Do you have a planning guide for your wedding?

Your wedding will likely be the biggest party you’ll ever throw, and figuring out how to plan a wedding can feel pretty daunting at first.

Getting engaged and starting to organise your wedding is an exciting experience. However, the planning and coordinating can be overwhelming.

A comprehensive wedding planning checklist is always advisable.

No matter whether you are planning a DIY wedding or you have a wedding planner to help you out, a wedding planning checklist with step-by-step tips and direct indications can help you get out of the stress and complexity of organising your own wedding.

But what are the steps to planning a wedding?

When it comes to how to plan a wedding, it is a good idea to follow a checklist and tackle the listed steps in order.

There’s a method to the madness here and sticking to a wedding planning checklist will ensure a smooth and relatively stress free process.

As a wedding celebrant serving the NSW Riverina and MIA, Chris Longhurst from Civil Celebrations has written a comprehensive guide for brides to be who are organising their dream wedding.

Through years working in the wedding industry and always standing closely with the bride and groom on their big day, Mr Longhurst has developed the Civil Celebrations Wedding Planning Guide to help perfectly organise your wedding. Mr Longhurst is happy to provide this guide completely free of charge, simply log on to www.civilcelebrations.com.au and request yours today.

But, what do you need to know before planning your wedding?

The answers to the four questions below are a good starting point as you figure out how to plan your wedding. Once you’ve discussed these questions with your partner, you can move forward with the other wedding planning steps.

How much do we have to spend on our wedding? (This may include talking to parents or other who are contributing financially to your wedding.)

Where do we want to get married? (Just a general location, city or town, state or region, will do for now.)

When do you want to get married? (A season, month or year is fine to start.) Do we want a big or small wedding? (If you can estimate a guest count, great.) Mr Longhurst’s advice on wedding planning is simple.

“Honestly, there’s no hard and fast rule, as you can really mould the steps to your own timeline, slowing down or speeding up where it works,” he said.

“How much time you need all depends on two important facts.

“Firstly, the general timeframe, think year and season, that you want to be married, and how long you want to be engaged.”

The average engagement length is 13 months, which is totally enough time to tackle planning your wedding.

Where you want a small, simple wedding or a big, lavish affair, the steps remain the same.

Set a budget (critical first step), find inspiration, start your guest list, choose your celebrant and venue.

• Topics:

• Weddings
• Living and Lifestyle