How To Choose Joy In Your Wedding Planning

It’s no understatement that planning your wedding can be an overwhelming experiences at times. There are many tasks to accomplish and increased attention and focus from your family and the outside world. It also seems that weddings have a way of creating other big changes in your life, and this may not be the only big life event happening in a given year. We don’t always get to choose what else is happening in our lives during our engagement journey. But we do get to choose to focus on what is most important to us, create the memories we most want to remember, and cut out the excess that doesn’t bring us joy.

4 Tips For Choosing Joy During Your Wedding Planning

1. Let go of your Checklist Perfectionism + Tasks vs. Deadlines

   Most of the items on your planning checklist will be tasks. The time frames on any checklist are meant to guide you through completing the most important tasks first. Don’t let perfectionism tell you that if you are not adhering to this checklist with 100% accuracy you are failing or behind with your planning. Use these timeframes as guides; adjusted to fit your individual planning time and life schedule as necessary.
   
   The true deadlines in your planning are firm and need to be adhered to. For example, payment dates from your vendors or when you are required to give final counts to your caterer or florist. It's important to adhere to these dates, so that your vendors and others can do their best work in a timely fashion before your wedding.

2. Don't delegate the tasks that you find really fun!

   This seems like common sense, but it's worth stating. The items that you are really looking forward to should stay on your to-do list. Even if those items are fairly easy and could be delegated to others. For example, if assembling your wedding invitations brings you a lot of joy, don't hand that off to your Mom to do.
   
   If people are offering to help, absolutely accept their offer in ways that can lighten your load. I often recommend that my clients have a small list in their minds of tasks that could be delegated, so that when someone offers to help, they have a readily available item to hand over!

3. Schedule Planning Dates!

   Wedding Planning can be a lot of work. That work can automatically fall mostly to one person, especially in the early months where it involves online research and email contact. A great way to share the workload of planning can be to set Planning Dates with each other. A dedicated day/time to work on your planning tasks together makes the time more enjoyable, efficient and can strengthen your relationship. Even if you have divided up the tasks, Planning Dates are a great time to spend together working on your individual tasks where you can run questions by each other, talk through options and have a shared experience.

4. Don't waiver on what's important to you, and be thankful to let go of the rest.

We'll call this step "Kondo-ing Your Wedding Planning." Otherwise known as Heirloom's Wedding Values (I feel in really good company here!). This is why it's such a crucial first step to get clear on those things that are most important to you (what sparks joy) before you get into the thick of planning. Being able to say, "Thank you, but that’s not for us" is one of the most empowering ways to have a joyful engagement.

Big life changes are hard and people deal with change in different ways. If planning your wedding is the most fun thing you have ever done, cherish that experience and enjoy the ride! If that’s not the experience you’re having and you’re struggling through some of the decisions or tasks, give yourself some grace and know this is one season and it too shall pass.

Wedding Planning Basics Video Series // Selecting Your Venue

If you've been following along in our Wedding Planning Basics Series, you know that we’re moving through the essential first steps in your planning process. First we set your values and priorities then we created a budget and a guest list. Today we're talking about one of the biggest decisions you will make during your whole engagement.

Selecting Your Wedding Venue

It's true that everything can feel like a big decision during the beginning of your wedding planning. Selecting your venue is the culmination of all of these big decisions because it sets the geographic location, the tone, the style, and sometimes the schedule for your day. It’s also one of the largest pieces of your budget, especially if the catering service is included.

That seems like a big decision, right? It is. Here's how to handle it:

Why I think selecting your venue should be like selecting your home.

It's so important to physically visit all of the venues on your short list and and take a tour to stand in their spaces. I believe that walking through your wedding venue is like walking through the house or apartment you know will live in. It feels right in your gut. You can imagine yourself in that space. You can imagine yourself starting your marriage there. Yes, there will be other factors to consider on a pros & cons list (availability, budget, what's included) just like you would do with a future home (location, rent, amenities), and sometimes compromises on your wish list will have to be made. When you feel connected to your venue the same way you did with that first home you really loved, it's much easier to plan around those compromises and ultimately have a great venue experience.

Next up, we're pulling it all together and talking about how to create a thoughtfully beautiful design for your wedding!

I'd love to hear from you if this series is having an impact on your planning process! Leave a comment or questions below, or reach out to me at abby@heirloomeventco.com.

More Videos In This Series:

• The First Step In Your Wedding Planning

• Budget Essentials

• Managing Your Guest List

• Beautiful Wedding Design | February 24th

• Bonus Video! How to Stay Sane During Wedding Planning | March 3rd

Real Wedding | Unique + Intimate Wedding In The Woods | MillCreek Wilde | Michigan

Every couple wants their wedding day to feel beautiful and unique, but it takes special care and thoughtfulness throughout the entire planning process to end up with a wedding celebration that feels quintessentially “you.” After much searching, Clay and Kristen settled on this hidden gem, tucked into the Michigan woods, and nearby their family vacation home where they spent summers and holidays. A special thank you to Jamie and Eric Photography who captured the emotions and love of this day in such pure form.

