Step one: Calibrate
In order to set yourself up for success, it is important to calibrate your expectations to reality and be very honest with yourself about what is important.
Calibrating your expectations
Lots of the weddings we see online and in the media are meant to serve as inspiration and nothing more. Styled shoots are sometimes indistinguishable from real weddings, and when we see a beautiful wedding featured on a blog, their budget is rarely included.
What ends up happening is that we adopt these ideas and expectations without key information: the price.
Going forward, any time you see a wedding that is a visual feast of an event, with place cards made of agate slabs and a suspended cloud of floral work above the head table, assume their budget was $150k or more.
If your budget is $150k or more, feel free to adopt expectations that match those weddings.
If your budget is closer to the average in the USA of $33k… be prepared to adjust your expectations. This doesn’t mean you can’t have a blow out affair, it just means you may need to scale back some ideas, prioritize other elements, DIY some projects, and, most importantly, you will need to be much more flexible.
And honestly? The more flexible you are, the more likely you will be to be happy with the end result.
Your wedding may not end up looking like a a styled shoot, because it is not a styled shoot, it's a real event with real humans. Instead, it will be an authentic event that is reflective of you and your partner’s spirit, values, interests, and community.