It’s. Know how to handle the stress before it hits you. That would be the number one advice that I would give a couple starting to plan their wedding. Listen, we all know that planning your wedding could be literally the most stressful time of your life. And it really shouldn’t be. It should be a joyful time. Yeah, sure, there’s going to be lots of stress and lots of decisions and lots of deadlines that you’ve got to hit. But the end of the day, it should be joyful, right? You’re starting to create one of the most special days of your life. And as soon as that stress hits and it’s not joyful, you need to stop and put a hole on everything. What I’d like for you to do is really think now before it begins on how you handle stress, right? Is it exercise? Is it meditation? Personally, what I would suggest is before you start this, really start a nice bond with your party planner. You’ve hired them for a reason. You hire them because you trust them, because you like them, because they would be your friend outside of this craziness of planning a wedding. So depend on them when it starts to get out of hand, lean on them. They’ve done this before and they can really help you pull you out of that rut and get you back on the right track, because it should be a joyful time. So many times I see a couple sitting in front of me at a meeting and I see that expression on their face and I say to them, guys, stop now and let’s regroup because this is the most important time of your life. We want that very special day. But you also don’t want those bad memories of what a nightmare it was leading up to that special day, right? So think about that. Think about how you handle stress. Put an end to it and it’ll be a little easier if it does become overwhelming because you’re actually prepared on how to handle it. That’s the most important thing I would say to a couple starting down this crazy road of planning a wedding.

Yes. The number one piece of advice that I give all of our couples as a wedding planner is don’t sweat the small stuff. Nobody cares what type of chairs you had. Nobody cares what color the linens were. Nobody cares what type of favors you had. All they care about was that they got to come and spend the night with you. And all you care about is that you had the best night of your life. So make sure that don’t let the little things stress you out. Now, my number one piece of advice as a bride is to hire a wedding planner, because I did not have a wedding planner. And it is the number one thing that we have the biggest regret about. And it’s one of the reasons why I started a wedding planning company. So those are my two pieces of advice for.

All right, y’all. Number one piece of advice when planning a wedding coming at you. Are you ready? Hire a planning team. Now, I know, because we’re wedding planners and designers, that this seems a bit biased, but we truly do feel that everybody should have an expert friend along the journey with them, guiding them, helping them save time and money in booking these vendors. Your planning team knows a little or a lot about all the different areas that it takes to carry out a successful event that fits your vision, that fits your budget. So we truly do believe if there’s one thing that we could tell every person, is that they should hire an expert friend, a wedding planning team, to help guide them along this journey.

Hire someone you trust to run the show. Hey, I’m Jason Monroe. I’m the owner of highway 61 films. We’ve been making wedding films in Chicago since 2009. After working so many weddings over the years, I would say that my number one piece of advice for a couple is to hire a wedding planner, event coordinator, someone that they trust, that they’ve worked with on details, schedule all the logistics, and have that person run the show. Because if you don’t, as a couple, there are going to be so many moments throughout the day where you’re going to be looked as the point person, and then people are going to come to you for questions about logistics, things that are happening, what time, and that’s going to be so annoying to you as a couple. And it’s going to take you out of the moment to where you’re just going to be trying to put on your best face to be diplomatic to people and answer questions. And then on the flip side, you’re also going to want to be in the moment with your family members, and a lot of that is just going to happen. I’ve seen couples get aggravated after being just poked and prodded so much, after asking so many questions because they didn’t hire a good coordinator. And frankly, I’ve seen it kind of put a damper on their day up until the moment maybe when the dancing begins, because that’s when all decisions are over with. So that would be the thing that I would tell you to do, is just to hire a coordinator. No matter where it is or what kind of budget you have for it, find someone good.

Number one piece of advice. I’ve told it to all my friends. I tell it to all my clients. My mom got remarried. I told it to her, do what you want to do is your wedding day. It is not a family reunion. It is not your mom or your mother in law’s second wedding that they get to have their dream come true. It is you and your partner’s day. So if there’s shit you don’t like, you don’t think is worth the time, you don’t think is worth the money, skip it, cut it, totally ignore it, and then add in the stuff that you think is fun, whether that’s cool little decorations off of Etsy, the custom cocktail napkins are really cool right now. Whatever you want to be your day, do it. Our priority for our wedding day and what I try to encourage all of my friends and clients to do is we wanted people to leave our wedding thinking like, that was cool, but that was them. That was not any other wedding we’ve been to this year. The elements we saw throughout the day really made sense for them and made it feel personal and unique. And that does not have to mean expensive. Absolutely does not have to mean expensive, but it has to be thoughtful, and I think creating your wedding day and planning it like that, whatever that ends up being, is going to make you enjoy it more and have fonder memories of it and will always outshadow any little things that will inevitably go wrong. So I didn’t love my hair and makeup the way it turned out on our wedding day. I didn’t love my experience with our photographer on the wedding day, but we had the wedding we wanted. I had mostly fake flowers. The centerpieces were from Trader Joe’s. We didn’t have a DJ because my husband doesn’t like dancing. We did the nothing bunt cakes, like, very cheap cake thing. We made a cocktail as our unity ceremony. During the ceremony portion, we just focused on what we wanted and was going to make us happy. At some points during the planning process, it got stressful, worrying about what everyone else is going to think or say, blah, blah, blah. But it all comes back to our initial intention of it’s our day, and it’s about what we want. Don’t really give a shit about what everybody else wants. They can come and enjoy it, or they can stay home.