Feature: Eye on Events

By Meera Jegathesan

Help, I'm Engaged! What's Next?

Congratulations! You are officially engaged to the person of your dreams, and it’s time to start thinking about your big day–your wedding! When you are not staring at that beautiful engagement ring on your or your fiancée’s finger, your heart might be racing and your head could be spinning with hundreds of questions and ideas, and you simply don’t know where to start. You aren’t only committing to spending the rest of your life with this one person; you are about to plan probably the most significant event of your life.

The months ahead might seem daunting, but don’t fear, take a deep breath, and consider the following questions, tips, and initial planning steps for your big day. With careful organization, planning and consideration, you can turn your own wedding into a stress-free, joyous and absolutely unforgettable experience!

Ready, Set, Go! Ask yourself if you and your fiancé are ready to enter into the commitment of marriage. Hopefully both of you have already taken the opportunity to carefully discuss and weigh the consequences and implications of marriage before becoming engaged. Planning a wedding can be extremely stressful for the bride, groom and their families, so it is important that you and your fiancée have built a solid foundation from which to begin your lives together.

Mind Over Matter. You might want your wedding to be a simple event to honor the love you feel for your fiancée or the biggest party you’ve ever hosted for your friends and family. Ask yourself why you are having the wedding and what you want out of it. This realization will assist you in making key decisions about your wedding going forward. Consider how personal you would like your wedding to be and how much you want your friends and family to be involved in the event. Since your wedding is an event you will hopefully only hold once in your lifetime, I am sure you will want the day to be truly special.

Weight of the Wallet. One of the largest limitations and concerns for hosting any event is money. A big mistake that brides, grooms and their families commonly make is to overspend on unnecessary aspects of the wedding and then realize that they do not have enough money to pay the bills when the event is over. Ask yourself how much you or your family are realistically willing to spend on the wedding and be extremely conservative in your budgeting. It is always better to overestimate rather than underestimate your anticipated costs so you are not faced with surprises in the end. Your budget will determine what type or scale of wedding you can have and you may have to set aside money on an ongoing basis to cover your wedding expenses.

You can expect that an average wedding for 100 people will cost at least $15,000-$20,000 (roughly $150.00-$200.00 per person). However, you would be surprised by how much factors such as the event’s location or timing, type of food and beverage served and decor could substantially impact or add to this amount. For example, a wedding in a major metropolitan city will probably be more expensive than one in a suburban location, or a seated dinner for guests might cost more than a buffet lunch. Create a spreadsheet and list all the parts of the wedding that will cost money and the amount you wish to designate for each part. Basic wedding costs you should consider might include wedding venue rental, hotel rooms, food and beverage, music, flowers, ceremony decor, clothing and jewelry, transportation, photography and the honeymoon. Always account for additional, miscellaneous expenses in case of last minute changes. I can assure that you will be eternally grateful that you have extra money set aside when you want your DJ to play music for that extra hour at your wedding! If you are trying to save money, try to accumulate your money in an interest-paying CD (certificate of deposit) or money market fund rather than a savings account. Pick a CD that allows you to withdraw money with little or no penalty so you can pay your bills. It never hurts to be smart!

Help is Around the Corner. Most of us have very busy schedules and have little time for extracurricular activities. Planning a wedding over the course of several months can absorb a large amount of your free time and cause strain on your already overwhelming life. Ask yourself if you can take on this responsibility yourself or require additional help. Your family or friends could be a big source of assistance. Many brides and grooms today enlist the help of professional wedding planners. A wedding planner can either plan the wedding entirely from start to finish or only be present to assist you with details on the day of the wedding itself. A wedding planner might charge a flat or hourly commission for the work they perform. South Asian wedding planners are becoming more common in the United States and around the world, but with careful education about South Asian customs, even a non-South Asian planner can still do a fine job.

