Issue #39: Wedding planning tips from my newly married friends
How to plan a wedding and not... hate it?
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After Sam and I got engaged — on an unseasonably warm day in November, walking through Somerville’s Prospect Hill Park — we went home to celebrate and drink champagne. But we never got to do that, as shortly after, Sam was overcome by a nasty stomach bug that lasted for the next 36 hours. “In sickness, right?” he called weakly from the bathroom.
Sam and I have been together since 2016. When we met, he was 26 and I was 21. We were both exhilarated by the pace of our work and careers, while our main extracurriculars included dive bars, boozy dinners, and hungover brunches. Marriage was a distant and irrelevant concept.
As our friends got older and summers turned into wedding season, we could feel it shifting closer; closer still, as we moved from our apartment to a house, began making financial decisions together, and started parceling up the holidays.
Sometime early last year, we decided we were both ready to get engaged. Neither of us saw ourselves in the traditional down-on-one-knee surprise proposal. Instead, we agreed we’d turn to each other when the time felt right.
After it happened (and Sam’s stomach bug subsided) we spent several weeks enjoying the headiness of getting engaged before shifting into wedding planning mode. To be honest, I wasn’t excited to start planning — so many people have told me it’s stressful, overwhelming, and so, so expensive. But maybe it doesn’t have to be with that way? (See point #1 below.)
And fortunately, most of our friends have already gone through it. They’ve given me some great advice… advice that’s helped prepare us for the logistics and decisions to come and feel giddy about the day at the end.
1. Planning doesn’t have to suck.
Before we got engaged, we’d spent a lot of time discussing our wedding — and just as much, if not more, time discussing our planning process. Imagining certain moments gives me butterflies (walking down the aisle towards Sam; seeing everyone we love eating, drinking, and laughing together; sharing the vows we’ve written)... but I’ve been adamant about not sacrificing my happiness, or the health of our relationship, to get there.
For us, that means splitting the responsibilities of planning equally. I’m generally more organized and proactive, but I’d resent Sam if I took on the lion’s share of the work for an event that’s for both of us. And I want to use this as an opportunity to continue developing our communication and teamwork skills.
Aliza says it’s completely possible for planning our wedding to be something we enjoy, or at the very least don’t actively dread.
“I hate that planning has such a negative association,” she explains. “I loved the process! It was creative, engaging, and of course, very gratifying.”
2. Hire a planner.
But that doesn’t mean doing it alone. Aliza also recommended hiring a planner: “It can alleviate a lot of stress.”
Boston wedding photographer Emily Boudreau feels similarly. “The couples who are fully engaged in their day, not worrying about what could be going wrong, have usually hired a wedding planner,” she says. “Peace of mind on your wedding day is priceless and hard to achieve without at least a day-of coordinator.”
With this in mind, the first decision Sam and I made was hiring a planner. We only reached out to ones who’d worked with both straight and queer couples and whose websites didn’t speak exclusively to the bride — assuming they’d be less liable to adhere to the “woman plans it all” dynamic. Kayla Madden was the first person we talked to, and after a subsequent and underwhelming call with another planner, we canceled the rest of the interviews. Kayla radiated warmth, competence, and passion; made us feel excited about the vision but calm about the process; and was 100% on board with our co-planning approach.
3. Trust your vendors and don’t overthink the details.
This approach — trust your vendors and don’t overthink the details — is one my friend Lilly (of
), whose wedding was this November, enthusiastically endorses. “[My husband Mike and I] almost always choose to be happy with the decisions we’ve made rather than regret or hem and haw about them,” she explains. “We don’t try to find the ‘perfect’ option.” For their wedding, Mike and Lilly made vendor decisions “based on vibes and recommendations” (their photographer was Lilly’s friend and former coworker, their DJ was a high school classmate, and their videographer was her former personal trainer).“I think I showed my florist four inspiration pictures and she didn’t hear from me again until after the wedding when I thanked her,” Lilly says. “I’m so glad I didn’t spend nights losing sleep wondering if she was going to include a flower that I hadn’t pictured being in my bouquet or something.”
As a forcing function for not overthinking, our friend Priya — who got married in June 2023 — recommends a shorter engagement. “Our engagement was 18 months,” she says. “With so much time, we ended up spending a lot of time — perhaps too much time — on decisions, and somehow the to-do list never seemed to end. If we could do it over, I'd try to do a nine-month engagement!”
4. Spend money on what sparks joy (and skip the rest.)
When it comes to saving money, our friend Ariel (who got married last year), recommends focusing on what “sparks joy” — regardless of what tradition (or other people) dictate. “For example, I love eating wedding cake, but my husband and I didn’t feel passionately about having a cake (or cutting it), so we served blueberry pie at our wedding,” she says. Similarly, they used silk flowers instead of real ones. “Prioritize what you actually value, and don’t worry about what you’re ‘supposed’ to do or other people might think.”
Emily agrees: “The couples who seem to have the best times are the ones who don’t follow wedding norms — who go about their day exactly how they want and don’t follow the traditions that don’t feel true to them.”
Following this advice, Sam and I sat down and scored the typical elements of a wedding from 1 (“very important”) to 5 (“don’t need/want.”)
Here’s everything that we ranked as unimportant (all very personal to us!):