As we emerge from that period in-between Christmas and New Year - where our Instagram feeds are clogged up with engagement pictures of diamond-clad fingers on frosty walks - spare a thought for the disorganised bride-to-be who still hasn't started wedding planning, despite getting engaged the previous year. For her, every new, beaming couples' photo stirs a feeling of panic. That was me a couple of years ago.
It’s not because I planned on jilting my husband-to-be at the alter, but that I know what it's like to breeze through the first year of an engagement and then suddenly realise you've left yourself four months to do all the wedding planning - and then be stung with the costs and lack of choice that come with that last minute rush. For a while, any new engagement pictures I saw were triggering.
They reminded me that my wedding was creeping up on me and there was still so much to do.. (or so I thought, not realising the pandemic was around the corner and I would have two cancellations ahead of me). If the wedding police existed (and it certainly felt like they did, judging by the number of concerned looks we were subjected to), we’d have been charged with recklessness and dangerously living on the edge. Meanwhile, friends who got engaged months after us quickly booked their hair and make-up a year in advance. Come on guys, give someone else a chance.
What I learnt when wedding planning was that you can try to be the ‘chilled-out bride’ all you like – and a sexist narrative that paints any woman who cares about her wedding as ‘bridezilla’ piles even more pressure on us to be like this - but it’s not your fault if you go a bit crazy or overspend. It’s a wedding industry on steroids that's to blame. I swear you’re expected to get your dress about four years before you’ve even met your partner. I got mine five months before our original wedding date, and even that meant narrowly missing having to pay ‘rush fees’ to ensure it was made in time.
The Venue
After we got engaged in 2019 we found our venue – a 17th-century oak framed barn outside Rye, surrounded by orchards, called the Cherry Barn – about a month later. This felt so uncharacteristically organised we gave each other a pat on the back and assumed we could have the next few months off. Ohhh how wrong we were.
Our problem was, we spent the first few months thinking we weren’t ‘that kind of couple’ who cared about things like live singers and colour schemes. It sounds so much more romantic to say all we care about is each other, doesn’t it? Well, after a year spent attending incredible weddings with budgets twice the size of ours, we realised we DID care about how ours looked after all. Fickle, I know.
Wedding planning: to DIY or not?
The trick is, you need to start early so you can shop around and compare rates instead of having to go for whatever's available. We went for The Cherry Barn becasue it perfectly met our requirement of being in scenic countryside while being close enough to London for most of our family and friends. We also loved it because it gave us the opportunity to have a DIY wedding, where you arrange each element yourself, rather than have a venue which sorts caterers/flowers/the works.
This means you can spend as much or as little on everything else, according to your budget and how important those elements are to you. It also means your venue is a blank canvas, ready for you to put your mark on to it. It helped that our venue was privately owned by a family, rather than part of a hotel chain or corporate event space, because owners Mel and Steve were happy to change things around and do whatever they could to fit around us. They did everything from put us in touch with and recommend local suppliers and help us keep the sound on until later, to driving our guests back to Rye at 2am when taxis didn't show up.
Wedding furniture, styling and the nitty gritty
A word of warning though, advice to start planning early particularly applies to anyone considering a DIY wedding as there's so many different elements to coordinate. We tried three companies for furniture who were already fully booked for our date. Eventually we found Hire Love, a company who provided the exact wooden tables and chairs we were after. We explained our ideas to them and they made all sorts of additional, helpful styling suggestions. We ended up hiring all sorts from their eclectic collection, including lanturns, parasols and a bar. On the day they set it all up beautifully - a highlight from my wedding was actually arriving at the venue and seeing how they'd arranged their colourful parasols to make a fun bar area.
If you're going for a DIY wedding it's really helpful to use a company like Hire Love - who do everything from provide furniture to plan and style the day. Don't forget though, with DIY weddings you also have to hire the less exciting nitty gritty, like cutlery and what seems like 4,000 different types of glasses., as well as thinking about things like rubbish collection.
A lot of this simply hadn't occured to me. I naively focused on the big hitters like dress and venue, not realising how many other decisions would crop up when you start looking into all the less exciting elements that I thought I could leave until nearer the time. I was nudged into action when a newly engaged friend announced she’d already decided what cutlery and glassware she was having for her wedding , which was set to be a whole year after ours. Suffice to say… at the time I was getting to it.
Catering
After this, I entered panic-mode and got a caterer crossed off the list. We went with blackbirdcatering.co.uk, mainly because we fell in love with owner Annie's cooking, but also because of the choice and flexibility she provided. We had a lot of fussy eaters and Annie came up with all sorts of suggestions and whipped up various different meals, catering to a range of tastes. If we'd had to stick to the provided caterer of, say, a hotel, I'm not sure we'd have been guarenteed this kind of choice.
The more blogs I read and Instagram accounts I followed, the more I was swept up in the belief that, God forbid, I had any regrets about my Big Day. Starting planning early will give you the space and perspective to think about how much it all matters to you - and gives time to recitify things when you realise the budget won't allow it.
You'll see things you didn't know you wanted along the way, and you'll also realise some things that were non-negotiable at first simply won't work. At one point, I was obsessed with the idea that we had to have espresso martinis after our dinner, but after weeks of trying, it proved too complicated and expensive to organise. We went for a Baby Guiness instead. A silver pandemic lining? It gave me extra time for things to fall through and for backup plans to be made, otherwise i'm not sure my guests would have had chairs to sit on, let alone after-dinner cocktails.
Flowers
As well as finding suppliers whose work or services you're into, try and find people you get on with. The florist we went with, Caroline at Wild Rubus, was relaxed and creative and didn't bouquet-shame me when I admitted weeks before I still hadn't thought about what I'd like. In a last minute, casual chat we worked out what would work well. I told her the colour of my bridesmaid dresses and the vibe I was after and was so happy with the beautiful bouquets she created.
Before handing over any money, have a chat with suppliers and check they 'get' you and understand your 'vision'. Don't worry if you don't know exactly how you want everything to look at the very beginning. Sometimes you need to leave one element and come back to it, once you've sorted other areas which could influence that decision. Caroline and I realised how the flowers should look once I'd sorted the bridesmaid dresses, parasols and napkins.
With wedding planning, start early to beat the system
For better or worse, we live in a world where people casually drop £30k+ and spend 18 months planning nine hours. When planning mine, I realised I could roll my eyes all I like at the wedding industry, but if you want a wedding, the best way to have some control over the situation is to be organsied, do your research and start early. Being too relaxed just means every caterer/DJ/photographer you approach will have been booked up for months by the time you put your request in.
If you start to worry that your budget won't bring you close to throwing the kind of lavish weddings we see plastered across Instagram, remember a study from 2018 which found people who spend more on their weddings are more likely to get divorced. My partner and I would often remind each other of this stat whenever we had to swap out something beaituful for a more affordable option. (No one notices wedding favours, right?)
So, if you’re newly engaged, it’s easier said than done, but try to focus on what mattered to you both initially. Whether you’re going all out or keeping it casual, leave yourself plenty of time so you have more choice, more freedom and you’re less likely to need to throw money at it unnecessarily. That's the best way to beat the system.
READ MORE: The Best High Street Wedding Dresses That Look Expensive