Wedding Planning Tips for Future Brides:

1. Ways to bring cohesion into your wedding:

- Ask your florist to add greenery to your bar, signage, welcome table, cocktail tables, and buffet table
- Make sure all your signage is created by the same designer so all fonts and colors are the same
- Ask your florist to add bud vases with blooms to your cocktail tables, bar, guest tables, lounge areas, welcome table, and buffet table. Make sure you have a good amount so it doesn't look incomplete.
- Prior to the wedding collect candles (with clear cylinders) and votives so that you can place them throughout. These can be used on your guest tables, sweetheart table, at your ceremony, on welcome tables, at the bar, on cocktail tables and at lounge areas (you can also sell these after). Make sure you have a good amount so it doesn't look incomplete. We wish we ordered more. They also look amazing at night!

2. Narrow down your design board

Rather than coming up with 10 different bouquets try to narrow it down to 1 specific bouquet you like. We had too many different options.

3. Pick your color schemes early on

Because we had seen so many weddings we had too many ideas and couldn't make a decision about colors. Coming up with your colors early on and sticking to them will make the planning process easier. That way all your florals, linens, signage/paper goods and bridesmaid dresses will look cohesive and consistent.

4. Repurpose

If you have a wedding planner/coordinator who can move florals during the wedding repurposing florals is a great way to enhance the design elements of your wedding. For example, using your ceremony florals at your sweetheart table or cake table or using your bridesmaid bouquets as centerpieces.

5. Making a statement

If you're on a budget for florals consider using greenery and candles on your guest tables and investing more of your floral budget into your ceremony florals or an elaborate escort card design this can really help to elevate the wedding and give it a more expensive feel without compromising on any area.

6. Have a solid plan B

Since we're photographers we wanted to make sure a plan B was in place. We rented a clear marquee. The reason we decided on this was because we wanted to make sure light would come through if we had to move the ceremony under the tent due to rain. After the fact we wish we included drapery. It would have been great to have sheer white drapes hanging from the ceiling (which would have diffused the light even more) and on the sides to hide the metal polls. With that said the tent still looked great without the drapes. One draw back with these tents is that they get hot. Our florist had to bring the flowers back inside, so drapes potentially would have blocked the sun better making it cooler.

7. Hiring a designer and coordinator

Since we're photographers we didn't think we'd need a planner or coordinator. We now know we were wrong. A designer would have saved us a lot time and stress with nailing down our vision and a coordinator would have been great to help us on the day of and with set-up. My sister realized instead of spending $5000 on food/catering (we had 50 guests) we could have got a food truck and would have had the money for a planner.

8. Cake

For a more elaborate cake and photo have your baker create a fake cake with only 1 tier thats real and have the caterer feed guests cake that's already been cut and more affordable.

9. Guest tables

We had shown our rental company the size of table we wanted through a picture. When the ables arrived we realized they were too wide making the tables look more bare than they actually were. Looking back it would have been great to measure the width or visited the rental company to see the size in person. If we had done this we would have selected the tables that weren't as wide so the florals and the candles filled up the table more and so guests were closer together providing a more intimate feel. It would have also given us more room in the tent to add a sweetheart table or lounge. We brought in Remi & Gold from the USA (don't know what we would have done without her), Boarding School Collective and La Tavola Linens. We had a hard time sourcing the velvet linens in Australia at a reasonable price and my husband was able to fly over with them in his suitcase. He couldn't fit anything else in his suitcase so we had to purchase a suite for him the day of the wedding.

A few items we sourced on our own and saved money on were the napkins which we purchased from Kmart for $1 each https://www. Kmart. Com. Au/ and the plates which we sourced for $2 each from https://www. Spotlightstores. Com/ . We loved how both of these turned out and we sold them after the wedding.

Credit needs to be given to the groom who redid the backyard with the help of one of his groomsman. He built retaining walls, added concrete, laid new turf and more. During the speeches the Bride Suzie gifted her groom Perry with a certificate of real manhood. This was especially significant and funny because prior to redoing the backyard the groom couldn't even change a light bulb.