How a Wedding Planner Plans Her Own Wedding

This weekend my husband and I are celebrating our one year anniversary. Everyone always told us it goes by fast, and it really does! It’s crazy to think this time a year ago we were picking up friends and family from the airport and putting together last minute touches for the weekend. As our anniversary has been approaching, we’ve been reflecting a lot on that special and meaningful day. It truly was a weekend full of love and enjoyment!

So, how does a wedding planner go about planning her own wedding? If you’ve been a bride, you know that picking the date and venue is one of the most important starting points. Once you have that figured out, everything else falls into place. So naturally, one of my first steps was to find our venue. One of our best friends discovered a new venue outside of Richmond and recommended we take a look. The first time I saw it, I fell in love and knew it was the perfect place for us. The venue accommodated all of our needs, the size of our guest list, and the location was beautiful and secluded. Deciding on a venue isn’t always this easy, but after years of experience, I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted for my own wedding.

After setting our date, we had a little less than eight months to plan, so the next few months were relatively busy as we met with vendors, worked on the guest list, and everything in between. Again, my experience helped us tremendously in this area as we had a vast list of resources to work with. We picked a very popular time of year to get married so naturally a few of the people we reached out to first were booked. However, within a month of setting our date we had our photographer, caterer, florist, DJ, and cake selected. It’s probably no surprise that my husband’s favorite part of the planning process was cake tasting (most grooms I talk to give this answer!). If I’m being honest, it was one of mine too!

One of the main things that made our day so enjoyable was that we hired our own wedding planner. Yes, even with my experience planning weddings I hired a planner! I wanted our wedding day to be all about my husband and me. I didn’t want to worry about timelines, linens or centerpieces! Our planner kept us on time, got us down the aisle, and kept the evening running seamlessly. She even took care of the bee invasion that had taken place in our cocktail hour room! We were able to completely enjoy the day stress-free. When we look back on that weekend, we can remember all the fun and special moments that we shared.

Now we are able to spend this weekend making new memories as we celebrate our first milestone. We’re celebrating by spending a long weekend together in Asheville, North Carolina! We’ll be off exploring some new hiking trails, local restaurants, and finally diving into our delicious anniversary cake made fresh by our bakery!