Wedding To-Do Lists

As anyone who has ever planned a wedding knows there are a million details and it can be overwhelming. With the average wedding taking one year to plan, the mother of the bride and the bride need a good game plan to work down the multiple details. 

So how did we tackle the monumental task? What we did can be applied to any major project. 

1.     After scouring wedding websites, several excellent wedding planning books and a very organized friend’s wedding to do lists, I put a monthly plan together to accomplish every detail. We created them in Microsoft Word which allowed me to modify them easily and also allowed me to send them to my daughter.

2.     Once we had our monthly plan, I further broke the to-do list down to weekly goals. As with any major project, you have to have small achievable goals that keep the project moving forward. We kept the weekly list to about three to four hours a week. 

3.     My daughter and I have a very hectic schedule, who doesn’t… so it was very important to set a day and time. This step is critical. Too many things can interfere and with a wedding months away, it is easy to put off small tasks. We held firm to that time every week.

This wedding time was valuable time for us to touch base, how was she doing, any thoughts, nerves, and generally, how was she feeling about the wedding, marriage and future.

If the tasks ended up being too long or too short, we would re-adjust.

Careful planning allowed us to enjoy the process of wedding planning. We had heard horror stories about mothers and daughters fighting, wedding planning nightmares about missing important details. We still had stressful moments but I believe we had far fewer of them. 

In addition, we were able to focus our attention and care to every small detail. 

No detail was too small. That attention to detail only comes from careful planning. Believe me, wrapping attendant gifts three months before the actual wedding is an important to detail. 

This process is a good lesson for any project, party or enterprise.