Welcome to our comprehensive wedding planning guide, an exhaustive list with links to reference material and useful features found throughout the site. This guide can function as a checklist, helping you work your way through the many facets of your upcoming wedding, or act as an informational tool, providing further info on all details of the wedding experience. We hope you enjoy this guide and our site, and best wishes on your wedding!
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No matter the budget, a wedding can be painstakingly planned to fit within it, but this only works when you determine your budget beforehand and carefully consider and weigh the costs of the different elements of running a wedding. For additional help in this regard please visit our wedding diary planner , which can help you determine your ideal budget , and how to meet it.
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Finding the venue is a process that must function hand in hand with determining a wedding date. You can’t effectively commit to either one without the other after all. If you have an ideal venue, or an ideal date to hold the wedding on, this will help make things easier, but may limit your options. On the venue front, we have a useful venue finder, with hundreds of venues throughout Ireland listed, any number of which would be perfect for your big day. Once both pieces are in place, everything else regarding your wedding will more clearly come into focus. Another thing to remember concerning the venue is its functionality as a hotel, or lack thereof. This may prove important when considering which venue to choose, and this can be determined when searching through venues using our wedding venues pages.
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The average wedding costs €20,000. Wedding insurance should cover you from €5,000 onwards and start at about €49.99. This basic package will cover most aspects of your wedding as well as cancellation, damage to ceremony/bridal attire, wedding gifts, rings, transport, and photographer/videographer, failure of suppliers, legal fees, personal liability and marquee extension.
€49.99 is not a massive price to pay for something that could save you thousands. We do generally recommend purchasing wedding insurance and the sooner the better. As soon as you make your first payment or deposit is an advisable time to buy wedding insurance.
There are many different types of wedding insurance products available; some may be more advanced than others so as with everything else in your wedding, make sure you do your homework.
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With the date, venue, and insurance issues taken care of, you’re now free to begin tackling the other major objectives along the wedding planning road. At the top of that list would be the wedding rings. Your wedding rings will be an eternal symbol of your love for each other, and should best represent each of you and your values and sentiments. Wedding rings come in many shapes, sizes, colours, and gems, and all of these intricacies and more are discussed in our wedding rings section, so don’t delay in stopping by. It really could be one of the most important decisions you make.
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Step 5: Your Guest List
With some of the initial planning out of the way, the early steps for determining a guest list have been taken care of. Both the budget, as determined in step 1, and the venue, as chosen in step 2, will place limits on the number of guests available for invitation. And with that general limit in mind, it should be fairly easy to start building a guest list, without having to worry about a massive, all-inclusive list. As your list is limited, you naturally want to begin with those closest to you and work your way down until you run out of room. First and foremost would be your closest family and friends. A good 75% of the guest list will likely be relatively easy to determine, it’s the last 25% that will prove difficult. Ranking people in terms of importance becomes very difficult at this point, and you and your partner will also need to be accommodating to each other throughout the end of this process. Of course if there’s someone that one of you simply can’t go without being there, it should not be an issue as to whether or not that person is invited. The final stages of the guest list will take time, but work at it, while determining the availability of your invited guests in the meantime to make sure there won’t be further openings, and do the best you can until you have a final guest list prepared.
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For the bride, this is probably the most exciting part of the pre-wedding planning. Women dream of what their wedding dress will look like from the time they’re little girls playing dress-up or house, and the realization of that dream brings many to tears. Once the tears have been dried, our bridal wear section
is a good place to get started on the wedding dress trail.
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The majority of your closest friends and relatives will already be aware of your upcoming wedding, through your own announcement of the event, or through the excited proclamations of your friends and family who already knew themselves. Now it’s time to make it official, by sending out the invitations to officially invite those closest to you to attend your biggest day. Stationery is no simple task to choose, coming in a near limitless array of styles, designs, and colours. Not only do you need to consider the invitations, but thank you cards, place cards, order of service cards, and other optional stationery will also be hot topics. Stationery should ideally be chosen to match the colour theme of your wedding day, and is usually sent on behalf of the bride’s parents. Ordering all your stationery needs from one supplier, and in bulk, should help keep a unifying theme, and help eliminate any confusion between delivery times of different stationery items. We have a large list of stationery suppliers to look through to help you get started in your search.
