Welcome, pals, to our monthly Problem Pal segment, where we give actionable, anonymous advice on all your wedding woes.
So No One Told You Life Was Going To Be This Way has written in with a worry I reckon everyone’s had planning their wedding:
How do I pick a best man without insulting my other friends?
It can be hard enough working out how to choose your wedding party, but singling out just one of your friends to be your best man, maid of honour, or mate of honour can feel like a minefield.
While different couples will have different priorities for their weddings, and I’d always encourage you to work out the things that are most important to you (without looking at any wedding checklists) and divvying up your budget accordingly, there’s one area I’d always recommend you do consider spending money on: professional wedding photography.
Why? Well…
I love working in the wedding industry – I get to talk to happy couples all day and scoff cake samples at wedding fairs – but there is a darker, cake sample-less side to it that I hate seeing, where some suppliers can fixate on a ‘traditional’ wedding and encourage couples to work down a checklist of what they ‘need’ to have, what their day is ‘expected’ to be like.
I believe if, at the end of the day, you got married, then you did it right, whatever you wore, whoever was in your wedding party, whether you had a ceremony in a church, a booze-up in a pub, or talked a registrar into jumping on a bouncy castle with you.
There’s no right and wrong way to have a wedding, just as there are no right and wrong people to get married. And it’s important that we wedding suppliers recognise that and make products for people – all types of people – not for ‘traditional weddings’.
Welcome, pals, to another Problem Pal segment, where you can get actionable (and anonymous) advice on all your wedding worries.
Like Carole King Says, It’s Too Late has written in with an all-too-common problem:
Some friends of ours didn’t RSVP before the deadline on our invitations. We assumed they couldn’t attend but, after we gave the final details to our caterer and our venue, they mentioned how excited they were for our wedding. I’m not sure how to tell them it’s too late now and they’ve missed the deadline – or if I even should!
I want to talk to you about one of the BIGGEST mistakes I see couples make when they plan their wedding – working down a checklist.
You know the kind of thing – a wedding planner book or a snazzy Pinterest image with all the wedding planning ahead of you broken into panic-inducing sections like ‘organise twelve months before’. A giant list of everything you must have for your wedding, to be ticked off as you frantically organise them all.
Now, I get the temptation. You probably haven’t planned a wedding before so a checklist feels like you’ve been handed a cheat sheet for the perfect wedding.
You have a list of all the things you need to have in order to throw a wedding! You know how much money to spend and what the timeline is! You have the recipe!
Sound the exciting new product klaxon!
We’re so proud to show off the (incredible!) new wedding website design we’ve made in collaboration with the (incredible!) luxury stationer Pen & Fold.
Based on Pen & Fold’s intricate, laser cut, palm leaf invitations, the Palm Suite website design is the perfect way to get your guests excited for a tropical destination wedding!
Read on for her advice on what corners you can cut – and what ones you definitely shouldn’t!
A couple of weeks ago, I ran a Q&A on our Instagram account, answering questions people had about wedding planning, invitation wording, and what we do at Gettin’ Hitched Rocks. (Answer: awesome work, always.)
Reading some of the questions that came in, it really struck me how truly overwhelming wedding planning can be – not just in the amount of wedmin there is to do and the number of suppliers you need to find and click with (which the Rocks Band and I already do our best to help with, with our stress-free wedding planning websites and all-in-one packages), but with guest-list stress, family pressure, disagreements, budget worries, both parts of a couple having very different visions… Things that can make you want to pack the whole thing in and elope. Or call it off.
March is ‘Meet the Maker’ month, where people across different creative industries pull back the curtain (or, in our case, the veil) to explain why they started their business and show how everything works behind the scenes.
I wanted to use the opportunity to chat to you this month about why I created Gettin’ Hitched Rocks and how it can help you enjoy your wedding planning. (No, really!)