Organizational Truth. I find that planning anything from a project at work to a trip to the grocery store requires careful organization. A wedding consists of an endless array of details and it is very easy to lose track of important documents such as contracts, notes, and receipts. Create a large three-ring binder dedicated to your wedding details and you can take the binder with you anywhere and you will always have the information on hand. Use tabs in the binder to differentiate each section, such as venue, food, flowers, music and finances. Print out emails, magazine clippings, pictures and linen samples for ideas and save them in the binder. Keep a contact list at the front of the binder so you can easily access important telephone numbers and email addresses of wedding contacts. You might even want to include a calendar to keep track of important dates and deadlines. For the tech-savvy bride or groom, a PDA (personal digital assistant) is a great way to create schedules, reminders and a list of contacts. You may also keep important websites and emails on hand for easy access. Organization is the key to success and who knows—you may even be able to pass your information on to your friend or family member for his or her own wedding in the future!

Define the Date. Think carefully about picking the right date for your wedding, and you may need to consider various factors ranging from your schedule at work to the cost of airfares and the typical weather during that time of year. You also might want to maintain the right amount of time to plan the wedding itself, secure a wedding venue and give enough notice to friends and relatives that may need to travel from out of town. Another factor to consider for South Asian weddings, in particular, is that there may be several different events surrounding the wedding to which you will need to schedule and plan as well. Make sure you are able to find locations for these events during the same timeframe as your actual wedding. Start with a general time period and narrow the date down when you actually locate the appropriate venue.

Location Is Everything. Finding a location for your wedding should be one of the first steps in your planning process sometimes even before you pick a date. I plan to cover this topic in greater depth in a future article, but ask yourself the following questions: Do you want to get married in your hometown, your favorite city or your favorite vacation spot? How easy will it be for your guests to travel to your wedding? How large of a venue will you need to accommodate all of your guests? Are you looking for an outdoor space filled with natural beauty or simply a room for your ceremony and reception? Hotels are traditional venues for weddings because they offer both sleeping rooms for out-of-town guests and banquet rooms for the actual events of the wedding. Hotels can be found anywhere (for example, city, beach, or airport) and offer a full range of services and amenities for you and your guests to enjoy. Additionally, hotels can provide blocks of rooms at a discounted rate for your guests to make reservations. These added services can make hotels overall more expensive venue options than other places, but their conveniences factor greatly in your decision process. Other popular wedding venues are country clubs, historic mansions and estates, temples, churches, and convention centers. Familiarize yourself with different types of venues so that you can make the best possible choice in the end. Ask friends for referrals and consult your local convention and visitors’ bureau for recommendations. Contact the venues directly and make appointments to tour the banquet rooms and even sleeping rooms, if applicable, with the event manager.

The Engagement Party. If you plan to have a long engagement (six months to one year), my suggestion is to throw an informal engagement party to officially announce and celebrate your union to your friends and family. You might consider hosting this event in your own or family’s home or at a local restaurant. It is not uncommon for engagement parties in the South Asian culture to include religious ceremonies or rituals to signify marriage and/or the joining of families. It is entirely your decision to receive gifts from your guests at an engagement party. If your guests at the engagement party are also attending your wedding but still want to bring a gift for the couple, ask a friend or relative to gently encourage them to bring something more informal, such as a bottle of wine or a small gift for the home.

The Insight of Inviting. Your guest list will be a large factor in your ability to meet your budget and locate the right place for your wedding. Sit down with your fiancée and family and make a list of all the people from your lives you wish to invite. Ask yourself if you want to invite your guests’ full families (including children and relatives) or just a person or couple. I always assume that out of all the guests you may invite, you can safely assume that roughly 15%-20% of those guests will not attend the wedding. Make two separate lists, such as one list for definite invitees and a second list for acquaintances and others that you would like to invite if the guests on the first list cannot attend. Your wedding should be a joyous occasion in which you celebrate with the friends and family members that mean the most to you! Finally, choose an appropriate invitation design and locate a printer to manufacture the actual invitations with the details of your wedding. Send wedding invitations out two to three months before the actual weddings. If your wedding is six months to a year away, send out a save-the-date reminder to guests so they can mark the relevant dates on their calendars. This could be your chance to be creative, too! Your save-the-date invitation can just contain simple details about your wedding, such as date, place and, if applicable, a list of suggested airlines or hotels and distances from local airports for out-of-town guests to begin to make advance reservations. In your actual invitation, you should include the same information but in much more detail. Don’t forget to include the important details of your wedding (such as date, time of each event and place), a self-addressed, stamped RSVP response card, and directions to the location of each event..

