Be it the bride’s or the groom’s side, planning a wedding is a real stressful task for sure! Remembering every minute detail, chalking out various plans and finally executing them to complete the wedding of your dreams requires a concerted effort of a lot many people, something that is efficiently done by a talented bunch of professionals working for some wedding planning firm. However such wedding planners are still out of the reach of many of us due to the exorbitant cost of hiring them. Hence, like most of you out there who’s doing all these planning all by themselves, here’s a complete checklist that can come handy. Check it out –

An important wedding planning consultation

Any Indian wedding is incomplete without your parents increasing the invitee list and adding all the distant relatives whom you probably don’t even remember. That leads to increasing the budget for literally everything! And we Indians do know how to turn the guest list from 50 to 500, easily! Having a proper plan is therefore, the first step and sticking to that plan requires some effort (a rather dedicated one!).

That being said, there’s also a lot of detailed planning that’s done for the budget part, décor and catering, deciding when and which season to get married firstly, what else, literally an entire bunch of tasks. We know it’s scary, hence figured out that this checklist of ideas might be helpful.

Let’s see,

Setup A Plan –

• We’d suggest to start off with creating the first of many guests lists, as your partner for their guestlist idea (for an intimate gathering), plan who gets invites for all the function, selective function guest list. The list (pun intended) is long!
• Target and setup a wedding budget and then break it down to see if that budget fits all your wedding festivities.
• While deciding your wedding venue, always narrow down the search to location, property type (whether a banquet or a lawn or both), favorite choices, budget range.
• See, if you can manage all the planning all by yourself or would need a professional wedding planner’s help. Set aside a budget for that as well.

Plan Your Budget

This is a given – deciding on a budget for all your wedding spending and along with the venue bookings, accommodations and the rest is a mindful task and we all know how expensive weddings can be! Even though it’s up to the bride and groom to decide the budget and splurging capacity, we have a few tips of our own –

• Guide on planning a wedding venue
• Things to keep in mind while booking a wedding venue
• Avoid certain wedding budget myths to begin with, they are nothing but sources to take your money away.
• If you are going for a floral decoration, try not to hoard it, there’s a chance that most of it would remain unnoticed.
• While deciding on the food, plan it smartly. This is with experience that we speak, loading on too many starters makes the main course go to waste.
• For all the wedding shopping, try doing it off season.

Choose Your Wedding Season

Usually the winter months are a bit expensive given the weather, and most people aim for these months, even the venue prices are quite high during months from November to January end. Ideal months are March to mid April, avoiding the hot May month, next would be July till September, you can easily skim out certain auspicious wedding dates during these months. These infamous off seasons can give you good deals on venues and will be economically helpful.

Start Your Tour

• Start visiting all the shortlisted venues and inquire everything from lighting, decoration, if outside decorators are allowed or not.
• Have food tastings before deciding on the caterer.
• Finalize on the venue at least 6 months prior to the wedding, keep this target. Post that, a lot would feel sorted.
• Start the next big step – the search for your photographer. Plan what kind of photography you’d want, skim through catalogs

Preparing A Guest List

This is a real task and we are not kidding! Planning your wedding guest list can take layers of verification, adjustments, crossing out the annoying distant relatives, your parents making you add them back! the list [pun intended] goes on!

Our suggestion would be creating categories within your list – the relatives who live far, the ones who would need airport/station pickups-drops, the one’s on each of the parent’s side, the friends, the colleagues, discuss with your partner on the approximate guest list if you are going for an intimate gathering. Your wedding planning would not be able to take a proper course until you have a rough estimate of the number of guests attending your wedding. Post that, you’ll get a detailed idea on the number of invitation cards to print.

Preparing Invitation cards

Here’s a catch to save you some bucks on – you can always have a creative wedding invitation card by having a single one, all your wedding functions listed in one single card instead of going for multiple ones for each of the functions. Send out E-invites to the ones living far. If you are planning on creating trousseau invite boxes within a budget, you can always try out these cute trousseau boxes from Amazon and fill it up with some goodies and send out your invites in them.

