Things I wish I would have had/done as soon as I got engaged

Friday, February 6, 2015



The countdown is ON- 30 days until this whole wedding goes down! Now that we are this close I've been thinking of all the things that I was like "WHY didn't anyone tell me this??" and/or "thank goodness we did this!" so just wanted to share a few of those gems:


I wish we would have...

1.) Ordered a return address stamp ASAP: gifts start flowing in (not complaining) which means thank you cards start flowing out. Anything that moves this process along a little faster is worth every penny. This is our stamp and I ordered it from my friend Ali who designs stamps over at Tumbleweed Paperie (check them out! Tell her Lindsay sent you!)

and on that note (haha see what I did there...note...)..

2.) Hoarded thank you cards: Engagement parties, showers, random "congrats" gifts... I've sent about a million thank you cards and it would have softened the blow if I had just been collecting them over time as opposed to buying a million $ worth at once. Lucky for me, my mom works at Hallmark and gets a pretty sweet discount on these kinds of things.

3.) Had a real life budget talk: Womp womp, I know. Everyone told me to have a serious budget talk so here's how our's went down:
Me: Ok let's buy everything as cheap as possible for this wedding.Harrison: Sounds good.
This is in fact not the budget talk a couple should have before a major event because said major event has a tendency of spinning out of control at about 500000 MPH. Once things had already spun out of control we sat down and had a real budget talk and it would have saved us about 68 headaches if we would have sat down and honestly talked about what we want and how much we are willing to pay for it. I wish we would have prioritized what we have to have (i.e. killer DJ, killer videos, type of catering, etc).

4.) Planned for the honeymoon earlier: We put this one off to the last minute. It all worked out, but we could have saved money with earlybird deals by having booked 6+ months out.

I'm SO GLAD WE...

1.) Spread out the payments: A friend told me to do this from the beginning and I. Am. So. Glad. At first I was like if the money's there, it's there, but let me tell you how much less stressed we are just having to make 1/6 of all the payments in this month before the wedding. This is also great because about 100000 unexpected tiny costs have come up in the last few weeks and those haven't been as hard to swallow as they would have been if we had been having to write everyone one big fat check.

2.) Started stashing booze early on: As soon as we decided we were going to provide the booze for the wedding, my caterer friend (and wedding coordinator who, at this point in the process, I'm pretty sure I would be lying facedown in a ditch without her) told me to just pick up a handle or 2 with groceries every week to soften the blow. I'm really fortunate that my parents are gifting the bar to us, but they've been doing it this way too!

3.) Used credit cards with bomb points programs: I got an American Air credit card and Harrison used his BOA credit card and we have put everything for the wedding on these two cards. We paid for our honeymoon flights with my credit card points and all of our honeymoon excursions and VIP club experiences have been purchased with Harrison's credit card points. Head's up though: I pay 100% of my credit card bill at the end of the month. I will NOT go in debt over this wedding (please, I have enough other things keeping me in a hole). You don't get the points until you pay off the dollars, so in order for this to work you have to really pay attention.

4.) Had my friends' wedding planner template:  This  helped to think of little thing we would have forgotten. This also helped me think of things we would need to buy that we might not have thought of, and we were able to space those out too.

5.) Got a ring dish: I take my ring off a few times a day- when cooking, to exercise, when I shower... It took one scare in the kitchen to realize that when I take that thing off, it's going ONE place and one place only (my ring dish). This is why we don't have nice things...

6.) Went bananas on Black Friday: Bridesmaids gifts 50% off - check! Some bridal accessories 70% off: check! Favors 40% off - check check! I only wish I would have had a more extensive list so we could have gotten everything on crazy sale.

Any advice? Anything you or friends have done or wish you/they would have done??

16 comments :

  1. 30 days away?!!?!?!? Ahhhh I'm so excited for you!!!! Your wedding day will be fabulous and amazing and sweet and I'm going to crash it.... lol! Happy Friday :)

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  2. never been engaged but these are awesome tips! things i didn't think about at all

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  3. I think those are some awesome tips to share for those who can be smarter than the people before them haha! You did some smart things though like black Friday shop and using points for sure!!! So close!!

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  4. Great list, not that I will ever need such a thing but it's fun to live vicariously thru you!

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  5. oh my goodness #1 and #2 SOO SOOO TRUE. my hand hurts

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  6. I totally agree about thank you notes!! I got really lucky and went to target and found the most beautiful ones for .97 i bought like 7 LOL and I still have them!! One month left for you yay!! xo, Biana - BlovedBoston

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  7. awesome - my only tip is to realize that it's just one day. and at the end of that day if you are happy and married, it's a good day. i didn't have any stress the whole weekend and that allowed me to really just ENJOY having all my favorite people in one place. that weekend was by far the best weekend of my life! so excited for you!

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  8. Great tips. Not going into debt for the wedding is the best advice!!

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  9. Such great tips that ill keep in the back of my head for later ... :P

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  10. Dad here. Master Procrastinator. Plan/pay Honeymoon early? Last minute travel deals make great surprises! Of course, my "master planner" daughter isn't much on my kind of surprises...& from a guy who ended up in Vail on his honeymoon in the RAINY off-season with lots of time in the room, uhhh, coming up with things to do (not all bad, actually!).

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  11. These are great tips! I am crazy about credit card rewards I've paid for entire vacations with my two credit card rewards programs.

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  12. i wish i had done 1 thing - eloped! haha just kidding. spreading out payments and stocking up on booze is brilliant, wish we did that! i booked the honeymoon super early though and we got amazing deals!

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  13. I was so glad we kept a spreadsheet of guests we invited. It had their names, addresses, rsvp status and we tracked gifts so we could do thank you cards. This helped with mail merge for labels too.

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    1. Ohhh I have an RSVP spreadsheet but didn't think to add gifts to that spreadsheet! Thanks!!

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  14. I have one dish that is the only place my ring is allowed to go period. I wish I would have gotten every verbal agreement about money/costs in writing. So interesting how so many things change over the course of a year engagement :-(

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