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A wedding is a joyous occasion which can cause more than its share fair of hassles to the person in charge of organizing the event. With a little fortitude and a whole lot of planning you can put up a wedding that comes effortlessly together. This wedding timeline will help you meet that goal. The items listed here must usually follow the sequence given. There may be some minor adjustments along the way but on the whole this is the mainstay of what any wedding must hold.

Setting the Date

The date is usually the most important deciding feature to decide just what sort of a wedding is to be planned. A spring wedding may well be planned outdoors, but in winter you will need to take things indoors no matter where you are located. Also the other factors such as availability of venue, flowers and food will all depend on the season that the wedding is set for. Unfortunately, unless you are the bride, there is little choice for the organizer here, and you simply have to make do with the date that you have been given.

The Guest List

Depending on the scale of the wedding the bride and groom will have to cull down the number of guests or add to the existing list. The budget will play an important part here as each additional guest will impact the wedding invitations, the favours and the food to be ordered. It is in the best interests of the organizer not to let the guest list get too out of hand. It should be communicated to the couple that while the actual wedding ceremony must be kept to immediate family and close friends the reception can be opened up to any number of peripheral friends they may like to invite to the celebrations.

Listing the Ceremonies

While the wedding ceremony is essentially the most important one, there are arguably another dozen smaller events that can be tacked on to the wedding. From bridal showers with the girls, to bachelor bashes for the boys, the formal engagement, and any of the more traditional religious ceremonies, a whole lot can be done. However, not everything needs to be done, so it is important for the organizer to list out with the help of the bride and groom the exact number of ceremonies that are to be performed. A few details of each ceremony and the expectations from it must also be developed.

Booking the Venue

If there are a number of ceremonies you may wish to consider booking a single venue for a number of days back to back, or a different venue for each ceremony. The budget and transportation of guests will play the deciding factor here. In any case, the venue along with catering and decoration must be picked and booked well in advance so as to avoid a disappointment at a later date. These bookings may require financial blocking and that too would need to be fixed up. A tasting of the food that may be served is also organized for the approval of the couple.

Invitation Words and Addressing

Special wedding stationery will have to be ordered for all the invites related to the different ceremonies and of course the thank you cards at the end. These days the options for wedding invites range from the traditional to absolutely one of kind personalized invites. Choosing the right words to go into the invitation cards is another exercise which needs to be handled with delicacy and care. Putting together the addresses for the entire guest list is another time consuming and important task. The posting and handling of RSVPs is also included in the roster of duties of the wedding organizer. This will give a fair idea of the actual number of guests to expect at the wedding.

The Wedding Ceremony and Reception

The actual ceremony will require the wedding organizer to be on the toes throughout the day. There are way too many details that need to be handled for them all to be listed in this wedding timeline. The most important ones would be the transportation for the bride and groom, the wedding dresses, the rings and the priest. Making sure all the out of station guests get to the venue in time would be another chore to handle. Once the actual ceremony is completed, there would be the transition to the reception that needs to be handled. This can be tricky if the wedding and reception are both held on the same day as frayed nerves and exhaustion can cause more than one explosion.  Ideally the venues for both the ceremony and the reception should be the same, and if that is not possible, as close together as possible.

Thank You Notes

There will be a number of people coming forward from amongst the family and friends of the couple to help during various ceremonies and aspects of organizing the wedding. It is only befitting that these people’s efforts are recognized by the bride and groom post the wedding. The thank you cards can be printed out along with the invitations and then personalized at a later date. Hopefully after all the effort the wedding organizer has put in, the bride and groom will not need a reminder to thank this person. Specially since they have been able to enjoy the wedding of their choice with flawless perfection. This then, is the end of the wedding timeline.

Feature Writer : Cashmere Lashkari