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Now that you’re over the hump in our 13 step guide, it’s time to take a respite (only temporary though, don’t get the wrong idea), and reward yourself by setting the planning in motion for your honeymoon. After the stress and activity level of the months leading up to the wedding, you’ll definitely need it, and this will likely be your first chance to spend a wealth of quality time with your new spouse. Making sure your passports are up-to-date and in order is the first step, and while the name on the bride’s passport need not be changed until after the wedding, in the case of a mandatory visit to the travel agent to update a visa, you may as well get it done while there. After having chosen a destination, you’ll also want to check in on the visa situation in that region, especially in the case of more obscure locales, which may have unorthodox customs.
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Now that your honeymoon is planned, it’s back to the business at hand, with a few more steps to go to complete your wedding preparations. Next up in the list is lining up a photographer to snap the photos you’ll be viewing and sharing with your kids and grandkids years from now. If there’s one area of the wedding you don’t want to skimp on, this would be it. A good photographer/ videographer, is worth his weight in gold, delivering timeless quality that will stand the test of time. Around this same time you’ll want to line up a wedding car, as well as take care of the flowers
(which should of course match the colour theme present in your wedding), and choose the wedding cake design. Live
musicians and/or a DJ or other form(s) of entertainment for the reception will also need to be considered at this point. And you thought you were going to get off easy after step 8!
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With all the money flying out of your bank accounts left, right, and center, there can be at least some solace taken in the fact that you’ll be receiving some nice gifts from your many guests come wedding day, and these gifts will largely be determined by you. Gift lists are essential for just about every wedding, as they help pull guests out of the rut of buying safe household items that are likely to be duplicates of already owned items, or even of other guest’s gifts. They’re also especially helpful when the newlyweds already possess a goodly collection of wares, and are not wanting for common items. Creating a robust gift list with exotic items of varying prices ensures you’ll receive at least a few of these useful items come wedding day, and give your guests the satisfaction of knowing they made a meaningful contribution to your prosperity. For more help with drawing up a wedding gift list, please consult the linked section.
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Your wedding invitations are now ready to be sent out, along with any other pertinent information. This should take place a good 8 weeks before the wedding, but the sooner the better. When inviting guests from overseas, you’ll want to send the invitations out at least 12 weeks in advance. By sending invitations out early enough, you’ll have plenty of time to await the replies and make the necessary adjustments to the guest list if some invitees won’t be able to attend. A reserve list should be put in place to quickly fill in for these vacant spots on the roster.
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Step 12: The Stag and Hen Nights
Ah, the infamous stag and hen parties, the bride and groom’s last chance to live it up as an unwed person. These parties are most often organized by the best man and bridesmaid respectively, and are often wild affairs, criss-crossing the town in a blaze of unwed glory for one final time. While stag and hen parties have typically been single night events the night before the wedding, they are now commonly expanding into multi-day events over weekends, or even take place over entire weeks. Depending on the money left over in the budget after all the preceding steps, more elaborate stag and hen parties can be planned.
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Your final preparations will largely depend on how the previous 12 steps unfolded, and on the individual attributes of your wedding. As every wedding is uniquely different, your finishing touches will likely be as well. Go over your seating plans, speeches, poems, readings, rehearsals, transportation, thank you gifts, favours, and any other relevant topics to make sure everything’s in order and ready to go. This guide could not possibly cover every little detail of wedding preparation, but it should help you take care of all the major steps, and give you a good idea of what to expect. If you still have unanswered questions, please join our Forums and feel free to ask other members of our wonderful community, who will gladly assist you in any way they can. Best of luck, and enjoy the honeymoon!
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