I started scouting venues however, I realized the difficulty of finding a spot that could accommodate our guest list without compromising my vision. We ultimately chose the Sanctuary on Camelback Mountain for it’s “Views Terrace & Ballroom” and ability to seat 150 guests. This capacity gave us the ability to invite all of our closest friends and family but having the limited seats forced us to pay close attention to our numbers. In terms of our budget – we knew exactly where the final costs would come in because there just wasn’t room in the venue for additional guests – that helped prioritize our expenses in other areas. Without knowing what our headcount looked like ahead of time, our search would have been that much more complicated.
Aside from actually fitting guests into your venue of choices, the headcount is the single biggest driver of the wedding’s final cost. Not only because of the obvious reasons – food and alcohol per head – don’t forget to factor in the cost of each rented chair, charger and linen – each table requires a centerpiece from the florist – each guest requires individual paper pieces from the invitations to the menus, programs and welcome bags – these costs are all driven directly by the headcount so make sure to choose your guests wisely!
He got down on one knee. You squealed with delight. You can't take your eyes off the sparkler on your ring finger. Now that the glow of the proposal has worn
