Hi! I'm Taryn, a writer, designer and soon-to-be-bride from Atlanta, Georgia. Sit a spell with me and catch up as I plan the wedding of my beer-loving, confetti-throwing dreams to the wonderful Mr. Williford.Indecision May or May Not be My Problem
People love to check in on wedding planning. Friends and family obviously know that we’re planning this big shindig in the fall, and they know we’re really invested in it (both in terms of time and money). So anytime we catch up with friends over dinner or on the phone, they love to ask “How’s wedding planning going?” And for the most part, it’s going really well. I’ve perfected my delivery when the question comes up. “Well, we’ve got all the big stuff done. But right now we’re kind of in a lull. It’s too early to start on the little things. So we’re just enjoying being engaged.”
Except, I’m not really sure I believe me. Not about the last part, but about it being too early to do things.
Luulla
There’s lots on my to-do list I could tackle rightthisminute. I could email my bridesmaids and finally tell them what color I want them to wear so they can start shopping for their mismatched dresses. I could decide once and for all what mix of vases, planters, tall candles and votives I want on all the tables and start buying up supplies. I could take my lunch break today to visit that cute bakery up the street and put in an order for our not-cake wedding dessert spread. We’re less than six months out. It’s actually a little insane that I haven’t started doing some of these things. But you know what? I don’t know what I want.
Indecision isn’t always a bad thing. The fact that you’re not able to make a quick decision is a signal that something really matters to you, and sometimes hesitation can give you the time you need to make the right choice. But eventually, you’ll need to overcome whatever is holding you back. (Or just cancel the wedding. That works too.)
Since I’ve been an uncertain person by nature my whole life (I think it goes hand in hand with being a bit of a perfectionist), I’ve decided that my recent bout of wedding doubt is the perfect opportunity to finally learn how to overcome indecision. After scouring the web for help and asking friends how they handle tough choices, here are some strategies that speak to me when dealing with indecision:
Forget about always appearing smart (or creative, or anything else). Forbes pointed this out out as a reason why proven executives sometimes have a difficult time making choices: They’re afraid of looking dumb. I need to learn to make choices for me, and not what other people think of me, knowing it will all come together in the end.
Trust your gut. It’s not just a “feeling,” it’s actually your brain tapping into a wealth of your own knowledge and experience that’s bigger than you can imagine and trying to guide you to the right choice.
lehman-family.com
Beware the paradox of choice. You know how a multiple choice question can slip you up, even when you know you know the answer? Weddings can be like that, too. If you walked into a store for simple ivory envelopes, don’t even look at anything else.
Keep in mind you can make decisions about your decisions later. A wedding is made up of lots of little decisions, and there will always be more do do and decide. It’s a scary realization at first, but I find it eerily comforting: If my initial choice does turn out poorly for one reason or another, my future self can find ways to make it better. After all, “if you don’t make the right decision, you can make the decision right.”
If you can’t make a big decision, make some small ones. Making a few seemingly insignificant small decisions will help the whole vision for your day come into focus, and guide the bigger choices. It’s also good practice for learning how you can make better decisions faster. Learning how to make choices you’re happy with is like any life skill and takes practice.
Accept “good enough.” Seriously.
How do you handle wedding indecision? I need all the help I can get to start moving on some of this stuff.
Bride vs. Groom: The Division of Duties in Planning the Hen Wedding
When we got engaged, Rooster and I had been dating for four years and lived together for three. There was no mystery left. Even when it comes to wedding planning.
From day one, it was perfectly clear that I, and not Roo, would be taking lead on the wedding planning. And not just because I’m the bride. It comes down to three things: (1) I’m obsessed with weddings, (2) I’m known to be a crafty gal and love to plan parties and (3) I care way more about the details than Rooster does.
