I know not everyone is ‘planning a wedding’ so I have kept the wedding posts to a minimum. But, I’ve been getting more wedding questions (and a lot of you guys are planning too!) so I wanted to share with you my favorite parts of this process. The only reason this process has been fun is because I haven’t stressed about the little stuff, I have had a clear vision about what’s important to us, and haven’t let people’s opinions sway what Zack and I truly want as we start our life together. Zack has helped me at each step (I told him I wouldn’t plan this alone because we are BOTH busy AF) so this was key. Planning a wedding can get overwhelming so it’s up to you to take it one step at a time and make it fun.
A special thanks to Minted for partnering with me on this post! Affiliate links are included which help keep this blog up and running. All opinions and thoughts are my own.
Top 8 Best Parts about Planning a Wedding
1.Getting closer with family
My immediate family doesn’t live in Pittsburgh (where we are getting married) so it’s been fun having them fly in for the wedding dress shopping, menu tasting, and bridal shower. They have also been amazing and are helping with small things for the day (hotel bags, programs, welcome party) and I can’t thank them enough. Chatting more about these things and ideas and just getting excited about all the festivities has been fun. I’ve also loved getting closer with Zack’s family – his mom threw me a beautiful bridal shower and his sister is one of my bridesmaids!
2. Preparing for marriage and my life with Zack forever, not just the ‘wedding day’
Zack and I took a course to prepare for our marriage through the church (found it locally) but we also have been reading “Things I Wish I’d Known Before We Got Married” and have LOVED it. Learning about our love languages was eye-opening.
3. Picking out the dress
If you follow me on Instagram, you know I tried on 30+ dresses (the pictures are proof) and finally said YES to my dress when my family was in town. I cried, my Mom and Dad cried and it was an emotional experience. I’m glad I have that memory.
4. Finding the venue
This was TOUGH at first. We toured venues in Pittsburgh and nothing screamed ‘us’. Then, we started planning a destination wedding in Lake Tahoe and hit some walls with the venue we loved being unresponsive and unhelpful. I have always loved a cathedral in Pittsburgh I had gone to throughout college, called them on a whim when we were ‘taking a break’ planning and they somehow had ONE date open in the summer of 2019 (they book out 1-2 years in advance). I held the date and the rest is history.
5. Designing and sending out our invitations
I fell in love with this design on Minted and knew it would be perfect for our theme of bohemian glam/natural greenery. I loved that I could order a ton of samples for FREE and ultimately decided the one I fell in love with was the one we wanted to use. Other benefits of using Minted:
- There was an entire matching set
- The entire ‘suite’ of invites, RSVP cards, envelope/envelope liners and even the thank you cards I plan to order all matched. You can also get stamps and other custom pieces but we didn’t.
- They address the envelopes for FREE (in the matching design)
- This saved SO much headache. We just used their template to add our guest list into and everything was printed beautifully for us.
- The quality of service and extras provided
- Minted sent along thin papers to put between each of the pieces in the envelope to ensure nothing would smear. We also had a note from Melissa who hand-packaged our order.
- Speed of delivery and quality of the end product
- I was surprised that the invites came in 4 days (even with printing our custom addresses on the envelopes) and the quality was impeccable. Definitely felt proud of these guys (yes, I know they are only paper but they were beautiful, ok!)
6. Cake tasting
DUH. Hello, sweet addict here. We tasted red velvet, almond and white cake with TONS of different filling options but ultimately fell in love with the combo of white cake + raspberry + thick buttercream.
7. Bringing our personalities/theme to life
We have loved throwing little details of ‘us’ into the day. There will be a few surprises but Zack and I love to travel and be adventurous so we are planning for the favors, guest book and ‘table numbers’ to be super fun and not traditional.
8. Engagement photos
Picking out a photographer I trusted was important to me. Getting an engagement photo session was just so much fun too. See more of our gallery here! We have used these photos a lot and am glad we got to work with Steven before the big day. Reminder these are not necessary for your wedding but came included for us.
What was the best part about planning your wedding?
