Dream, Plan, Realize

To achieve great things, two
things are needed: a plan, and
not quite enough time.
—Leonard Bernstein

Turning any dream into reality
requires a few things: work, money, and
most important, a plan. You wouldn’t begin
to build a house without first having blueprints
drawn, and you shouldn’t just start booking caterers
and hiring musicians without a plan either. Now,
months before your wedding day, is the time to
begin budgeting and planning to create the day of
your dreams and to do it without causing bankruptcy,
physical exhaustion, or frazzled nerves. You are
preparing for the biggest celebration of your life.
Those big events of your past—prom, Sweet Sixteen
party, getting your driver’s license, graduating from
college—all pale in comparison to the one that’s
now looming on your horizon. Even if you are at
the pinnacle of success in your chosen profession,
hold a Ph.D. in anthropology, can speak multiple
languages, and have traveled around the world, the
idea of planning your wedding day can paralyze you
with thoughts of “Where do I begin? What do I do
first when faced with planning such an event? ”
There is a wealth of information available about
just what you’re going to have to do over the next
few months. It’s called event planning, wedding
planning, and wedding coordination, and you can
do it yourself (with a few helpful hints, tips, checklists,
and handy forms that we’ve provided in the

appendix of this book, or you can hire a wedding
planner who knows the ropes and has the inside
track on all the vendors you’ll need to hire over the
coming months and just seems to know intuitively
where to find three pounds of fresh pink rose petals
and can feed 250 people without wrinkling a brow
or even seeming to hurry. (In either case, whether
you do it by yourself or with the help of a wedding
planner, it’s all about organization and delegation.
A couple of things dictate how you’re going to
handle planning all the details of your wedding:
how much money you have to spend and how
much time you have to invest over the course of
the next few months. If you have at least 12 to 15
hours per week to devote to wedding planning and
are a fairly organized person, you can do all the
planning yourself with a friend or two to help carry
out some of the footwork. If your professional
demands are great and you have discretionary funds
to invest in the planning of your wedding, then
we suggest you go with a professional planner. In
either case, you will find information and advice
in this chapter that will help you keep it all in
perspective, which is what you need at this point.