Through careful consideration and discussion about what would make their guests feel truly welcomed, and what elements were most important to honor each of their lives, Clay and Kristen crafted a day that unfolded with meaningful details and unfussy ease. Guests felt like family gathering for a summer reunion and topped the night off with everyone’s favorite childhood pastime, marshmallow roasting around the campfire.

Details for this day: Venue | MillCreek Wilde in Watervilet, Michigan, Photography | Jamie and Eric Photography, Planning + Floral | Heirloom Event Co., Hair and Makeup | Flawless Beauty by Debra, Catering | Kangaroo Kitchen, Cake + Desserts | Black Currant Bakehouse, DJ | Groove is in the Heart

When envisioning their floral design, Kristen wanted a lush and organic look that would blend seamlessly with the beautiful natural setting of the woods. Textured greenery bouquets for the bridesmaids nicely complimented the bride’s bouquet of roses and peony with accents of dusty miller and rosemary sprigs.

A few showers didn’t stand in the way of this sweet first look outside the barn. Clay and Kristen chose MillCreek Wilde for it’s privacy, beautiful wooded surroundings, and because everything felt just a touch more magical on the many paths that wrapped around the barn.

A very meaningful touch to both of them was walking down the aisle together. A traditional walk that I have seen more and more of my couples take in their own way. Symbolizing their commitment to each other as they walk forward into marriage, they arrived at the altar together for an incredibly personal ceremony given by a family friend and mentor. Incorporating spiritual practices across multiple faiths and a special ceremony that included their young daughter. There wasn’t a dry eye in the entire room.

Yellow school buses gave a nod to the bride’s chosen profession as a teacher, and added to that “off into the woods” excitement!

A long vintage farm table, with guests seated all the way around, stood in for a head table and gave the bride and groom a chance to eat dinner with their closest loved ones. Elegant greenery and white floral accents made the vibe feel upscale and elegant in the rustic space.

A delicious vegetarian and vegan meal was served complete with a vegan sweets bar! It was important to the couple to be able to honor their own practices, but also to be able to share their love of food with their guests and serve a meal that even their non-vegetarian family and friends would find delicious. They worked with the chef at Kangaroo Kitchen (out of Grand Rapids, MI) to curate a menu of seasonally inspired whole-food recipes using local ingredients from Michigan farms.

After dinner and one of the MOST epically choreographed first dances, an ALL 80’s dance party ensued! The dance floor was packed for every. single. song.

Crafting a celebration so rooted in what was important to them and sharing their love for each other with their family and friends was a distinct honor to participate in. With each wedding, I see the mission of Heirloom lived through our couples and just as I help to bring their dreams to life, they do the same for me and mine.

Wedding Planning Basics Video Series // Managing Your Guest List

Hello! We're moving right along in our Wedding Planning Basics Series and today we're chatting about how to manage your guest list. Each of these planning steps builds on the foundation of the last, and none go more hand in hand that creating your budget and managing your guest list.

Managing Your Guest List

Money and Relationships can be two of the most complicated factors in life,
so it's not surprising that Wedding Budgets and Guest Lists tend to be
two of the hardest pieces of your initial planning phase.

What makes the guest list so difficult? It seems on the surface, like a fairly simple task. When you're talking about people, it's never that cut and dry. Especially because these are people that you love and care about. Or you don't, but someone you love does.

Your guest list is the single biggest factor that influences your budget. So let's learn how to best manage it.

How to Manage Your Guest List

1. Create your Base Guest List. These are your non-negotiable people. You couldn't imaging your wedding day without them present. Create the rest of your list in priority order.

2. Request lists for your family in Priority Order. This is hugely important.

3. Compare Your Base Guest List with Your Budget and your venue short list.

4. Add or subtract from your priority ordered list based from there.

5. Make hard cuts, if needed.

Once you've gotten through your budget talks and creating your guest list, it's time for a little Planning Celebration Break! Go out to dinner. Open a nice bottle of wine. Treat each other to something fun!

Next in the series we're talking all about finding your dream venue and how to know when it's the best fit for you!

I'd love to hear from you if this series is having an impact on your planning process! Leave a comment or questions below, or reach out to me at abby@heirloomeventco.com.

More Videos In This Series:

• The First Step In Your Wedding Planning

• Budget Essentials

• Selecting Your Venue | February 17th

• Beautiful Wedding Design | February 24th

• Bonus Video! How to Stay Sane During Wedding Planning | March 3rd

5 Tips To Select Your Wedding Date

Selecting your wedding date is one of the first big and concrete decisions you will make for your day (although with the Heirloom method of planning, THIS is the very first thing you do). There are so many moving pieces involved including your values, budget, venue availability, etc that just getting to this decision can feel monumental. Here are the top five things to consider as you’re working through your choices and considering a potential wedding date.

