It's no secret that planning a wedding can be stressful, expensive, and time-consuming. When you get engaged, you are automatically expected to put together a huge party (possibly the biggest of your life), with no experience in event planning and usually very little help. It's easy to feel overwhelmed and to start to hate the entire process, which is unfortunate since your time being engaged is supposed to be a happy time for you and your significant other. You might find that the planning process will be a little easier if you know what to expect.
There are certain things that you, as a newly-engaged person, might already have on your radar. You've probably already heard that everything is pricey, that you need to book things far in advance, and that creating a guest list can feel close to impossible. But there are some unexpected things that happen as well that no one ever tells you about. As someone who has been engaged for over a year now, I have experienced all of these things myself, and I know I wish I knew about them before they happened.
So, to feel more prepared as you get ready for your big day, take a look at some of the things you can expect to go through while planning a wedding.
You will not be able to stop talking about your wedding, even if you don't want to be that person
Before you get engaged, it's easy to get frustrated with newly-engaged friends and family members who can't seem to stop talking about their wedding — listening to them feels exhausting. But once you get engaged and start the planning process, you will almost definitely find that you have become that person.
It's hard not to talk about it all the time, to be honest. If you're really into your wedding day, you'll be really focused on planning, so it's only natural that you'll feel the need to bring it up whenever possible. It also doesn't help that everyone asks you about it all the time.
Everything happens all at once in the beginning, and then all at once at the end
When I set my wedding date, I figured that the next year and a half of my life would be full of non-stop planning. I was wrong. When you're planning, what typically happens is that a lot of important stuff needs to be done all at once, in the beginning; then there's a lull where absolutely nothing happens; then as the date arrives, everything picks back up again.
In the beginning, you'll drive yourself crazy booking vendors, researching, and trying to come up with your own vision. In the end, you'll feel exhausted writing checks, finalizing things, and fixing anything that may have gotten messed up along the way. But in the middle? You'll simply be waiting.
If you go to a wedding expo, you should create a new email address
Wedding expos are quite common, and can be helpful if you're struggling to find vendors or a vision. They usually involve a whole bunch of vendors in booths who will try to get you to book with them, so they can be a bit overwhelming. The best piece of advice I got about them, that I unfortunately did not take, was to create a new email address just for the wedding.
Each vendor will ask for your contact info, and even if you only give it out to one person you're interested in, your email somehow gets added to seemingly every wedding-related business in a 100-mile radius. You will be inundated with emails for months, and it's not exactly fun. I also got a lot of phone calls from vendors as well. Keep that in mind.
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