Your wedding is one of the biggest days of your life. Not only are you marrying your soul mate and making a commitment for all to see, but you will also be pulling off one of the biggest events you will ever plan.

Unless, of course, you are so enthused by planning your own wedding that you take a big step into the world of professional wedding planning. There are all kinds of wedding planner courses, from short 10-week courses to getting the best out of your day, to long courses that look at every detail under a magnifying glass.

And with your desire to no doubt make your wedding the perfect fit for you and your future spouse, avoiding common mistakes and pitfalls is a must. With a meddling mother and/or mother-in-law, egocentric bridesmaids and interfering siblings, you need all the help you can get.

Know the warning signs before they hit with our top 10 mistakes to avoid when planning your wedding…

#1 Choose bridesmaids carefully

The proposal has been popped and now the exciting process of planning your big day is in full swing and, in the first few flushes of wedding planning, you can make decisions that can only be described as disastrous.
You may have promised your childhood best friend, when you were four years of age, that when you get married, they will be your Maid of Honour. You may have sort-of promised the same thing to the girl you shared a room with at Uni, and so on.

Now that you are getting married, it does not mean that you have to honour all these promises drunken or otherwise, from your past.
This is real. And you need a posse of girls around you on the day that are supportive and certainly not bridesmaidzilla-like in the run up to your wedding, choosing a dress or on the day itself. The same obviously goes for the groom and his best man and ushers.

#2 The dress

When it comes to the wedding dress, it is, without a shadow of a doubt, the most important garment of the day. You need to be comfortable in it, it needs to flatter and you need to love it.
But, the wedding dress is the first decision that can be a disaster, which can be avoided by keeping in mind the following;

#3 Skip eating in the run up to the wedding

Clearly, skipping food and not drinking enough in the few days up to your wedding is, for health reasons, alone not a great way to approach the big day. A combination of nerves and excitement can send your stomach into knots, leading to you not eating/eating enough.
Even worse is skipping breakfast on the morning of your wedding.

The problem is this; adrenalin doesn’t last forever and your first glass of celebratory champers on an empty stomach will send the champagne bubbles straight to your head. Before you know it, you’ll be doing the conga down the corridor and crashing out before your evening guests have arrived.

#4 Stay clear of ‘the night before beauty fixes’

Anything that involves cutting, shaping or dying should be done well before the wedding to give beauty treatments time to ‘calm down’ to their desired effect.

Therefore, AVOID;

#5 Meditate not medicate

Half way through our list of disasters and we are to the night before your big day.

Every nerve is jangling, no one has heard from Uncle Peter and your Mother is slowly beginning to self-combust. To top it all, you don’t think you have ordered enough button holes.

It can be tempting to pop a sleeping pill the night before so that you get your eight hours of sleep but unless you are used to sleeping pills, when you wake in the morning you may find the haze of sleep difficult to shift.

In the lead up to your big day, practice some relaxing breathing exercises, and if you can, a spot of meditating.

#6 Avoid cheap, designer gown imitations…

… and never buy off the internet. For your wedding dress, visit a reputable wedding boutique.

#7 The mother-in-law diplomacy act

People surround you on your wedding day and in the planning of it for two reasons: they care and they want to help.
Problem is, as well-intentioned as it is, it can be over-bearing, the wrong kind of help and with so many opinions coming at you, confusing too.
Your mother-in-law will not be the only person to irritate with their interference, but they can sometimes be the person who takes the butt of all the jokes at a wedding.

Hopefully, you will have come to know your mother-in-law well over your courtship with your soon-to-be-spouse and thus, you have a measure of how you think they will react to wedding planning.

Unfortunately, wedding planner courses won’t equip you with patience and virtue in handling the mother-in-law, but:
a. Don’t fall out with her – the damage can be lasting
b. Delegate a job that you are happy for her to run with as her own
c. Take a deep breath. And no snapping.

#8 No booking a professional wedding photographer

So, Uncle Desmond has a really expensive camera and cousin Pete has a drone? Great. But really – are you prepared to stake everything on them being able to stage and set your photos so that in ten years’ time when you look at them, you are going to become dewy eyed over how beautiful you look and handsome your hubby is?

You can’t do that if Uncle Desmond becomes so inebriated halfway through the reception that there are no photos beyond the ceremony.
If you spend your money on nothing else, spend it on a photographer.

#9 Shedding too much weight

Wedding planning can, if you allow it to, run on nervous exhaustion, a heady mix of adrenalin and excitement, with a dollop of anxiety mixed in.

