By Brittany Hegar, Staff Writer
The arrival of spring means wedding season is just around the corner. Flowers are blooming, the weather is warmer and soon-to-be brides are feeling the excitement, but actually planning a wedding can be daunting. Making checklists is a good first step to tackle the obstacles and hassles because they are common and essential tools for mastering organization when planning the big day.
Regardless of size, every wedding has many of the same planning details. But before getting too involved with plans, it is important to know the wedding’s budget. With good planning, wedding planners say brides can have a beautiful and fabulous wedding, even on a modest budget.
Krissy Heavin, senior marketing major from Lexington, Ky., who also works as a wedding and event coordinator, cited her experience with how brides can be creative with a smaller budget and still have a great result.
“A bride-to-be wanted chandeliers and could not afford it, so I made giant chandeliers out of hula hoops, wrapping silk fabric around them using fake diamonds that were strung on the fishing line to create an elegant, more personal touch,” Heavin said.
The next big step is setting the dates, not just the wedding date but also the bachelor and bachelorette parties and showers. After the dates are set in stone and planned, brides need to decide who is going to be in the wedding. Who is the maid of honor? Who will be the ushers? They then need to pick their colors and theme, which will help determine where the wedding ceremony will take place. Following that, brides need to find their wedding dress and choose a location for their reception. This is the part where many brides hire a wedding coordinator because of the extensive amount of tasks that have to be planned in a short time period.
Technology is making it easier to tackle many wedding tasks. For example, brides can order free and easy online invitations they can personalize and then send out to as many people as possible, not just for the wedding, but for showers or other related events. With one click, brides can know who is coming and who is not in seconds. One company that offers this service is Evite at www.evite.com.
Christi Stark, advertising manager for the Optimist, used technology in another way to help plan her wedding.
“I used the Web site www.theknot.com to help me with some ideas that I had in mind,” Stark said.
This Web site lists suggestions on how to begin planning a wedding and how to be better organized.
Whitney Mann, the campus visits manager in the Office of Admissions, recently married.
“I did not stay really organized because I was engaged for a year and I thought it was far away, but it snuck up on me really fast, so I felt crammed when I was planning everything,” Mann said.
Mann made checklists to stay on track but said one thing that helped was that she was “a very calm bride” and did not “freak out” the week of the wedding, which made the whole experience more enjoyable.
No matter how well brides plan, not everything will go as planned.
Stark said her wedding day did not go smoothly. She had made plans with two different family friends. One of them would do the bride’s cake, and one would do the groom’s cake.
“My cake came out great, but on the way to the wedding, the groom’s cake slid in the box, so the corners were all smudged and cut off,” Stark said. “So to try and fix the problem, they tied a ribbon around the cake.”
