Preparing a wedding can be very difficult, especially when you have to go to a full time job. Al suppliers, all shops, all tailors work on mornings, the same as you, so there is not much left to do in the afternoons. If you cannot work in shifts, you may consider hiring a wedding planner to help you with the event preparation.

This is roughly what a good wedding planner should do:

• Give you an activity plan, with all things required to be done and how much in advance you should take care of. For example, in order to be able to send out the wedding invitations one month prior the event, you need to allocate at least a couple of weeks before the mailing date, to start preparations.
• Provide you a list of bridal accessories with prices and shops where you can get them.
• Handle contracts with all suppliers, in your behalf, letting you know the details and the evolution of things on a weekly basis.
• Present you wedding theme ideas, with details regarding the accessories, location, prepaprations and costs.
• Follow up with all suppliers to make sure they appear on the wedding day, and that they deliver their promises.
• Supervise the location decoration and make sure the serving personnel is properly instructed.
• Be present at the ceremony, to be sure that any issue that may occur will be solved without unpleasant incidents for you or your guests.

If you cannot afford a wedding planner, you can always ask some good friends to help you with small things, and follow up and do the planning by yourself. After all, our mothers still remember their wedding ceremonies, and there were no wedding planners by that time

So you decided to go for a theme wedding, a memorable and original ceremony people would talk about years in a row. But how to you choose your theme? Are you going for some romantic ideas to express the love that brought you together, or are you rather going for a modern style, party-like wedding ceremony? Classic or modern, that is the question.

There are a few factors you should consider, for a maximum of effect with minimum of trouble:

1. Time of the year:
   • You wouldn’t pick a winter theme during summer, would you?
   • You wouldn’t like a romatic wedding by the lake in the fall, when wind blows like hell
   • You have to make sure that you can find all needed accessories in the season of your wedding (of vourse you can find strawberries also in winter, but the price would be at least triple, comparingly with summer time)
2. Guests age and preferences:
   • You are the main character of your wedding, but your happiness will come very likely from your guests’ happiness.
   • Beware if you choose a Lego theme for some 50+ years old guests: they might not be so happy with it.
   • For your very young friends, an “urban style” theme wedding might be more suitable than a “harvest day at the farm” one. Be sure you find out what most of your guests would like for the party.
   • If neccessary, you can have a separate party for your friends, and one for your rather old relatives, whom you love but don’t share the same preferences.
3. Estimated number of guests
   • For a very small number of guests, you wouldn’t want to organize a “princess ball” theme wedding. The ball room may seem too large to make your few guests feel at ease. It would rather look like half of your invitees did not show up.
4. Budget
   • There was this saying: “no money, not funny, honey!”
   • Don’t try to go big if your budget cannot support your glamorous ideas.
   • It’s better to have a simple, “zen” style wedding with all proper accessories, than have an almost empty ball room, because you didn’t have enough money for its proper decoration.

These being said, you can sit together, bride and groom, and do a little brainstorimng session: write down all crazy ideas that come to your mind, try to define yourself, to see what things you have in common, to see what is most representative for your couple.

Your wedding ceremony has to express your style, isn’t it?