What comes next? People are starting to complain! How did I even get here?

Brides lucky enough to have a full-time planner handling the big day deets and those who’ve hired wedding day coordinators can stop reading because they don’t have to worry about who needs to be where when. The rest of us? Need a plan. And that plan is the wedding day timeline – not to be confused with the wedding planning timeline – a list of happenings, times, and possibly people that gives you a general outline of how the wedding day will play out.

While some couples play it fast and loose with the wedding day timeline, some wedding day timelines are broken down in five minute increments. Especially during the reception when you may be moving from first dance to father-daughter dance to mother-son dance to dinnertime pretty quickly. This will help you and your wedding party keep it together, of course, but it will also be helpful for your mc so she or he doesn’t miss any cues.

Why do so many people forget about the wedding day timeline? Probably because we do – and by we, I mean wedding experts. We get so immersed in the planning side of things that we forget that the planning is leading up to an actual event that also needs attention. So that’s my tip: Make sure that you either make yourself a wedding day timeline spreadsheet in advance of the big day or choose a wedding planning workbook (like the Ultimate Wedding Workbook) that includes one!

What’s this? Today’s post is written not by me, Christa aka Never teh Bride, but by Bentley Meeker, America’s premier lighting designer. I thought Mr. Meeker might have something to say on the subject of lighting design for weddings, as he has worked for over two decades in the event industry, creating extraordinary environments for the weddings of notable celebrities like Robert DeNiro, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Chelsea Clinton. The images in Mr. Meeker’s post come from his book, Light X Design, which features a kaleidoscope of amazing lighting design for weddings and other events.

Wedding lighting design for ceremonies

Lighting is THE single most important visual element in your wedding. More so than flowers, decor, or even architecture and space. Yet, with all of its critical nature, so many brides, and even wedding planners, don’t consider lighting or budget for it at all. If so, it is often looked at as an addendum to the wedding decor budget.

With lighting setting the mood, it should be considered first and foremost once a space is chosen. Here’s why: One can transform any space with light, but one can only augment with flowers or decor.

On the practical side, there are three things that need to be managed when executing a lighting design for weddings:

• The room needs to look beautiful
• The guests have to feel good
• Lastly, the guests, especially the bride, have to FEEL good

Lighting design for receptions, too

So in support of that, here are five things to look for when lighting a wedding:

1. Symmetry - Light everything evenly so that the room looks symmetrical.

2. Intensity - Dim the lights a little less than you think you should. Your eye adjusts to the lower light and it creates so much more atmosphere than you’d ever imagine. Which brings me to my next point:

3. Levels - Dim absolutely everything. Having the ability to dim the lights when the grandparents go home and set the mood for the kids is a pretty important thing to be able to do.

4. Color - Soft beautiful flattering colors (pinks, ambers, honeys and apricots) should be used wherever people are. While we love blue and green to look at, and we often want to go bolder with color, those colors make our skin tones sallow and pasty.

5. Angles - Be super sensitive to light in peoples’ eyes by angling things as vertically as possible. If your grandmother has a light shining in her eyes all night, chances are she’ll go home before the cake cutting.

There is also a 6th consideration, namely your lighting designer. Since lighting is often mysterious and unknown, and the bride and her family are often unable to see the full picture prior to their walking in, (decor, catering, etc. will not yet have been set up) it is very important that your lighting designer really get you and who you are. That’s personality driven and I think it should be considered right alongside talents and portfolios as a critical criteria.

~Bentley Meeker

Are you a wedding vendor who has some insight to share with brides-to-be and grooms-to-be? Send me an email to talk about the possibility of guest posting right here!

Wedding day stress is inevitable, or so people say. After all, it’s weddings that make perfectly lovely women turn into bridezillas. Weddings bring out the worst in people. Wedding vendors are all out to get you. Something terrible will go wrong. Men hate weddings. Or so people say, right to your face when you’re planning a wedding and just looking for some support or a little enthusiasm. Not me or Twistie, but definitely lots of people – probably the same people who, when they hear you’re pregnant, start ranting about how they tore from HERE all the way to HERE. Right.

Skip the stress by fudging your internal deadline

Here’s a wonderful antidote to wedding day stress that came up in a recent Brides.com post: Pretend your wedding is on a Wednesday. In other words, check off as many wedding planning to-dos before the Wednesday that’s before your wedding. Do the things that most brides and grooms do on Thursdays and Fridays before Saturday weddings on Mondays and Tuesdays. It’s probably one of the best wedding planning tips I’ve ever read. It’s the easiest way to make sure that on the night before your wedding, the only thing you have to worry about is getting a good night’s sleep.

She looks happy enough!

Children at weddings is one of those topics that’s been debated half to death, here and elsewhere, among couples and families and wedding guests. Some people maintain that children simply do not belong at weddings, while others counter that weddings ought to be family affairs where children are absolutely welcome. The simplest solution, of course, is to defer to the wishes of brides and grooms. If children are invited, then they’re welcome at that particular wedding. If children are not invited, then that particular wedding is an adults-only affair. Simple, no?

The same goes for infants. When La Paloma was very young, The Beard and I were invited to a wedding – our invitation said ‘The Terrys’ – and I made a point of getting in touch with the bride to ask if babies were invited. Because I was not going to inflict an unpredictable 8-month-old on someone’s special day unless she was definitely going to be welcome. She was, we went, and there were no difficulties with the exception of my trying and failing to nurse in the confines of my automobile.

