When The Wedding Planner Plans Her Own Wedding

...& What I've Learned In The Process

As many of my social media followers know, I recently re-married on May 26th 2019 to my wonderful new husband, Adam - creating our Beautifully Blended family.  We call ourselves "The Crazy Bunch", 'cause heck with 4 kids, we ought to be crazy :) 

A little bit of background - NEVER would I have thought that I would re-marry again. (But seriously... I asked my best friend if she would just move in with me and just raise our kids together.  Becoming a lesbian or a nun was also appealing at times).  Then FATE took its course and I met Adam :)  He turned my world upside down and filled my heart in a way I didn't know possible. 

Date #1 it came out almost immediately that I didn't want to have more children and I didn't want to get married again (...I know, intense! right?).  He agreed (Hallelujah!)   

Fast forward 1 year - Adam's starts asking how I feel about what he called "a commitment celebration" and maybe some "commitment vows" with a "commitment celebration dinner" and that we wear "commitment rings".    Heck! he wanted to get married but was scared to ask!  Although it wasn't something I had necessarily needed to do again, out of respect to him who had never been married or had a wedding before, I agreed.  I loved the guy.  We were married in our hearts.   The celebration I thought would be great also for the kids to witness. 

So there we were -- planning our "commitment celebration" i.e. Adam's version of a small, family-oriented wedding. 

The Initial Plan:

  • keep it small
  • keep it simple
  • keep in cheap
  • make it family-focused 
  • enjoy the honeymoon instead :)

This blog post is a reflection on what I've learned as both a professional wedding planner working in this industry, but also as a mature bride myself, doing this all over again for a second round marriage.

1. Keeping it simple is HARD!

Adam and I established a reasonable initial budget for our special day.  Although we did keep within our budget, doing so was was damn hard!  The fact of the matter is that once you get planning, there are things that you are gonna want; regardless of the size of the wedding.  There were certain things I comprised on that were not important to me. 

For example, our NEGOTIABLES...

  • no wedding cake
  • no bridal party (just the kids and a couple of witnesses)
  • I got my dress off the rack and it wasn't expensive at all (I've maid more for bridesmaids dresses!)
  • our flowers were limited to some table-top, my bouquet and my step daughters i.e. no corsages, boutineers, fancy arrangements, etc. 
  • no fancy chapel or ceremony space (we got married in the restaurant) 
  • none of the usual stuff like bouquet toss, garter toss, dancing, etc. 

....pretty much all the usual details of the wedding were up for debate / trade off for me and not important!

Our NON-NEGOTIABLES - these are the things that were an absolute MUST

  • amazing food (i'm so tired of the usual banquet hall options and we are huge foodies!)
  • excellent wine (for me : )
  • only immediate family and super-close friends (Adam's family is tiny and I'v had the big fat Italian 300+ person wedding before.  Wasn't gonna do that again)
  • private event 

So once you get into planning, there are things that will come up that you want / need. i.e. 

A DJ - although we didn't really have any dancing at our wedding, of course you still need someone to play music, especially for ceremonies, our first dance.  We needed a mic for the officiant and our speeches, someone to make announcements, etc.   Hence the need for a DJ.

A Photographer / Videographer - small or large event, you're going to want to capture your special day no matter what!

Fun Entertainment / Elements - when you have a bunch of people in a room, you can't help but throw in a couple of surprises.  

2.  Weddings are damn expensive..... no matter how much you cut back!

The main investment in your special day will be your venue / catering.   It doesn't matter whether your event is large or small, the reality is that every place has a minimum spend in order to host an event.  For us, we wanted our restaurant privately for the night. In order to get that, you need to make a minimum spend to make it worth the restaurants time to close down to public.  Since our priory was amazing food and wine, this wasn't an issue.  We opted for the best meal we could get and an amazing wine list for 40 people to make this happen.  The overall cost per person of our wedding was actually quite high in comparison to what most of my clients spend; however our overall budget and spend was less.    This is because we spent more PER PERSON on a smaller number of people for the special day.

3.  The drama still exists - even the second time around :)

One of my hopes this time around was to eliminate a lot of drama surrounding the whole family situation and who to invite.  In my previous marriage and wedding, I was very let down by several of my personal relatives.   This time around, I wasn't going to have it.  The issue is that it doesn't matter whether you are a young bride or an old hag like me, you still will have people to please and naysayers with their opinions.   After some negotiation with my mother, I was able to come to some common ground and negotiate on a few areas, however the reality is that the same stuff came up again 12+ years later.  

4.  There is soooo much more joy in planning a MARRIAGE then a WEDDING

As a new officiant myself, my favourite part of planning the wedding was actually planning the marriage i.e. our ceremony for our special day.   Knowing what I know now, I really took an active role in creating the verbiage that we wanted to use to represent the union of our families.   Whereas in my first marriage I relied on the standard words says by a Catholic Priest, this time I enjoyed working with our Officiant to customize our service.    

5. No matter who you are, you need a wedding day of coordinator :) 

So of course I planned my own wedding, but I definitely could not pull it all off on my own; especially when it came to the Day of Event Coordination.  Although family and friends offered to help, the fact of the matter was that I didn't want them to do it.  I wanted them to be guests and enjoy the night and not have to worry about set up.   Hiring Richa was a GOD SEND.  She assisted with all of my set up, take down, schedule management, paying my vendors and just being my eyes and ears when I wasn't there.  Not to mention, because I had a coordinator, I was able to save TONS on DIY solutions that I had pre-created and provided. 

6. It's never too late to have a Happily Ever After!

If you are a mature person, on your second or more time around, been in a long term relationship for a really long time, etc. and wondering whether having a wedding is for you -- I can honestly tell you that I am SO GLAD we did it.  I know "it's just a piece of paper"; however for our kids and our family, having this wedding was EPIC and CRITICAL to our sense of family.