Plan your wedding 101 – Part 1
One couple of my friends are getting married sometimes in 2010. The couple is now starting their full force to work on their wedding. Yet, my friend still have no clue how to start planning one.
I am not a professional wedding planner, but I tried my best to plan one. So here’s how you can start…
1. Pick a date and time
I think this is the BASIC of all wedding, you need a date!! Friday, Saturday or Sunday, doesn’t matter, just pick one!
However, sometimes venue will give discount if it’s Friday. Old Mill gave us 15% discount for our total cost. So it was a sweet deal. Yet the problem is that if you want to have ceremony during the day, not everyone can make it because most of us are working!
And if you are concern about the weather how it might turn out, check out historical stats from the weather network. (I only link to Toronto’s historical stats, but you can always check out other cities). Usually the summer months in Toronto looks pretty good in terms of rain precipitation!
Another way is to pick a date that is easy to remember. Usually it’s not for the bride, it’s for the groom!
Once you set the date, stick with it. The rule of thumb is the larger guest number you gonna have, the earlier you should book the date! some people book their venue two years ahead!! It’s crazyness!
Lastly, you should try to schedule your reception right after your ceremony.
I have friends having ceremony in the morning and she has to wake up at 3am to prep everything!
My ceremony was at 2:30pm and I had to wake up at 8 am to prep everything, it’s very time consuming!
Therefore it’s best to have your ceremony sometimes in the afternoon, and then following the reception right away. It keeps the momentum and the guests won’t have to waste the whole day for your wedding.
2. Set your budget and do your possible headcount
There’s no question that money is number one issue for wedding planning. My original goal was to have a wedding 20K and less. I managed to meet that by trying to get the most out of my money.
I also prioritize the list of guests to come to our wedding. Don’t feel bad that you didn’t invite your neighbours or your coworkers. Setting priority of guests are more important to keep your budget in place.
(Some people will thank you not to invite them to pay for their meal!)
I personally invited around 80 people, and 60 people came to the wedding! The venue usually will quote for the possible headcount, and you will need to pay deposit to secure the date. If your guestlist turn out to the less than the quoted price, the venue will refund you money.
3. Pick a Venue – Part I
Picking Venue is not always easy, I personally searched 5 venues. It’s a lot of phone calls, emails, price comparison and time for sure. The first thing when you call a venue, they will always ask what’s your approx. guest count. So if you done your homework for point #2, then it’s easy job for ya. Always ask for a quote for the same number of guests, and get as much detail breakdown as possible.
And what’s your best bang for the buck venue? Restaurants or Hotels.
Mainly reason is because they have everything there! The kitchen, the tables, the cutlery, plates..etc. Some room that the restaurants or Hotels provided are probably decorated already. You will save some money towards your decoration.
The very first place that we looked at was an art gallery at Distillery District. The gallery is beautiful. I fell in love with it. However, after I saw the price breakdown, I backed up and went screaming! If you are hosting your reception where the place doesn’t provide the table, the chair, the kitchen, the server..etc. You will end up paying everything just to make this reception happen. Read my “reception insanity” blog here. Check out the Thompson Landry Art Gallery Post.
If you are as frugal as I am, don’t go that route. Try to find the best you can find without paying extra price tag for …everything!
Here are the questions that you can ask when searching for the venue:
For the Ceremony
- Find out the time slot that’s available for the day that you wish to have your wedding. If you are booking for Friday, then try to have the Ceremony later of the day, and then it follows the reception right after, so you won’t waste time.
- Find out where you will have your ceremony in the property? if it has a chapel? If it’s a chapel, what’s the chapel rental fee?
Can the ceremony hosted outdoor? It there any extra fee if hosted outdoor? - Can you bring your marriage officiant? or you have to use the one provided by the venue?
If you have to use the one provided by the venue, how much would that cost? - What’s the refund policy?