Which brings me to the topic of this post, the concessions brides and grooms can make for their littlest wedding guests. I don’t mean the toddler+ set that can amuse themselves by sticking their fingers in the backside of the wedding cake and crawling under tables, but rather those wedding guests confined to strollers or bucket car seats, the guests who sup from breasts and bottles, and yes, the guests who may not only cry during your ceremony, but actually scream. Babies at weddings aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, that’s for sure. But if they’re yours, then here are 5 things you can do to make your littlest guests (and their mamas and papas) more comfortable in an unfamiliar situation.

1. Make sure that parents of infants know that the infants are invited. Not every invitee with a wee one is going to take the initiative like I did, which means that some may decline simply because childcare isn’t an option. The easiest way to ensure that babies’ mamas and papas know that the whole family will be welcome at your ceremony and reception is to include the little one’s name on their invitation. That doesn’t leave much room for confusion – though don’t be surprised if people are still confused since wedding invitation etiquette is not something taught in school these days.

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As more couples pay for all or part of their own weddings, changes are happening in the way ceremonies and receptions are planned. My favorite change? The emergence of the involved, helpful groom who has an opinion about his upcoming wedding and is exciting to shoulder his share of the wedding planning work. In my dad’s day – as I’ve been led to believe – grooms mainly tried to stay out of the way of brides who had the final say when it came to just about everything. But now that grooms are footing some of the bill? They’re folding invitations that they helped pick out, assembling favors that they actually like, and more.

Let's hear it for those helpful grooms!

Some of these involved grooms-to-be are even blogging, though admittedly they tend to give it up after they tie the knot unlike some people – hello! – who just keep on going on about wedding planning like nothing happened. There are even wedding planning guides for grooms! Unfortunately, some parts of the wedding industry have yet to catch up to the trend of the helpful groom and continue to focus only on brides-to-be and their desires. I’ve even heard stories of wedding vendors who, when meeting hetero couples, talked only to the bride and all but ignored the presence of a groom. Uncool, vendors, uncool. Was The Beard as involved as he could have been? I plead the fifth on that one and state for the record that I can be a a force of nature when it comes to party planning.

How about you? Is your other half – if your other half happens to be a groom – pulling his weight? If not, and you want him to (some brides don’t), then TELL HIM THAT. Don’t just stew in a sauce of resentment until you explode. Your groom, like many, may have been told by a well-meaning male relative that he shouldn’t participate in wedding planning. Inside many an uninvolved groom is a helpful groom waiting to come out.

Image: Peacock Photography

Even if you’ve planned everything perfectly down to the tiniest detail, your wedding day isn’t going to go smoothly if you can’t actually get to the ceremony or the reception. Some locales have more complicated layouts than others, construction and road closures can screw up the best laid plans, and some addresses are just plain difficult to find. You may be surprised at how difficult your venues are to find for your wedding guests – or even your limo driver! Knowing where you’re going and what’s local can make your wedding day that much less stressful for you and your guests.

How can they have closed every road leading to the chapel?!

Wedding Directions Aren’t Just for Guests
Maybe you’re getting married in your hometown, but lots of couples don’t. And to those brides and grooms I say do a few test runs so you know the lay of the land. Do you know how to get to your ceremony venue? Can you navigate from the ceremony space to the reception venue? Even in the event of a road closure? If you needed to send out your MOH for emergency, last minute supplies, could you tell her how to get to an ATM, a drug store, or a florist’s shop? Unless you just can’t get there prior to the big day – because you’re having a destination wedding, etc. – drive around the locale you’re getting married in until you no longer need a map.

Will Your Wedding Maps Be Accurate?
Speaking of maps, have you actually driven the routes you’re suggesting your wedding guests take from the ceremony to the reception? As mentioned above, if you can, get in the car and check the accuracy of your directions before printing them up and putting them in your wedding invitations. When that isn’t possible, is there someone local who can do it for you? Couples having destination weddings may be able to call their venues to confirm the accuracy of directions. Don’t assume that your limo driver will be 100% sure where your wedding venue is – your knowing how to get there may make all the difference!

Your Wedding Maps Are Here – Double Check Them
You’ve driven around the city or town where your wedding will be held. You’ve driven the routes that make up your wedding directions. And now your wedding maps have finally arrived! Time to assemble your wedding invitations? Not quite. First, you need to proof your wedding map one last time. Mistakes happen! For example, my wedding invitation proof were error-free, but my wedding invitations arrived in the mail with a really lame typo. Your wedding maps may contain some slight oops, and reputable companies will replace them for free as long as you catch the error.

What steps are you taking (or did you take) to ensure your wedding guests can find your ceremony and reception?

She looks honest enough...

Wedding planners are great. Fantastic. From consultants to full-time planners, they can make it a lot easier to plan a wedding. Had I been able to afford one, you bet you tush that I would have hired one and had a better, less chaotic wedding as a result. But I didn’t know then what I know now, so I can’t exactly beat myself up over who I did and didn’t hire, right? If you can afford to hire a wedding planner and the idea of assembling favors doesn’t sound like the best way to spend a Saturday night, then go for it!

Just remember that, as in all bunches, the wedding planner bunch has a few bad apples, so you need to be careful when hiring one. Below are nine things that most wedding planners don’t publicize – not all of which are true for all planners. As you’re hiring a wedding planner, keep these possibilities in the back in your mind and, above all, make sure the planner you hire is someone you feel comfortable with!

1. Wedding planning requires no formal training. There are certification programs and classes, but there is no formal licensing scheme in place. Anyone can decide to start calling themselves a wedding planner, so when you hire a wedding consultant or planner, get those references and follow up with them.

2. Not all wedding planners are full-service wedding planners, especially when it comes to wedding planners and wedding coordinators at resorts or in-house planners at venues. Consequently, it’s important to have all of the services your planning professional will be providing outlined in a wedding planner contract.

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