Wedding Planning Ideas: The journey begins

I was civilly married for 4 years before I was finally able to walk down the aisle. My husband's parents and mine were pressuring us to have our union blessed by a priest because I was pregnant of our first child at that time. We personally wanted to have the wedding after my pregnancy so that I have time to *cough* beautify myself. But no, the pressure was on. The grandparents didn't want their first grandaughter born without a blessing from God (it's quite obvious that both of our parents are devout Catholics). My husband and I gave in since they meant no harm and we also think it'll be for everyone's peace of mind. (except that until this very day, I can't look at my wedding pics without squintting...I look like a hippo on my wedding gown!!!)
Eventhough I was carrying a heavy "load" in my womb, I did all the dirty work on our wedding preparations. I hope somehow I could give you ideas as I share my thoughts on wedding preparations. (I love weddings!!!!)

First, set your budget so you will know where and how to work on it. What I did, I outlined the basic needs for my wedding and prioritized them. Whatever excess budget I had, I then gladly spend on "unnecessary" things but made my wedding memorable (like butterfly release, bubbles, treats for the flower girls and so much more).

Second, never ever scrimp on food. It's the last thing(and probably the only thing) your guests will remember. You don't want to be remembered as the couple who had the bad wine or sour tasting spaghetti.

Third, choose a theme or at least follow a pattern. This way you get to focus on a single idea and you'll know what to work on. Chinese wedding perhaps? or Hollywood wedding? or maybe Hawaiian wedding? With a theme to work on, it gets easy on the budget too :)

Fourth, choose colors that are bright and happy. It affects the mood of your guests and thus the entire ambience of your wedding place. I choose pretty shades of yellow, pink and blue as my wedding colors and had my bridesmaids (with matching colors on my flower girls) wear gowns of each color. I loved the effect on our wedding pictures! I also personally chose my flowers. It was of course all vibrant in colors matching the yellow, pink and blue my bridesmaids and flowergirls wore. In my country, it's not a common practice that the entourage spend for their own gowns so husband and I looked for really affordable ones but made sure that my entourage will still be able to use it even after our wedding. If you're looking for one, try browsing through our flower girl collection.

Fifth, DIY as much as you can. I have plenty of time in my hands so I did our save the date, email invitations, our monogram, graphics for our giveaways, thank you notes, and would you believe it our wedding cord ;)

Lastly, make your day your own. It will never be perfect--expect as much but you can at least say at the end of the day that you did all you can to make it one. I wanted my wedding to be a gathering of both sides of family and friends. I wanted both sides to meet and know each other, mingle and be actually friends which I think did happen.
As expected it was full of bloopers and everyone had so much fun. I even had a 'prank' for my husband that everyone had a good laugh.

I hope somehow you learned a thing or two. Happy wedding preps!