Wedding series: The planning (Part 1) 

I’ve heard people speak about the rigors that come with planning a wedding and I had always thought it was all exaggerated and stuff, I mean come on, it’s a wedding, it’s most likely like planning a party, right, right? Wrong! My turn came and I quickly realized “no be child’s play o.”

Welcome to “THE WEDDING SERIES” I hope to capture everything about my wedding (as much as I can), The opinions shared here are completely mine and do not in any way form the rule or only possible modus operandi. LOL…just thought to put out that disclaimer.

Yes so where were we? Oh yes…I’ll try to capture it all, however feel free to comment and message me if need be and I’ll be happy to assist in whatever way I can.

GOD

All things begin with God and His importance cannot be overemphasized. My goodness, when things start to go left, you start to get depressed, the worry kicks in, the arguing, unsolicited opinions, family input. BOY O BOY, it was not easy, funny I heard about all this but I was so certain we would be the exception LOL. I WISHED! We had to fast and pray regularly. Again, no rules, do what works for you, but GOD came through for me. We are not the best, most loved couple out there, but the favors were coming in and I owe it to GOD!

THE ONLINE SPREADSHEET

The first thing I did was open an Excel spreadsheet online that my fiancé, scratch that husband, and I could access and edit as required. You can do that using the Drive app on iOS.

https://www.google.com/drive/

The sheet had a list of all items needed for the wedding (traditional and white), from the minutest detail like toothpicks to the important ones like décor and food.

One fantastic thing about the app is that you and your partner can edit real time and put in figures as you get them. The main reason why we used this app was to have an estimate of how much we intend to spend and prioritize.

We divided our sheet into four categories, each representing one month and what should be sorted that month. (We started the planning 4 months before the wedding). This way, we didn’t leave things to the last minute. We focused on the items for the month and did our best to close them out before the month was done.

Oh boy! Weddings are expensive! Listing the expenses and getting a total would make you realize you need to reevaluate, cut out some things and adjust your cost! You might wonder, does this mean we can’t budget till we have the total costs? No. It’s safe to have your planned budget but be open to the possibility that you might (most likely) have to shoot beyond it as you go. This is why early planning is very important – to create time for unforeseen or unplanned expenses.

We had to assign roles on the items – who’s taking care of each item on the sheet. We shared with family as well, that way, we could keep track of progress.

 

PRIORITIZE

We can’t always have what we want. Well some people can but yeah a higher percentage probably can’t. I fall under that percentage. As a result, we had to sit down, look through our list and develop a strategy that works. (You don’t have to use this strategy, whatever works for you)

We both picked two things we were willing to break the bank for, the others we were ready to compromise. I was particular about my dress and decoration. We agreed that these would be financial priority and based on the cost, other items on our list would have to take a back seat. It worked for us and I didn’t feel bad about the other compromise.

WEDDING PLANNER.

LOL! Trying not to throw shade of any sort, but if you wanna get a planner, please get a very good planner. I did most of my stuff myself and it was a bit frustrating because i had a planner. I was calling vendors myself and negotiating myself. Some planners will get you vendors with ridiculous budget, others will get you vendors with wack quality. I took matters into my own hands because i knew what I was willing to spend and what quality I wanted for it, anything that deviates from that I gotta handle it myself.

The key here is to realize that no one knows how you want your wedding to turn out but you. You can brief the best planners, but they’ll only give you what they consider good enough. This isn’t even a function of cost but taste. You’re going to have to get your hands dirty if you want what you want. Some prices might be ridiculous, don’t be scared of doing research and reaching out to vendors yourself. Remember, it’s your big day, you should have what you want.

VENDORS

You don’t want to be stuck with terrible vendors. Please don’t be deceived by some Instagram vendors. (of course, not all are wack) but yeah. Do your proper research. You don’t want a stuck up vendor, vendors that think they are doing you a favor. I developed some sort of relationship/friendship with all my vendors, so it was just not a service/product they are offering, it was deeper, that way it is harder for them to fuck you up. lol.

DO IT YOURSELF

Not everything buy on instagram. Get to work, enter market, get your friends and loved ones to assist you. You will be amazed how much you will save.

DELEGATE

You can’t be in charge of everything, you need to delegate before you run mad. My chief bridesmaid was in charge of the bridal party, their make up, hair accessories and styling, earrings, dresses. I was not involved in this at all. My mum took over souvenirs of course she ran it through me. I REPEAT, YOU CAN NOT DO IT ALL.

THE WEDDING DRESS

Next thing I did was try to sort my wedding dress because I wanted it done as early as possible to avoid stories that touch. I reached out to two vendors and eventually went with Mai Atafo. The meeting was very brief because I knew exactly what I wanted; A ball gown with sequin lace. We eventually concluded on An Ivory ball gown with hand beaded bodice, sequin Chantilly lace and lace border Applique around the bottom.

Mai is undoubtedly one of the best designers out there. My first fitting was pretty much perfect.

Different churches have different policies. My church requested a picture of me in the dress and the dress was initially rejected because the lace was a bit too see-through.  LOL I wanted to die when i got the mail. It worked out fine at the end of the day.

Final result here.

BRIDAL PARTY

It is called MAID OF HONOR/BRIDESMAID for a reason. They are just not there to look pretty and take selfies. It is more than that. I feel like asking a friend to be a bridesmaid should come with a manual because a lot of people really don’t get it. I chose the best MAID OF HONOR and i can’t imagine what i would have done without her. My bridesmaids were also amazing and so helpful. Pick/Choose your bridesmaids wisely. Pick people that love you, that are selfless and ready to make your day as perfect as it can be, you will need all the help. Overall, some people are not cut out for all the bridesmaid wahala and its ok, but MAID is there for a reason, so yeah, take a minute to think about your decision.

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This post would’ve been ridiculously long so we had to divide it into two parts. So, watch out for the second part next week.

I hope you enjoyed reading this. More exciting details to come!!

Let us know what you think in the comment section. For those that are married, feel free to also share your experience! We’d love to read them!

Tomorrow is Friday! YAY! What are your plans for the weekend?

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• TITI