After being engaged for a year and four months and getting married March 15, 2014, we have decided one thing: planning a wedding is crazy, fun, exciting, frustrating, overwhelming, and strengthening, but mostly it's just bazaar.
How can you spend so much time planning for one weekend?! And why in the world does it cost so much? Why do we need to register for gifts? And why are there so many "traditions" that few people actually know where they came from? Here are some tips we hope will help engaged couples in the exciting adventures of planning a wedding:
- Give your wedding to our Father. This one is the easiest and most effective way to really enjoy your wedding. By giving your wedding to Him, you instantly are taking the focus off of yourself and thus relieving much of the pressure and anxiety that comes with weddings. This advice is neither a secret nor uncommon but can easily be forgotten in the wedding-planning craziness.
- Pray over your wedding. Find specific things that you want your wedding to be or do and pray over them. Ask your bridesmaids, groomsmen, and other people to pray over them too.
- Talk through your wedding with your fiancé, regardless of their participation or interest in the planning process. They might have opinions on things that they don't even know they have.
- Ask for help. Don't just hint at it or expect people to volunteer. Many people will volunteer their time to help with wedding plans and set up but will never show up if you do not ask. Be persistent and concise with single task jobs and always have a back up plan so the people you ask don't feel the pressure that you might be feeling. This will free them up to help absorb some of your stress later.
- Walk through the things that you want your wedding to be or do. Weddings can bring about a lot of things, some good, some bad. Find two to five things that you want your wedding to be or do (i.e. Father-centered, fun, exciting, relaxed, reverent, nostalgic, iconic, exc.). This creates filters through which all decisions can be narrowed. "Is this focused on Him or not?" or "Does this band do fun or nostalgic songs?"
- Take control of your wedding. Regardless of who is helping you with or planning your wedding for you, take control. If you have a vision for your wedding day, lay out that vision in a clear easy to understand way and find out how close you can get to achieving that. If you don't really care, make that known, but don't check out of the planning!
- Know what is happening at your wedding. Knowing what is happening at your wedding before it happens will clear up your head during that day and will help you not feel like you are being led around. All the advice that you will get, "Don't let it pass you by" or "I hardly remember a thing from my wedding, so don't let that happen to you", is saying basically the same thing: soak up everything and everyone that is there. Often this happens from the lack of knowing everything that is happening around you. You are so overwhelmed with all that is happening and everyone coming up to shake your hand that by the time you get the end, and the whole day is a blur. The more you know about what is happening on your wedding day, the less surprises you have, and you'll end up remembering the ones that do happen a lot better. Details, details, details.
- Share everything. Not with everyone, but share your wants, desires, fears, torments, joys, thoughts, ideas, etc. The more you share with other people, the more things will become clear. Find friends and family with strengths and learn from them while sharing. Also it helps when you have friends that are good at things you didn't even know until you share it with them.
- Be open. Your wedding will NOT be perfect. But given the right planning and the correct state of heart it can be a perfectly joyous occasion.
Why We Loved Our Wedding:
- The wedding day was about Him, and not ourselves. Society tells us that the wedding is mostly about the "beautiful bride" and about creating this elaborate, royal-like wedding using wedding magazines and Pinterest boards for inspiration. We wanted the attention to go to our Father, which is why we love how our preachers (Trace Hamiter and Taylor Teel) directed the guests to not just watch a wedding happen, but engage in worshipping Him, the Bridegroom of the Body. Marriage is a picture of His love and His glory, and we wanted everyone at our wedding to realize that.
- We started with a simple idea: let's make the wedding interactive. Why should our guests sit back in their chairs (or pews) and watch a wedding happen? They should feel a part of the ceremony as much as we would be. We decided we wanted everyone to pray over us and then start worshipping Him together in song. That became the focal point of our entire wedding, and we knew He would use that moment in an amazing way.
- The wedding weekend was FUN. We love to laugh and spend time with friends and family, so making sure our wedding festivities involved everyone was very important to us. There were yard games at the reception, carriage horses to give free rides around the farm, and a fun photo booth for hilarious picture-taking. Our guests had a great time, and so did we!
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| Photos by: Cameron Freshwater Photography |
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