I got married 2 weeks back in Chennai. We were fortunate that our wedding turned out to be everything we hoped for and I thought I’d share my lessons with a focus on what went well. As the chances are high that you will be involved in organizing a wedding in some capacity – as a groom/bride, parent, sibling family member, or friend, I’m hopeful the lessons will be useful to you.
Context: We had 6 months to plan our wedding as I got down on my knees in January and we decided the date would be in July. Additionally, we had 2 days of pre-wedding celebrations with friends and family before a small wedding day and then a large reception – a mix of Indian and Western traditions. It wasn’t conventional and that meant we went back and forth on the kind of wedding we wanted. Additionally, our parents played a big role in our wedding as per the norm in Indian weddings – this context will be reflected in my thoughts below.
6 months before/ when you start planning
1. Bride/Groom – Sit down to understand: REALLY understand what you want. Ask yourself what you visualize when you think of the day(s) and make sure you have a picture that is aligned. We always described our wedding with 3 words – small, intimate, and celebration. That helped.
2. Bride/Groom + Families. Have an open conversation on the type of wedding you want. We had long discussions upfront to get this sorted and we eventually narrowed down on a plan for the 4 days that we all could live with..
A caveat here – It’s vital to be sensitive to everyone’s needs and requirements. We did our best (as bride and groom) not to bulldoze our parent’s suggestions and sensitivies while being firm. (It helped that our parents were wonderful throughout the process, of course!) After a bit of back and forth, we managed to find very good middle ground.
3. Set up governance. Organizing a wedding is just like managing a project. My recommendation would be to make the bride the CEO – no decision goes through without her approval. In our case, we had our parents take charge of different aspects and this was a HUGE step in making sure planning moved forward.
4. Sort out venues. This is driven by the type of wedding you want – so those discussions need to come first. As soon as these are done, get our pre-invites to all close friends so they can sort our vacation and flights as necessary.
3-5 months before.
4. Work hard on guest lists. This is tough if you are Indian and want a small wedding. I’d wager it’s tough in most cases. There’s no running away from it. We had many many long conversations and we kept going back to our keywords – small, intimate, and celebration.
5. Dig deep into costs. Weddings are expensive affairs and the cost of many small things add up quickly. Luckily, there are tons of levers to cut costs. For example, we were all aligned that we wanted excellent food all through but were more than willing to cut down on other little things like –
– We did e-invites instead of traditional invites and that helped a great deal as stationery costs add up
– We pre-bought all our alcohol in the 3 months before the wedding as charges across venues are really steep! So, we had all friends coming in from abroad bring duty free alcohol..
– We kept guest lists small :)
– As we got closer to the event, we went through every cost item line by line and removed tons of unnecessary items
– We worked with one logistics provider. This was more expensive but helped a lot with convenience and saved a lot of time as we had one point of contact for the most part.
6. Involve everyone who wants to be involved. We were fortunate to have friends and family who wanted to be involved. My recommendation would be to get everyone involved as much as possible.. their support becomes invaluable as you get closer to the day.
1-3 months before
7. Get inviting and help people coming from afar with logistics. This is an arduous process but is a big step in building the momentum. Send our your invites and then help all friends taking the trip across continents with logistics – booking flight tickets, etc.
8. Use Whatsapp. We experimented a fair bit with various pieces of technology and came to the conclusion that Whatsapp is the best event organization app. We had a huge centralized Whatsapp group for our friends and numerous sub groups for various pieces of the puzzle. This was invaluable and also helped build excitement and momentum.
1-4 weeks before
9. Speak to close family every day. This is crunch time and the stress levels go up. Be of help by keeping in close touch with close family (assuming close family is helping out :))
10. Very important – Transition “control center” to framily. The worst mistake you can make is to be the control centre close to the wedding. My recommendation would be that the bride, groom, and both sets of parents absolve themselves of all organization responsibility one week before the wedding. I’m hopeful you will have close family members or friends who will take over. If you don’t, I’d suggest you go make some close friends NOW.
In all seriousness, the week leading up to a wedding in the family is very chaotic and you want to make sure you aren’t the stressed out bottleneck. We were incredibly fortunate to have some super capable friends and family take over the entire organizational piece – i.e. one big rocks manager (food, venues, etc.), one events manager (i.e. all the small details), and one person in-charge of the various small pieces of the puzzle . We literally just focused on what only we could do – show up, get married, smile, and have fun.
This learning didn’t come easy as I pushed the ‘ask for help’ part until I was completely overwhelmed. Please avoid my stupidity.
11. Do a complete event flow call – from first minute to last minute – with new framily event managers. We did a marathon 5 hour Skype call with everyone involved and walked through every single detail a week before the big day. That was the day we transitioned responsibility over to friends.
12. Define clear roles for all friends. As mentioned above, we also defined roles for the members of framily who were going to help with the wedding and had people in-charge of photo, video, technology, music, etc. This was really helpful amidst the chaos.
13. For the ladies – if you have more than 1 function, pack separate bags with everything required beforehand. Pro tip from the wife.
During D-days
14. Ask for lots of help. It’s amazing how many of your framily will want to help. You’ll be making them happy by asking them for help. So, do lots of that!
15. Always smile and be in a good mood. If the bride and groom are tensed, everyone is tensed. Let it be a real celebration! And if you are the bride/groom, it’s your day.. take advice with a pinch of salt and do what you need to do to have fun.
After
16. Follow up with thank you’s. To individuals, groups – as necessary.
Other tips at random
– Take some time to get to know each others’ families in advance. It’s nice to surprise relatives by already knowing their names! We didn’t have that issue with friends since most of our friends were common having been together 6 years.
– Calling in-laws ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’. This is not for everyone but we decided a few months before the wedding that we’d replace ‘Uncle’ and ‘Aunty’ with Dad and Mom i.e. A uncle became A Dad. It was a huge mental shift for us but helped..
– Things will go wrong. That’s just normal. Shrug and move on. Make the most of the limited time you have with your favorite people.
– Work in some surprises. We had a bunch of surprises planned that different groups were privy to and this added the sense of fun and anticipation.
– Make sure the wedding reflects YOU. We didn’t have a traditional bachelor/bachelorette party as that’s not our style. Instead, we got our closer friends and family together at a beach house 2 days before our wedding and had a blast. We also had lots of music, some dance, lots of conversation and many laughs – i.e. our style.
– Never forget that it is a celebration. Never ever ever forget this. Organizing a wedding can get very stressful.. remember to remind yourself from time to time that it is just a celebration and the most important thing is to have fun.
Our wedding was very very special. Save for a couple of super special people who couldn’t make it thanks to travel issues, we had almost all of the most important people in our lives together for 2 incredible days. I would happily do it all over again to relive all those great memories. Now that I’ve played the groom’s role in a wedding, I’m looking forward to helping out in the many that will follow..
I’m sure I’ve missed out a few tips but I’ve hopefully got most of what worked for us covered. Look forward to your additions in the comments.. and of course, I hope it helps!
A Learning a Day 