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

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??