Here Comes the Wedding Party. Ask yourself and your fiancé if you wish to have bridesmaids and groomsmen in your wedding. A wedding party can include friends and family members of the bride and groom or only family members. If you decide to have a wedding party, you may want to determine what role each of those friends or relatives will have in the wedding and how they would be differentiated. For example, will your bridesmaids help you get ready before the ceremony or just be there to walk ahead of you into the ceremony? South Asian weddings typically involve the families of the bride and groom very closely in the ceremony. Consult your family for assistance in deciding whether or not to have a wedding party and remember that having a wedding party is always a choice and never an imperative.

Official Rites. Weddings have been celebrated traditions for hundreds of years in just about every culture and can have religious or non-religious associations. Ask yourself if having a religious ceremony is important to you, your fiancé or your family. If the bride and groom are from two different religions, you may want to find a way to integrate both religions into the ceremony. Consult your family and a religious leader for advice in this area. Nondenominational ceremonies are becoming very common even in South Asian weddings. Many couples opt to hire a justice of the peace to conduct a simple legal ceremony. Remember to consult your local city hall for information about obtaining a marriage license as laws vary from state to state.

Every Event Counts. In the initial steps of planning your wedding, you might try to craft a very rough plan or schedule for the event(s) within your wedding. Do you wish to have a ceremony followed by a reception? If so, do you wish to have both on the same day or one day apart? What about other traditional wedding events? For example, South Asian weddings often span several days and in some cultures, a wedding might include a Mehendi (an event to place a decorative henna design on the bride’s hands and feet) on one day and/or a Sangeet (an event in which friends and family perform for the bride and groom) on another day. These events are often completely separate from the actual ceremony and reception. Ask yourself if you want to have those events and, if so, you will need to treat those events similarly to the wedding and consider such factors such as guest list, location, and food. The events of your wedding could even begin months before the actual wedding day. Your parents may wish to have a bridal shower for friends and family a month before the wedding and today, members of the wedding party often plan bachelor and bachelorette parties weeks before the big day to celebrate the couple’s impending nuptials in an informal way. You and your fiancé should agree on the number and nature of events that will take place as part of the overall wedding celebration as well as the financial implications of each event.

Registry Rules. A sign of solid etiquette at a wedding in almost any culture is for a guest to bring a gift for the newly married couple. However, a guest may not necessarily know the most appropriate gift for a couple and two guests may end up giving the same gift to a couple. Did you really need to receive five of the same mahogany picture frames from Pottery Barn? Consider starting a wedding registry with a local department store or home furnishing store. Ask yourself if there are specific items that you would like to receive from guests. Once you identify these items, you or a family member can provide this information to guests to ensure they can give you the gift you actually want. Common wedding registry items include china, flatware, appliances, bedding and bath accessories. Department stores make it easy to select the items in the store, list them on an Internet site, and ship the gift directly to you. If you are planning a honeymoon, you might want to provide a registry that represents the various aspects of your trip, such as hotel stays, activities, and dining options. Many couples today ask guests not to bring boxed gifts to weddings either on the invitation itself or by word of mouth. While this request is accepted so the couple doesn’t have to transport so many large gifts from the wedding to their home, you may need to expect that guests will give money or gift certificates instead. Set appropriate and courteous guidelines for gift giving and make sure your friends and family members are aware so that they may communicate these guidelines directly to your guests.

The above steps are just a sampling of topics you as a future bride or groom should contemplate when planning your wedding. The next step for you in planning your wedding is careful execution. Taking all of the above into consideration will leave you, the bride or the groom, organized, relaxed, and ready for the big day.

In following articles, I will go into greater depth about different aspects of wedding planning and expand on many of the above topics in greater depth. But for now, grab your binder, jot down some notes and set sail for the adventure of a lifetime!

Meera Jegathesan works as a sales manager and event planner for a major hotel company in the San Francisco Bay Area. She always thinks outside the box and her next big idea is just around the corner.

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