5 Tips To Consider When Selecting Your Wedding Date:

1) Short List Venue Availability

If there is a short list of venues that you really want to get married at, check their availability immediately. They will almost always be booked out farther than you anticipated. If a particular venue is a top consideration for your wedding values, then you may find yourself considering a Friday, Saturday or Sunday based on their availability.

2) Your Personal and Work Schedules

Consider what your typical year looks like with work commitments, personal activities and especially busy periods of time. The year of your wedding will look different than almost any other year in your life, but give some thought to your general "busy times" vs less busy times. If there is a seasonal activity that you're part of, think about if you want to incorporate that into your wedding schedule, or stay away from it entirely.

As an example, fall is my favorite time of year. It's also the busiest season in our house between Heirloom's wedding schedule and my husband's commitment to season tickets for his favorite college football team. I knew that I didn't want our anniversary to be taken over by work and football every year (see #5), so I took fall compleatly out of the running for a potential wedding date.

3) The Seasons

Regardless of which region of the country you live in or the wedding will be in, you need to consider the seasons and weather. How much you need to factor it in, depends mostly on your location. For cold weather climates, selecting a warmer month vs. colder month will be the initial consideration you need to make.

Also consider the general temperature for that season and how much it typically rains in your area. Always have a solid weather back up plan for your guests. Period. End of story. It's your responsibility as the host of this event to ensure that all guests have a safe place to go in the event of inclement and/or unsafe weather.

Remember that weather is the one thing that no one can control on your day. Selecting a given season isn't a guarantee you'll have beautiful weather. On my own wedding day, I had researched weather almanacs going back 50 years and our average daily temperature for that date had never been below 60 degrees. Come our wedding day, the temperature forecasted was 40 degrees! Selecting a season can also help guide the vibe and overall feeling of your day.

I recommend ruling seasons out that you definitely don't want to get married in, and then looking to your venue availability or the other factors listed here to help you choose between the remaining seasons.

4) Overall Guest Travel Needs

If you have a significant portion of your guests traveling from out of town for your wedding, consider their potential travel needs when picking your date. Google your city name and potential date and see if there are any big events happening that weekend that would make airfare, hotels, etc. more difficult or expensive. Consider seasonal travel needs if your wedding is at a particularly difficult travel time (such as: dead of winter, major holiday, summer tourist influx). If your prospective date falls during a more difficult time for guest travel, make sure to give your guests as much notice and possible to make arrangements. Plan to communicate early and often with them about the travel needs and what to expect.

5) Your Future Anniversary!

I don't think this gets nearly enough consideration when couples select their wedding date. Your wedding happens once, but your anniversary happens EVERY YEAR and is a special occasion that you and your partner can connect over again and again throughout your lives. Think about how you may want to spend your future anniversaries and what your life typically looks like during that time from year to year.

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Check out Heirloom's Wedding Planning Basics Series to walk you through all the steps that take you from Engaged to Booking Your Venue!

Why Heirloom Added Floral Design + Working with an All-In-One Studio

I have this little note hanging on the bulletin board in my office. I scribbled it down three years ago when I was just starting Heirloom, as I was trying to find my footing and direction for what I really did the best and how I could provide an incredible experience for Heirloom’s couples. I was brainstorming all the things I really loved about working on weddings, and how they might all fit together to make up a business.

I LOVE the couples and their families that choose to work with Heirloom each year. Every single time, I feel honored with the trust, kindness and friendship that I walk away from each wedding feeling. The people involved in each day will forever me by favorite part about the work I do.

I have a life long personal passion for design in all forms. As a 14th birthday present, I asked to redecorate my bedroom. I meticulously put together mood boards, collected fabric samples and even had my JC Penny bed skirt custom altered for just the perfect scalloped edge. I danced, painted, sang, picked lilacs in our backyard to make elaborate centerpieces for our kitchen table. The elements of design have always poured out of me in every way I could find. It was also one of the biggest reasons that wanted to make the transition to weddings from my extensive background in corporate events. I felt so strongly pulled to a more design focused career. Learning to trust my own design eye and work from a place of confidence in my designs took time, but has given me the most expansive feeling of ‘stepping into my own’ that I’ve ever known in my work.

And then there’s Logistics. For the longest time, I thought that my love for logistics stood in stark opposition to my love of design. That I had to pick or the other. I could be a zanzy, scattered creative, or a sharp, hyper-focused Type A. I thought I had to find my tribe and stick with them. Yet there I was with my heart right in the middle of both. My organized, systemized and curious brain naturally lays out large amounts of information in a clear pattern. I can easily draw out the right information from the right people to make everything run seamlessly. For me, Logistics is the solid structure that creativity leaps from.