For the Reception
- Make sure you ask as detail as you can about the room, e.g. What’s the max capacity of the people in the room?
- Ask the venue if they provide cake table or head table.
- If the chair covers are included? (unless they have real nice looking chairs.)
- If table clothes, table numbers, votive candles, and receiving line table (for guest sign in ) are provided?
- If venue can provide a easel on the table or on the floor so that you can place your engagement photo for people to see, or poster(s) with guest lists.
- While you are in the reception room, also ask where the bar, DJ will be in the room. Other equipment is that you can ask if they provide projection video screen, microphone, or any speakers.
- Find out where is the possible table layouts. Some place I went have dance floor right in front of the head table, and the guests table goes around the dance floor. The Balmoral room in The Old Mill, it’s the same floor through out, so the coordinator at Old Mill helped out layout the tables so we can have a little dance floor area.
- Also, ask what is the time you can have your venue till. Ours was till 1am only. After 1am, there’s extra fee. So just make sure you ask those.
4. Pick a Venue – Part II
- Find out your basic food per person. The biggest price difference for each menu is mostly the food. Some venue will give you a list of packaged up menu that they have. Some venue will ask you to pick the food. Whichever is fine, but do your math. We picked our food from the set package except we didn’t go with the open bar. So the food itself is $62 CAD per person. And we’ll host all the drinks that were consumed that night.So far most of the meal price I’ve seen, the basic cost is around 55 to 65 CAD dollar per person. (not including alcohol and extras). So you can probably do your math from those numbers first to set your budget.
- Open Bar, Host Bar or Cash Bar? The reason that we didn’t pick open bar is because most of my friends are non-alcohol drinkers. However, we still want our families and friends to have fun on us, so we decided to go for host bar. And if you are limited with your budget, cash bar might be a better idea. And watch out for the open bar, you might be limited with certain brands of liquor. There’s also time limitation for open bar as well. So ask your Venue if they limit certain type of liquor if it’s open bar and how long you can have your open bar!
- Dessert or No Dessert? I personally think having your wedding cake as your dessert is far more than enough. (especially for small wedding like mine!) I had tons of dessert at my wedding except everyone is too tired to stay later to have those!!! Unless you know people will be staying later and dance whole night. Having a bit of dessert is a good idea.
- Menu Tasting. With Old Mill, they have menu tasting for your menu would be at your wedding. I think it’s a good idea to always try out your food before your set foot on the menu. The only thing is that, they charge full price for the food. So if it’s 62 dollar per person at my wedding, it’s 62 dollar for the menu tasting. Some place might offer complimentary menu tasting (e.g. Fairmount Royal York). Yet Fairmount is double the price for the actual wedding meal compare to The Old Mill! Argh.
5. Pick your wedding party
For me, it’s quite simple, I have a small wedding, so I only have one maid of honor, and Alex has one best man. But I think the ratio is 1 to every 50 guests. If you are not sure how many bridesmaid you should have, if you have 200 guests, then 1 maid of honor and 3 bridesmaids are all you need.
I personally paid the dress for my maid of honor (Linda) because I would feel bad to dedicate works to Linda and then she has to pay for her own dress! However, it seems like it’s normal for people here to ask bridesmaid to pay for their own dress. (*sigh*)
In conclusion, keep your wedding party simple! The best man usually will help out the groom to pick out outfits, the wedding ring, or become the chauffeur for the big day. The maid of honor or bridesmaid usually help you out planning the wedding. They are also the best people you can rely on coordinating the event as well.
6. Now, start the wedding details!
I guess I will write out the rest of the details on my second post. But here’s what I will have:
- Wedding Dress/Groom outfit
- Wedding Photographer
- Wedding Flowers
- Wedding DJ
- Wedding favors
- Wedding cake
Stay tuned!
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Tags: Toronto Wedding & Bridal Resources, toronto wedding blog, wedding, wedding resources
24.Feb.09 
wedding 
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