Your Second Job

WEDDING NOTES - Your Second Job

Weddings are the stuff of dreams, but in reality, preparing for yours can be like having a second job.

Planning a wedding requires real work.  It requires planning and meetings, contracts and negotiations, purchases and coordination.  It must have great communication and clear cut deadlines.  Purchasing and deadlines are real.  Some experts estimate that the average wedding ceremony and reception will require 250-300 hours of time invested.   How will you handle this second job while you are still gainfully employed at your regular job?

The best advice is to treat the upcoming nuptials like a business.  You need to get your tools together.  Get organized.  Set aside a work space related to wedding only projects.  It can be a basket on the kitchen counter or a special drawer or a notebook/portable office.  Just make sure that all the information related to you upcoming wedding is kept in one place.

Get an organizer or planner and keep it up to date.  A few years ago BRIDE'S magazine survey brides and 20% of the brides in the survey said they would sooner lose their wallets than their wedding planner.  Keep track of all names, phone numbers of any person who is in any way related to the upcoming wedding.  Take careful notes of any conversations, plan and promises made and by whom.

Set goals and give yourself deadlines.  Then stick to them.  Make lists of upcoming tasks and check off as completed.   If you let some deadlines slide, think how that would go over at work.

Hire a professional/consultant.  Businesses do this all the time.  If they have a special project that requires special attention within a specific time frame, they bring in a "specialist" or a consultant whose sole focus will be that special project.  Consider hiring a wedding consultant.  NBS and Weddings Beautiful can put you in touch with the best in the business.  These pros can help you bring in the project on time, on budget and with a trunk full of memories that no money can buy.