The Wedding Admin
Without a doubt, one of THE most important things about planning your wedding is working together as a couple, it’s all about the teamwork and collaboration.
It’s really beneficial to assign tasks between the two of you (and family members, if required) so that you’re both involved and contributing. As my husband would say, our wedding was like a creative project for me and a data management project for him – we both found our niche, and got to focus on what we enjoyed doing!
Book A Wedding Planner / Buy A Wedding Planner
Wedding planners are brilliant as they will offer a personalised planning service and will be dedicated to your big day. They will also have all the experience and contacts required to bring any wedding idea to life.
You’ll often find that wedding venues will have dedicated wedding planners who will assist with the planning of your big day. Be aware that they will also be working with all the other couples so manage your expectations.
We decided to plan our own wedding, as together we had a combination of the skills required to organise our big day. Our wedding venue, Larkspur Lodge also had an experienced and super wedding planner Sophie, so we benefitted from her help too. We received a wedding planner book as an engagement gift and found that it was an ideal reference point for steps to be taken to planning our day. It was also the perfect size to take to wedding appointments for jotting down notes.
Create A Wedding Email Address
Creating a dedicated wedding email address can be extremely beneficial. The main advantage is that you’ve got one place for all your wedding correspondence that’s separate from your individual email addresses. Plus, you can both have access to / visibility of it too.
Purchase Wedding Insurance
As soon as you have got your date booked in with your registrar, church, venue, make sure you purchase wedding insurance. A simple search engine search will give you lots of different options to suit your requirements.
Create A Wedding Budget
Spreadsheets offer the perfect way to keep on track with your wedding budget and spending. We accounted for everything and included all of the deposits that had been paid and the balance due dates. Google docs and sheets can be an absolutely brilliant tool as it allows you to update and share the documents so that you both have visibility.
Be realistic about how much you have got to / want to spend on your wedding. We wanted to have the most amazing and memorable day, but we set our budget and we stuck to it.
We were always mindful about being sucked in to the ‘wedding bubble‘ and constantly asked ourselves ‘Do we need it?’ ,’Will our guests even notice it?’, £50.00 here, £75.00 there, it all adds up in the end.
Create A Central Source For All Your Information
Shared documents and spreadsheets are the best way to store information. Apart from having the ability to both access and update it, you can keep adding columns for all the extra information RSVP, Dietary / Drink requirements, Assigned Table Number, Gift Received and Thank You sent.
The total sum and find functions gives you the ability to easily achieve guest totals for your invitation requirements and when you’re searching for guest names.
Make sure you put a password on this as it will have a lot of confidential information on it.
Gather Wedding Guest Information
You will need some of your guests’ details for your wedding day; the wedding invitations, thank you notes, table plans;
Guest Names (including plus ones), Addresses, Email Addresses
and Contact Numbers. We added a note on our save the date cards to request that our guests sent their details to our wedding email address.
Record Wedding Supplier Information
Keep all your supplier information (contact details, costs quoted, references) in one place so that you both have access to it.
The Venue, Florist, The Band, Make Up Artist, Hairdresser, Games Company, Invitation Supplier, Venue Stylist, Wedding Cars etc etc.
GDPR
Be mindful of sharing any personal information, especially those of family / friends involved in the wedding planning. Get their permission first.
Group Emails:- Be extremely careful about sending out group emails. If you have to do it then the best approach is to add addresses in the BCC row (blind copy) so that you don’t share all your guests’ information.
WhatsApp Groups – You’re really excited about your wedding but be mindful about creating WhatsApp groups as chances are your guests won’t want to be receiving all your responses to your save the date! The announcement feature on WhatsApp may be a good tool for navigating around this.
Create A Wedding Website
Wedding websites are a really useful tool for making sure that your guests have got access to all your wedding information. We secured a domain name for our wedding and then created a site which included venue information, hotel and taxi information, wedding gift list information, and an ability for us to provide regular updates for our guests.
MY WEDDING WISDOM
THE WEDDING ADMIN HINTS AND TIPS
Buy Things Early
Wedding Day spending tends to come in bursts, a lot of spending at the start as you secure your venue and suppliers, and then balance payments before your big day.
We bought things over time, for example, I bought my bridesmaids gifts a year before the wedding.
File and Save Documents
It’s a worthwhile idea to get a ring binder / email folder to keep all your documents, contracts and receipts in.
This will then be your go-to place to find anything that you need to read over and review.
Share The Cost
It’s possible that there are some deals to be brokered with the couples who are getting married the day before / after you.
Some suppliers will offer a discount if you’re hiring items and they can be used for 2 days e.g. Unique lighting, garden games, centrepieces.
Read Absolutely Everything
It is absolutely crucial to read everything, all contracts, terms and conditions and small print.
The pandemic was a unique situation but it was interesting to see how many deposits weren’t refundable with a change of date (this was completely out of our control) so we did lose some money.