Long Distance Wedding Planning
When I got engaged, I knew that I wanted to have my wedding in my home town, where my fiancÃ?© and I both grew up, where our parents live, where our friends still consider home. Unfortunately, for the year preceding the wedding, we were both going to be living four states away. While living long distance made the job of wedding planning difficult, it didn’t make it impossible. With some careful planning, this daunting task can be carried out with few if any snags.
1. Start wedding planning early.
If you have your hands on one of the many timelines provided by wedding planning guides, magazines, and websites, by all means use it. You are, however, going to need to adapt it slightly to your long distance needs. I would suggest performing the planning tasks in the order that they are listed on the timeline, but giving yourself extra lead time. For example: the hall should be booked first, followed by the church. You should try to plan this more than a year before your wedding, particularly if you’re going to need a specific date in order for you to be able to get enough vacation time to come home. One other task I made sure to accomplish early was picking out dresses; I knew I could get all my bridesmaids together a year in advance and wasn’t sure when I would be able to again. If your styles are timeless enough, they’ll keep.
2. Group tasks together.
We used our timelines to organize wedding planning activities into groups. Group one included booking the hall, beginning preparations at the church, choosing our attendants, ordering my gown, and selecting bridesmaids’ gowns. Then we took a break for several months. When we were able to come home again for Christmas, we tackled our next group of wedding planning chores: our detail meeting with the hall, choosing a photographer and florist, ordering invitations, and booking the DJ and limo. Think of these tasks as connected and schedule them around when you’ll be in the area anyway, so you don’t have to come from a long distance just to meet with someone.
3. Enlist and accept help.
My mother and maid of honor were crucial during the whole wedding planning process. They agreed to do things like make calls, pick up my dress, store engagement presents. A recently married friend gave me her notes and the phone numbers of all of her vendors; this saved more time than I can imagine. My bridesmaids even met me at my parents’ house to help me write invitations, which my parents then sent for me when I left at the end of the weekend. It’s a good idea to have several people who live near the wedding site who can take care of little emergencies that come up, particularly ones you can’t handle long distance.
4. Don’t panic.
At some point during your wedding planning process, whether you are long distance or not, you will surely have a moment of pure panic. For example, I woke up one day and realized that I couldn’t remember the name of my limo company. I knew I had booked one; I remembered the conversation, but I couldn’t find anywhere that I’d written the name or phone number. I had no record of having done it. I called my mother in hysterics. She laughed and told me to calm down. Once I’d calmed down, I was able to remember that I’d gotten the number from a list of recommended vendors our hall had given us and that it was a small family business. My mother called the coordinator at the reception hall, who was able to figure out exactly who I’d spoken to. With a quick call, my mother confirmed that we were, in fact, booked and ready. Everything was fine and, while a better organizational system might have saved me the trauma, the fact is that there was no reason to panic in the first place. Small mistakes are not crises and can usually be resolved with little fuss. The fact is, this is your wedding. The rest is just details.
