Love My Dress reader, I need your help! I've been wanting for sometime now to pull together a guide for all my newly-engaged readers, full of tid-bits of advice and pitfalls to avoid as a planning Bride/wedded couple to be. The kind of advice that you realise in hind-sight you wish you'd have known prior to your wedding day or that you have learned already in your wedding planning journey.
I'd like to make this guide freely available for download via Love My Dress and well, I need your help!
In order to help me compile the very best guide, I would like to seek your input. I know that many of you reading this wedding blog will already be married and many more of you will be about to be married – it is you that I want to target with this blog post.
What advice would you give to newly engaged couples and Brides to be?
I'd like to invite you to leave up to 5 of your top tips in the comments box below for collation into a composite PDF guide. Here are some pointers to get you started…
The Dress – what would you do different next time, if anything?
What about the best ways to survive the night before/morning of your wedding day?
Your Wedding Photographs – any regrets? Would you recommend an engagement shoot?
Love My Dress Wedding Blog – Photography Copyright (c) 2011, Eliza Claire
Best pre-wedding day beauty regime tips. Any product recommendations?
What about buying for your Bridesmaids have you learned/did you learn anything?
Keeping any children happy and pre-occupied – how did you/do you plan to do this?
Love My Dress Wedding Blog – Photography Copyright (c) 2011, Mark Wallis
How did you battle pre-wedding day {and wedding day!} nerves?
What are your tips on finding the best wedding photographer?
Any Bargain buys/secret fabulous websites/online shops?
Any books you would recommend? What about wedding planners/organisers/list makers?
Love My Dress Wedding Blog – Photography Copyright (c) 2011, Sara Reeve Photography
Did your Mum or Grandma pass on any little gems of advice that worked?
What items could you not do without on the day?
From any aspect at all in relation to planning a wedding, I am keen to hear from you all, be you a newlywed or a Bride to Be. And to inspire you further, I'm including some of my own tips below…
Tip 1 – if you are wearing a bracelet against a silk wedding dress, be careful the detail on the bracelet does not catch the fabric of the dress. This happened on my wedding day, leading to a patch of scratched fabric with bits of thread hanging off!
Tip 2 – I found it helped to move around the table of guests during the wedding breakfast to ensure I got to say hi to everyone. Everyone after all was there in one place so it was easy to track who I had got to see and hadn't, and meant I could relax a bit more for the rest of the day knowing I'd made an effort to catch up with all our guests.
Tip 3 – Wedding favours are lovely, but really not necessary, especially if you have a tight budget.
Tip 4 – Do NOT impulse buy the very first wedding dress you try on. You will fall in love with many dresses at first. Spend time trying them all on before you get that gut feeling you've 'found the one'. Enjoy the experience!
Tip 5 – Most of all, when you find yourself fretting over the tiny detail on the evening prior to your wedding day, try to take a deep breath and let those thoughts go. You will look back and realise they didn't matter a jot.
……..Get the picture? Great! 🙂 And a few more…
Tip 6 – Don't be afraid to challenge convention and tradition when faced with it. You don't HAVE to do the standing to cut the cake shot. You don't HAVE to do a first dance if you don''t want to and you don't even have to do the whole speech thing either! Have your day your way.
Tip 7 –The Guest list. Ahhh, the guestlist. If you are struggling whether to invite or not to invite and worried who you will offend in the process, go with your heart I say. Follow that gut instinct and stick fast to it.
♥ ♥ ♥
Thank you so much for your help on this one guys – I'm really looking forward to reading through your feedback, comments and top tip. Whether it's just a single gold nugget of advice or more, please take a moment to pop your comments below 🙂 Thank you so much.
Lots of love,
Annabel xXx
♥
ps – Tip 8!! – Consider a unique wedding day service to help you capture and maintain memories, like, The Wedding Reporter…
pps – I will be linking to any website or blog of those leaving comments in the guide I pull together – thanks a million! 😉
Annabel View all Annabel's articles
Founder of Love My Dress. Passionate Podcaster and Editor. Annabel lives in rural North Yorkshire with her husband and business partner Philip, their two daughters and menagerie of furry hounds. She loves photography, meditation, walking, being outdoors and star gazing. She is fierce when it comes to championing talent within the wedding industry and when she's not working on Love My Dress, she supports her husband Philip in the running of the family's sustainable flower farm and floral design business, Moonwind Flowers. In 2013, she became a published author.
