Bayad Utang: How to start planning a wedding

A bride tossing her bouquet of flowers. Catego...

I'm sure that a big, lavish wedding requires detail-oriented and effective people planning one. I'm married but I didn't have a wedding. However, I'm an organized person so read up.

Before you start thinking of themes, dresses, flowers and so on, you first need to know this:

Your guest list - how many you are willing to invite.

Draft a list with your partner and start paring down as you take your budget into consideration. This may take awhile, but the sooner both of you agree not to add (or remove) any more guests, the better off you will be to proceed to the next steps.

You will need an estimated number of your guests so that you can among other things:

Choose a suitable location to hold your event and find out how much it would cost
Find out how much catering would cost, and choose a caterer of your choice
Find out how much it would cost for guest giveaways (a famous practice in Filipino weddings)
Find out how much your cake would cost should you decide to serve it as dessert
Find out how much your invitations would cost

A cousin of mine and her husband did this. There were issues along the way, such as not inviting another cousin, but they knew what they wanted. At the end of the day, they had the intimacy of the wedding just how they liked it and the cousin did not really miss a thing. We hardly see her anyway, something like once a decade.

Multi-tasking is not cool

Because almost everything in a wedding is dependent on one or the other, create a plan that shows their relationship. The table below shows an example of what I'm talking about.

I'm no longer a fan of multi-tasking. In this regard, though you can contact suppliers for everything on the same day to get the momentum going, it would really help you stay sane if you channel all of your energy into completing one item at a time. Stick to mono-tasking so that you wouldn't feel harrassed by the demands of your wedding. You and your partner will have more mental energy to make the best decision on every task in your list.

Make your day YOURS

The wedding vows are complete - you may now ki...

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One thing my husband HATES about weddings is how it becomes a giant production. Photographers here and there, videographers blocking the guests view of the couple, cables running up and down the church and reception halls, the couple not having any chance to really hang out with guests...my husband hates all of that!

I suppose it boils down to what you want out of your wedding day. I still believe that you should enjoy it with very little worry about the "program". Discuss with your videographers and photographers about maximizing on candid moments, rather than instructing you to "act" all the time.

Admittedly, I would like to have one of those on-site videos but I don't want the people I hire to be obtrusive. I want them to capture moments naturally created during the whole do. At the end of the day, I want to be able to say "I got married" and not "I created a wedding production".