The problem is that in this time, with 250 favours to make up for the tables and keeping up with an ever-changing seating plan, deadlines looming and decisions to be made, we can forget the most important thing: looking after ‘me’.

This means taking a walk or having a run. It means eating well, eating healthily and eating regularly.

This affects not only your mood and enjoyment of the day, but also how your dress fits. Drop too many lbs and lose too many inches, and when you get dressed in your beautiful dress, it won’t hang as well as it did.

However, there is also another side to this and that is the food we eat tends to be ‘snacks’, loaded with calories. All too many brides have gorged on crisps and chocolate in the run up to their day and just about managed the squeeze into their dress.
Moderation is key!

#10 Saying the wrong names

For those that love the American sitcom ‘Friends’, you will remember the episode ‘The One with Ross’ Wedding’. Whatever you do, say the right name…

How to avoid all these mistakes?

The answer is simple. Get yourself booked on to one of our wedding planner courses today.

With flexible payment options, you can learn new skills from the comfort of your own sofa, if that’s how you study best, or make notes for your next assignment whilst commuting to work on the bus if that’s the way you rock.

You may also find that studying wedding planning for your own wedding leads to a new career either planning other people’s wedding, or opting for another course on event planning.

Who would have thought that planning your own wedding could open so many doors?

The question has been popped, the proposal accepted; the champagne has flowed, and the engagement ring has been admired.

Now all you need to do is plan your wedding.

You want it to be special. You want it to be a little different and unique; you want a theme that is fun and frivolous but, you also want the sanctity of marriage and the story of your relationship to shine through.

To top it all off, you also have the constraints of the budget within which you must operate. When it comes to understanding how to plan a wedding successfully, you need a few basic and simple steps.

Step 1 – what kind of wedding day do you want?
Do you want flamboyant? Is it going to be big? Is it small, intimate and romantic? Is there a theme? A colour?… the questions go on and on but before you get swept away in a tide of unanswered questions and ideas, you need to sit down together, as a couple, as decide what can, what must, what can’t and must not happen on your day.

Step 2 – the perfect wedding venue
In our how to plan a wedding guide, we suggest that the biggest purchase be decided upon first, and that is the wedding venue.

You may decide on a church or registry office, followed by a wedding reception or you may opt for the all-in-one approach with a wedding venue that does both ceremony and reception.

Ask around, do a bit of research online and then make some appointments to go and view places. Not only is price an indicating factor but you will also need to consider whether you have exclusive use of the venue, if it is big enough and whether there is a need for overnight accommodation, either at the venue or nearby.

We would suggest visiting two or three venues to see how far your money can stretch.

Step 3 – Get help!
You can successfully plan your wedding, creating a day that is not only memorable but fun too but, if you know you are going to struggle, then you need to decide on the best course of action when it comes to getting the right kind of help.

There will be a legion of relatives and friends all clambering to help you out. From writing invites, to making up hundreds of party favours, there is a whole raft of people to call on.

But – and we must sound a note of caution – a wedding can also be the time that people tend to get carried away with their ideas. What you want can become lost in the melee.

The answer to this is to hire someone who is objective, full of advice, suggestions and contacts as well as being completely on your side. You may think that hiring a wedding planner is an extravagant expense, but it can be money well spent (and save you a lot of stress and headaches too!)

Step 4 – Check out major wedding suppliers
From food to flowers, drink to entertainment, once you have your venue sorted and enlisted help, you now need to start putting the finishing touches on your day.

What can impact on your day is when something goes awry with a key wedding supplier, like the food being late, the flowers not arriving or the wrong wedding cake being delivered.

Finding the best suppliers within your budget is simply essential. Take a look online, read reviews and get recommendations. Many entertainers and musicians will use social media to showcase their talent.

Once you are satisfied you have found the right people and suppliers book them, confirming details nearer to time to prevent any mishaps or problems on the day.

Step 5 – enjoy your wedding day
You have had fabulous help from family and friends, your wedding suppliers have all delivered, all that remains to be done now is to go ahead and enjoy your day.

You have a superb venue, hand-picked entertainment, beautiful flowers and the partner of your dreams. Even better you have managed to plan your own wedding without going over budget nor becoming overly stressed about small, inconsequential things, known in the industry as being a bridezilla.

All of this means that when your wedding day dawns bright and early, everything is under control – bar the weather – and you can kick back and really celebrate the start of something wonderful together.