I’ve been talking a lot this week offline about the role of vendors in your wedding. With so much DIY, budget constraints and plain creativity it’s easy to take on entire things like catering yourself. In my own experience, with my own worry wart head and a mother who worries the best thing I’ve ever done for celebrations is to hire catering for instance, mainly because if I didn’t I would be running around trying to get the food ready. If I relieved myself of that duty than you can bet my mother would be doing it or another family member and to be honest? I want her having fun and enjoying herself, not worrying about the oven timer!
So my question to you Dotties is- where do you draw the line with getting help? Did you outsource absolutely everything or did you do it yourself? How did you make sure everyone had fun?
We found that doing the wedding ourselves was the best option. However, at the same time acknowledging the limits of our time and wanting to enjoy the day ourselves. Putting the effort into researching and knowing what we were trying to achieve, meant when we were overwhelmed we could go an ask for help and bring on suppliers to take the load off DIYing, additionally, could keep our budget in focus.
As we were paying for it, we made the decision to not involve family in the planning as once you mention it to one person, you have to include the rest and then everyone has responsibilities and no one gets to enjoy the day. Additionally, family tends to want to financially contribute, which although a heartwarming gesture, does mean you feel obligation to take on their ideas which may go against what you originally thought or blow your budget.
Keeping in communication with the suppliers and encouraging everyone to talk to eachother also meant the day ran smoothly. Finally, you have a bridal party you can go to for help, most of ours were flying in for the wedding, so we limited their assistance to pre-ceremony. We filled them in on the schedule for the day and got them to help bring things to the venue, help make sure early family arrivals were catered for and just the general running of last minute errands when you are getting ready. Because from the ceremony onwards was planned for almost everything that could go wrong, everyone got to sit back and enjoy the day.
It’s not for everyone, and you do step on people’s toes when you stand your ground, but it’s one way to have a wedding and we had a positive and wonderful outcome.