Develop A Wonderful Theme And Hand It Over
In your mind, what would make your wedding fantastic? For me it was a day of absolute bliss because Deirdre, my Matron of Honor was a one of a kind complete organizer who reveled in the task and became not only an efficient wedding planner but also a fabulous visionary who could "see" what I wanted and was able to translate it in to action. I'll be in her debt for ever.
One of the keys was a very relaxed approach to things. The most obvious of all when you think about it is to keep your costs under control and Deidre is a martinet, when it comes to control. After all she is an accountant and works as an auditor for one of the big insurance companies. She was able to get a very clear feeling for budget limitations going in as she knows me and my family so well and she had no compunction in asking for clarity and definition if she was not sure of from the get-go.
Of course, when you are planning your fantastic wedding I can't second guess what might make it fantastic for you. It might be the style. Elegant, formal, resort hotel, large guest list, the classic antique wedding dress, a sit down dinner with multiple course, a large orchestra playing gently in the background. Or could it be a relaxed informal wedding on a deserted beach somewhere, informal vows, a simple peasant dress, barefoot bride, a small jazz combo and lots of dancing in to the night and then a cottage on the same beach or nearby.
All very much a personal matter of taste and I would recommend that you make sure that your Matron of Honor or whoever is helping you do this (and I recommend a really good friend and then hand it over) knows what you have in mind. Give her the overarching themes, sketch in a few choice details and then give it up, Baby!
I'm going to tell you about my wedding just a little so that you can imagine what Deirdre did to make it special. First of all, she spent the weekend with me and we nailed down the numbers we had to work with. Then we did some dreaming. What would we saw as attractive, glamorous, exciting. Which kind of dress did we like? Here we didn't haul out the books with picture in. We talked about all the brides we knew and remembered their weddings. What it was supposed to be like, what it was really like. We laughed ourselves sick but after a bit we were focusing in on the Caribbean beach wedding as against the Vermont Country Inn wedding around Christmas. We talked about the kind of things i love. Flowers, good food and drink, the friends I have, what I love to wear. Then she dropped me off at Nordstroms to meet Susie and said she'd be back to pick me up for dinner. Later, she arrived at dinner with a file full of sketches, place possibilities, menus, brochures. We all ordered a couple of drinks, some appetizers and Deirdre held forth for the next hour and a half on a wedding plan as she envisioned it. Do you know that basically she described my wedding almost to the nth detail.
I would love to introduce you but she said afterwards she would never do it again. She had not realized how much planning went in to one of these weddings. They look so easy - beautifully informal but in fact very tricky to pull off. Thank God for my Deirdre!
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