Experts Share Essential Wedding Planning Tips

Experts Share Essential Wedding Planning Tips - Eternity

Experts Share Essential Wedding Planning Tips

21st March 2023

Wedding season is upon us! The time for wearing your favourite lehenga, glamming up with incredible jewels, and incredibly elaborate cakes. Regardless of how soon or far your wedding is, you’re going to be faced with a lot of “are you excited for your big day?” and “when’s the honeymoon?” questions right about now, when truly, you may be facing various emotions and levels of stress.

Don’t worry, we’ve spoken to our incredible industry experts to provide you with top tips; with advice to help you from the start of the planning process, right till a few days before.

Don't leave things last minute

A tip from majority of our suppliers is to enquire & book in advance! The UK is known for having its busy wedding periods, due to the weather, holidays & much more. More recently, couples sit on quotes for a while, and the supplier is often booked by the time they go to pay.

Tip via Hire2Style, London

Piano With Bhav emphasizes the importance of booking your artist entertainment earlier on, around a year in advance. It’s good to remember that some suppliers can take on multiple bookings in a day, whilst most entertainment artists, makeup artists, mehndi artists & much more can’t. Once they’re booked, they’re booked! So if you have someone in particular in mind, be sure to enquire and get booking early on.

Aurelio Photography also suggests booking your photographer early on, often straight after your venue. With more and more couples opting for numerous events & pre-wedding shoots, photographers need time to prepare, have consultations, and carve out the appropriate amounts of times to work on post-wedding production and edits – so they need to have their couples booked in advance in order to manage expectations.

Thoroughly read all your contracts

Whilst it sounds obvious, it’s sometimes to easy to get caught up in the excitement of booking your suppliers, that you don’t actually read through all the T&C’s properly.

Check out our post on everything to look our for when you read through supplier contracts.

Set your budget and manage your expectations

When it comes to wedding planning, it’s often most emotional due to varying expectations, budgets, and unfortunate disappointments.

Sejal Anujah Shah, Harrow advises all couples to really think about your budget, and carve out your priorities as a couple. This will help you to manage expectations and get you in the right mindset of where you can afford to spend a little bit more (ie. perhaps on your dream bespoke wedding outfit), or where you may need to compromise.

Especially when it comes to customisations, you need to be prepared to pay the premium. In the long run, you might think it absolutely worth it to have elements of ‘you’ throughout your outfits, stationery, drinks & so much more.

Find suppliers who understand you and your vision

Speak to your suppliers as much as possible, in advance! You will be spending a lot of time communicating with each supplier, and you want to be able to trust them completely; as well as, ensure you have the correct communication style and working style with them.

Whether it be a trial, consultation, or initial meeting; have a transparent chat before booking.

Tip via Divya Mehndi, London

Have your mehndi done on a quiet day

As you know, bridal mehndi is a time consuming and intricate process.

Having the bridal mehndi done on a quiet day can offer a few benefits. Firstly, it allows the bride to fully relax and enjoy the process without any distractions or interruptions. A quiet environment can be soothing and help to reduce any pre-wedding nerves or stress – definitely don’t allocate yourself any wedding-admin tasks on your mehndi day!

Secondly, a quiet day can also provide your mehndi artist with the necessary time and space to create intricate designs that require concentration and attention to detail.

Tip via AJ Mehndi, London

Minimise distractions

In addition to the above, when it comes to getting your mehndi done or your hair & makeup, try and minimise the distractions as much as possible. This includes having too many friends & family members around and greeting you, or even asking tons of questions.

Definitely allocate one or two bridesmaids / friends / family to keep you company, but avoid having too many people in the room.

Finish your prep 2-3 weeks in advance

Do not leave anything to the last few weeks! The more you plan things in advance, the more you can get into the zone of feeling relaxed & excited for your wedding.

Delegate as much as possible for the last few weeks, to also save yourself a lot of time in the crucial days leading up to your wedding.

Our biggest tip is to set up a wedding website. Include all of your guest information ie. dress codes, parking, specific timings etc., to avoid any last minute questions.

Don't get caught up in impressing the guests

Unfortunately, this is one of the ongoing battles of planning an Asian wedding. You don’t want to get caught up in ‘what would our guests think’ thoughts!

Majority of the time, you stress about little aspects of your wedding, which no one else would really notice. It’s impossible to control everything, so remember to do everything you want and can control, without thinking about others.

Natural lighting

Culturally, the likelihood is that most couples will definitely still have physical wedding invites, however, they may have fewer as they try to become more sustainable with their wedding planning.

With reduced costs of printing all your save the dates and invites, wedding websites are a more cost effective way to share the information further.

If you are planning a mixture, browse through our talented wedding stationery providers here.

Bespoke is better

Unfortunately, this is one of the ongoing battles of planning an Asian wedding. You don’t want to get caught up in ‘what would our guests think’ thoughts!