Choosing the Sites, the Theme, the Tone of Your Wedding

For the happiest life, days
should be rigorously planned,
nights left open to chance.
—Mignon McLaughlin

At last, it’s actually time to
begin planning your wedding. You have
the ring, you’ve told all your close friends
and family, announced the upcoming nuptials in
the local newspaper, and basked in all those happy
congratulations and well wishes. You may even
have been pestered with questions about where
you’ll live, when you’ll start having children, and
other personal information that people seem to
feel free to ask at this time in your life (and you
have handled it all with grace and aplomb). You’ve
even planned the budget for your wedding and
resolved some of the potentially thorny issues of
your new legal and financial status. Now you are
overwhelmed with pressure to choose invitations,
the dress, the flowers, the cake, and music for
both the ceremony and the reception.

Start with the big picture. Before you begin to
focus on those highly important details, it is time
to choose where your wedding and reception will
take place and to consider what general atmosphere,
even attitude, you want your wedding to
have. Then you’ll be able to move on to the next
phase—choosing who will be participating in the
ceremony with you, the color scheme for your
wedding, and what sort of food you will serve. In
short, it’s time to determine the style your wedding
will have. A wedding is an event, rather like a
Broadway play: Will yours be lavish and over the
top, somber and formal, joyous and filled with
meaning, or casual and laid back? Will you choose
to honor your love, your families, your ethnicity, or
your culture? What means the most to you and
what feeling do you want to express on this day?
What do you want to emphasize as you exchange
vows? How do you want your guests to go away
feeling? Your decision regarding sites, formality,
number of attendants, and color schemes will help
to narrow your choices and get you started on all
those other decisions. Now is the time to start
booking the sites and reserving the key vendors
you’ll need to hire.