Your Wedding Day Plan

While I don’t think it’s possible to have a stress-free wedding, I think you can minimize the stress by being as organized as possible.

One way to do that is to have a wedding day “plan”, a simple-but-detailed-pack Word doc that you can email/give to your bridal party, venue and other key people.

I think everyone’s plan will look a little different depending on her own situation (and how detailed-oriented she it) but here’s an outline of how my plan looked:

Title: Lindsay & Shawn’s Wedding, Saturday, August 7, 2010

Total Guest Count:

Meal Breakdown

Beef:

Salmon:

Veggie:

Timeline

Friday, Aug 6, 2010

Details about delivery of our alcohol & décor

Saturday, Aug 7, 2010

A detailed breakdown on what was to happen when. Make sure to include the following items (assuming they’re applicable):

- Wake-up time

- Any times about when certain people should be meeting you/your partner

- Hair & make-up start/end times

- Photographer start & end time

- Other photography-related items such as when you have to be at, and leave, a specific location

- Officiate arrival time

- Live musician arrival time

- Bridal party arrival at ceremony site

- Ceremony time

- Bar start & end time

- Bridal party arrival at reception site

- Grand entrance

- Dinner start & end time

- Start time for any speeches

- DJ start & end time

- First dance

- Cake cutting

- Bouquet & garter toss

- Midnight snack

- Last call

- Last dance

Monday, Aug 9, 2010

Details on us coming back to the Berkeley to pick our stuff up

Contact Info

Bride:
Groom:

Best man:
Maid of honour:

Décor helpers:

Bakery:

DJ:

Flowers:

Live Musicians:

Minister:

Photographer:

Hair:

Make-up:

Floor Plan Guide

The Berkeley has an Excel-sheet floorplan that I marked up and included in my wedding day plan. I used this space in the Word doc to expand upon my markings.

I started by listing off all of the tables, what their table names were (since we didn’t use numbers) and how many seats should be at each table.

Then I commented on the placement of some of the other tables that were used so:

Table A = Cake table

Table B = DJ set up

Table C = Escort card table
Etc.

Other Notes

Down here I mentioned other key things that people, particularly the venue and my bridal party, would need to know, for example, that we wanted purple uplighting and that tea lights should be placed wherever it made sense

Be wary of putting in too many details. Try to keep your wedding day plan to about two pages in length; any longer and you risk people being scared off by the length. You can also put together a separate, more detailed-heavy document for people like your décors helpers who need more instructions.