Bride-to-be Blogger Kristy: Deciding Which Wedding Details to Keep—and Which to Cut

iStockphoto

I keep wondering to myself, as I spend late nights looking up decorative treat bags for our favors and local items to include in our hotel guest bags: Do the little things really make a difference?

After a year and five months of engagement, I’m ready to get married already! Slaving over carefully selecting details has me losing sleep at night. So someone, if you can, please assure me that the little things do make a big difference.

I think this comes pretty standard in life situations. I think back to my parents’ “words of wisdom” post I wrote in October when they celebrated their 35th wedding anniversary, and one of their pieces of advice was, “Surprise them with simple things.” Well I’m realizing that a lot of simple things start to add up! So I started vetting through the details list to see what we could do on our own, what we should purchase, and what should be eliminated. And of course, some key factors played a role in our decision-making: time, money, and importance.

So maybe you’re thinking, “What on earth could this girl be talking about?” or you’re sitting there thinking, “I’m right there with you—let’s list it up!” I’m a visual person, so naturally, a list was the way to go. This time it wasn’t as terrible as our reception location list, but it was growing and definitely needed some taming.

So the first thing I did was price things out. The adorable Ann Wood cake toppers that I thought I couldn’t live without—what better way to tie the love birds theme together?—priced out to be about $200 and were quickly eliminated. After about 10 minutes of Internet searching, I found many similar cake toppers online (thank you, Etsy!), and even better, I found templates. So with some assistance from my mom and her amazing sewing skills, we’ve made our own cake toppers.

Another thing I decided to tackle is our guest book. There are so many different choices out there instead of the standard sign-your-name-style book. We’ve decided to use a fingerprint tree, where guests leave their fingerprint on a sketched tree (at the end of the night, the tree is full of “leaves!”), as our guest book. So, I resorted back to my first few years of college and my drawing classes where one of my favorite things to sketch were trees, and another item was relatively inexpensively crossed off our list!

Thanks to my Photoshop skills, we’ve been fortunate to be able to design and print most of our paper items on our own, and hopefully eliminate a few additional costs. So programs, guest information that they’ll receive at the hotel, table signs, and random printed information can be completed, edited, and then hopefully printed at a relatively inexpensive price.

It feels pretty amazing to DIY a bunch of things for our wedding, but I’ve also been very selective about what I’ve done myself because my own to-do list has been growing at a staggering rate. So, I’ve reached out to both friends and family for help. My mom is sewing our cake toppers, my high school girlfriends and aunt are helping with a secret favor task, and I’ll feed anyone some hummus, chips, and a glass of wine who wants to help me stuff guest bags or help glue together the programs. My girlfriends and family have been my secret army in wedding planning, always willing to help out at a moment’s notice.

Some of the things that I ultimately ended up eliminating were ideas I had originally gotten from Pinterest—I love it, but with Pinterest, it’s one I-can’t-live-without-this moment after another. And many of them I learned that I could live without (the sparklers and matches to give to guests at the end of the night—burnt wedding dress, anyone?).

As I continue to work towards our wedding day and sort through the details, my inner architecture nerd is helping me remember that less is more—or at least simplified and well thought out and budgeted detailing is more (for your wallet, sanity, and time management, at least).

What were some well-invested details you’re incorporating into your wedding? Or, if you’re already married, what are some items you wish you had just skipped for your wedding?

Like Philadelphia Wedding on Facebook

Follow Philadelphia Wedding on Twitter

Getting married? Start and end your wedding planning journey with Philadelphia Weddings' guide to the best wedding vendors in the city.