So there I was, with my all the pieces of my brain, sketched out on my little notepad. All pulling against the seams of one and other to be the MOST important element. What I realized is that I needed them ALL. These three elements together were the container that held together the whirlwind, once in a lifetime experience that is planning a wedding.

That messy middle is where the magic happens. It’s where the visual design of your wedding day comes together seamlessly with the logistical details needed to host an event of this size and scale. All along the way caring for and working with the most important people in your life.

It takes a blending of art and detail to make all of that happen, and that is where my talents truly shine. It’s where I feel that Heirloom couples are best served because they have one trusted partner to walk with them and guide them through all of those elements.

I’ve worked hard since the day I sketched that little note to hone my process and develop an experience that approaches wedding planning differently. With a heart for the process as well as a beautiful end result (your wedding day!).

Photo by Roots of Life Photography, Invitation by Emily Rose Ink, Ring Box by The Mrs. Box,
Ring by Susie Saltzman, Featured on Style Me Pretty.

I knew that adding floral design was truly the best decision to fulfill this experience for myself and Heirloom’s couples. I set out looking for a way to do it that matched the level of intentionality and integrity I strive for in everything Heirloom stands for. I spend the better part of two years studying, reading, taking workshops and classes. I worked with other designers and florists in every capacity they would invite me in and every moment of additional time I could find. I had to build and strengthen my floral design skills to a level I was proud to offer to couples for their wedding.

I worked part time at the counter of a local floral shop. They didn’t service any weddings, but I took every opportunity I could to get hands on design time. Truly, I received so much more than the floral education I went in seeking. People came in to buy flowers for all types of occasions, and it was at that little counter that flowers took on a meaning beyond being pretty. Flowers are a physical representation of our feelings. When something wonderful happens, we bring fresh flowers to celebrate! When someone we love is suffering or ill, we bring fresh blooms to breathe life and hope into the room around them. High school dances, graduation, loosing a loved one, new baby, new job, cancer treatment, the list is endless. We mark occasions with flowers because they represent a beautiful and unique presence in our world. It fit so well with the work I was already doing to bring out the meaning a detail of a couple’s story on their wedding day.

Just to make sure I was EXTRA ready to add floral design to the business. I designed all of the flowers for my own wedding. You can see more of our wedding day here. Making my bouquet on my wedding morning, will always be one of my favorite memories of my day.

Photo by Maria Harte Photography

This season I’ve had the distinct privilege to design florals for Heirloom’s couples in addition to their planning. It’s an evolution of this business that I’m so proud and excited to be standing in, because it feels like exactly the right place. But how do you know if this method is right for you and your wedding day? Keep reading, because I’ve put together some helpful pieces to think about if you’re at the beginning of your planning journey.

Photo by Jamie and Eric Photography

Why You Benefit from Working with
A Full Service Planning and Design Studio

If you’re a newly engaged or soon-to-be engaged couple and thinking about how to bring your wedding visions to life, choosing vendors that are right for you is one of the first steps to make your wedding planning process a fun and enjoyable journey. If you’re considering working with a studio that offers planning, design AND floral services all in one (like Heirloom!), here are some reasons that I have found it to be beneficial:

Your Communication is Streamlined. Your Engagement Experience Come First!

At it’s core, your engagement is a big list of decisions to be made. Working with a wedding professional who oversees all of the logistical AND visual elements of your celebration means all of your communication is streamlined and the number of vendors you’re talking to and updating throughout the process minimal.

Photo by Ideal Impressions Photography

Here’s what Lindsey said so beautifully about our work together this summer:

”We felt a bit overwhelmed with the wedding planning process. Hiring Abby and Heirloom to help us as the best wedding decision we made! Abby helped us to set short-term and monthly goals that made our wedding planning less daunting and more manageable. Abby thought of ideas for our wedding that never crossed our mind! Even more, Abby took our hopes and dreams for our wedding and made them a reality!”

Design + Logistics Go Hand-in-Hand

This is one of the core tenets of my beliefs, and goes all the way back to the very first important step of my process, setting your wedding values. A wedding that visually represents you, stems from your values. We use those values, or most-important items, to dictate everything from budget breakdown to venue selection to design. I start formulating a design plan at the very same time that we’re formulating the big ticket items.

Flexibility + Team Support

Executing weddings at this scale is not something I can do alone. The members of Team Heirloom who make up your wedding day have the ability and flexibility to step in and fill roles wherever needed. We function as one team for all of your planning, decor and set up items. This approach means we are there and ready regardless of any unexpected items that arise.

Photo by Jamie and Eric Photography

Other Resources for Engaged Couples!
Abby’s Wedding Planning Basics Video Series
Work with Heirloom for 2019

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