Booking Your Venue

There are many things which need to be kept in mind while choosing your wedding venue.

• Making sure that the wedding venue is nearby to your place.
• Deciding whether you should opt for an indoor or an outdoor venue.
• Having long conversations with the decorators and the caterers are some of the few things which you need to pay attention to while booking your venue.
• If you are planning a destination wedding, keep a check on the accommodations that the venue provides for your guests or if there’s any nearby hotels for their accommodation.
• Better, check out this full proof wedding venue planning article.

Shopping

• First, plan your outfits for all the functions – mehendi, haldi, sangeet, etc. Go for different outfits or styles, you can check out some inspiration here.
• Start shopping at least 3-4 months prior to the event, take time out for fittings, it’s natural that you won’t get your dream outfit in the first few trials, better if you start the hunt early.
• For your Mangalsutra, you can go for these options.
• Next comes your jewelry and wedding ring shopping. Start with the wedding jewelry, that way your budget can be maintained, do the main ones first followed by the ones for the other functions.
• One advise – always click photos of the outfits you try (you will anyway for the ‘gram!) so that it is easier to match your jewelries with it when you go for jewelry shopping later.

Pre-wedding Events

And that’s how you can take care of the following events –

• Book your mehendi artist at least 1/1.5 months before the wedding. For bridal and bridesmaids mehendi ideas, try these out.
• For your mehendi decoration, go for a floral themed one if you are planning for a wedding in September-January month period. Look for beautiful bougainvillea and lilies floral décor paired with a lilac and white décor.
• The cocktail night can be amped up with these cocktail night décor ideas. Ask your caterer to keep mainly finger foods that go with the cocktails served.
• Go for a light shimmery gown/sharara at your sangeet and cocktail night as it suits the function and let’s face it, dancing and sipping on cocktails while managing a heavy lehenga shouts a big no-no.
• Next for your haldi, here are some ideas for it – https://www.venuemonk.com/blog/white-is-the-new-yellow-for-haldi

And now, if you are looking for a month wise planning, here’s a calendar for you –

A year to a probable 6 months before the wedding –

• Cheers first, you are getting married! Have a fun night out celebrating your wedding date.
• Plan and make your first budget draft. Keep a tab of all the expenses and probable out-of-budget plans.
• Sit and plan your guest list, which definitely includes a LOT of disagreements (cue – fights over inviting people you weren’t even aware existed)
• Book and we cannot stress this enough, BOOK your wedding venue
• Book your photographer as their dates are usually prebooked during the wedding season
• Keep a tab on all the latest décor, lighting, music, fashion trends!

Here’s a little help – for venue booking, contact – venuemonk.com

5-3 months before your wedding date –

• Your Invitations should be in prep by now
• Book your Hair and Makeup Artists
• Start calling and booking your Mehendi artist
• Get a choreographer on board if you have some sangeet performances to prepare
• Start all the bookings for your honeymoon if you are leaving right after your wedding
• Start with your salon appointments for your hair spas and skin care routines

2 months prior to the wedding –

• Start with your wedding outfit shopping
• Make appointments for outfit trials and stitches, try and maintaining the same diet to have that smooth fit on your wedding day.
• Get your jewelry shopping in line, wedding rings, gold, silver, imitation whichever jewelries you plan with your outfits, buy them accordingly.
• Send out your wedding invites and e-invites.
• Book your priest/priests
• Book guest houses for all those coming from afar.
• Stop stressing! Ask your BFFs for your bachelor/bachelorette, they probably have already planned them.

1 month before the wedding –

• Follow up with all your vendors
• Do all your last minute shopping
• Pamper yourself the most this time – go for body massages, facials and all.
• Try your wedding outfit to check one last time before the D-day.
• lastly, have a beer! it’s time to get married!

Now that you have your checklist in account, you can also take a read at these blogs for more wedding inspo –

Modern Mangalsutra Ideas For Women

Influencers to follow if you love all things fashion

Hangover kit items that come in handy after your cocktail party night