Wedding Wednesday: Timeliness

Alternate title: Don't put off stuff to the last minute and spend the week or two before your wedding freaking out.

I know I ended my series of "Wedding Wednesday" posts a few months ago, but in light of my sister's upcoming nuptials (just a few more days!), I decided to throw one more into the bunch. Because this week has been nothing but phone calls and last minute runs to the store and packing up half our house to travel to the wedding (granted, most of that is stuff for William, but I digress). And that's not even the half of it; apparently once we arrive at her place she has a (fully-booked!) itinerary for us for the next three days. Now, I fully understand that some of the stuff needed to wait until the final days because they are dealing with perishable items (flowers, food, etc), but I do know that a fair amount of the stuff could have been done in advance--and would have resulted in a lot less stress if it were.

So here's my two cents. If you know you are going to be in a difficult wedding planning situation (living in different cities, moving, starting new jobs, etc), throw out those "recommended" timelines and get as much stuff done as soon as you can--and start delegating tasks sooner than a week before the wedding. There's no reason that printing the programs should be a stressful ordeal (but it will be if you've waited until the very last minute to get them printed  and then are unable to get a hold of your finance to approve the final proof before the print shop closes. Unnecessary stress). And even though the store says it will only take three weeks to get your shoes dyed (or design and ship your wedding band), get those things done a lot more than four weeks before your wedding. Things might get lost in shipping or come back damaged, and now you are SOL. There is no harm in having those things done months in advance; it's not like the shoes will "go bad" before the wedding. And it will be much easier for you (and your family!) to enjoy your wedding day when you haven't spent the entire week beforehand stressed.


Disclaimer: Please don't think that I'm trying to imply that I'm perfect when it comes to managing my time. I'm definitely guilty of last minute stress before events; the chaos leading up to my sister's bridal shower is proof enough of that. And I certainly don't mean to be insulting my sister; many of the hiccups that have happened have been out of her control (although, to be fair, if she were getting the things done sooner than a month or two weeks before the wedding they wouldn't have been nearly as big of deals). But the bottom line is, regardless of the fancy wedding timeline that tells you to print your programs a month before the wedding, throw that out the window if you know your plate is going to be full with other tasks in those final months (or if wedding planning is going to be competing with another major life event). Paper products and material goods will not spoil, and the sooner you get them done the fewer things you have to stress about.