Rodney Bailey via Groom Sold Separately
I thought that “taking the lead” on wedding planning was going to mean making most of the decisions myself, but Rooster has surprised me with how much he wants to be involved. He’s been right there with me every step of the way—choosing a venue, caterer, photographer and everything else—with just as many questions and opinions. We’ve even split the legwork 50/50. It just worked out that we take turns handling vendor contacts and signing contracts. At the start of our engagement, I didn’t expect planning would be such a united process.
Reflecting on how we’ve split wedding responsibilities has me wondering how other couples make it work. Does the bride do most of the planning in most weddings? What tasks, if any does the groom seem eager to help with? Did you get any planning help from family or friends?
Here’s how our division of duties shaked out with some of our decisions:
- Venue: We both wanted to have input on our venue. I did the bulk of the searching, but we talked over our options together. We visited Monday Night Brewing—our only site visit—together (but I’d been there before). Once we picked it, I negotiated and signed the contract and paid the deposit.
- Catering: We both cared about this one equally (what can I say… we love good food!). Like the venue, I searched for options, but we discussed it together. We visited our food truck, Ibiza Bites, for a tasting together. Roo handled the communication, contract and deposit, since I did the legwork on the venue before. (That’s f***ing teamwork! Tenacious D? No? Just me? Okay.)
- Photography: This was all me, pretty much. I had such a vested interest in picking our photographer that I did the legwork and decision making by myself. Rooster did give me his opinions on potential photographers’ portfolio websites, though, and he attended the first meeting with our eventual choice, Paige (I had a good feeling about it and I wanted him to meet her).
- Day-of-Coordination: Roo wasn’t convinced we needed a coordinator, but I knew better based on advice from every bride ever. I did the research, made the phone calls and made the decision here. I consulted Rooster on cost, but he didn’t weigh-in on the decision and trusted my judgement. I decided on Kristine of Simply Charming Socials and handled the meeting, contract and deposit myself.
- Event Rentals: As soon as we realized we would need to add some tables and chairs to the brewery’s existing decor, I started searching for rental companies. I shared some of my findings with Roo and had him weigh-in on costs and styles, but he ultimately wanted me to do what would make me happy (as long as it fit the budget). I chose our rentals from Blue Eyed Yonder’s vintage catalog and handled the contract and deposit myself.
- Hotel Room Blocks: I assigned this to Roo, and he handled it completely! I just met up with him one weekend to check out the rooms (and at one point I went alone, because I know he hasn’t actually been inside our wedding night suite).
In the interest of not boring you with too many planning details, I skipped over some other key vendors, like our DJ and Officiant. Rest assured that we split most of the legwork on the other vendors between us, although we did fall into somewhat of a pattern: I search, he calls, he signs the contract, I pay the deposit. It’s worked well so far! Although I’m guessing that since our remaining tasks are a lot of decor decisions and do-it-yourself projects, Rooster is going to be much less involved than before. Sigh.
“Hashtag Wedding. Hashtag Hashtags.”
I can’t remember the first time I spotted a hashtag, although I’d be willing to bet our wedding fund that I clicked my first hashtag on Twitter sometime shortly after I joined in 2009 (the same year Twitter introduced using the pound sign to link groups, events and ideas). The humble hashtag has evolved beyond trending topics on Twitter and is now used globally on many different networks to not only link concepts, but also to add unnecessary post script to social updates. #likethis
The latter use leads many people to believe that hashtags are silly, overused gimmicks that don’t really serve any purpose other than to inspire Jimmy Fallon to lampoon them on The Tonight Show. You guys have seen that clip, right? #hilarious #justintimberlakeismysoulmate #callme #imnotmarriedyet
The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon Tumblr
Truthfully, I’m still on #teamhastag. So, like so many brides and grooms before us, Rooster and I have decided to adopt a wedding hashtag to help us (and our guests) collect and share pictures and updates about our bash.
Here’s how we did it.
Pick Something Unique and Easy-to-Remember
There’s no formal registration process for creating a hashtag, anyone can just, well… pick one. For that reason, you want to make sure that your hashtag is totally unique to your celebration; so when you or your guests click your hashtag on Instagram, for example, you’re only seeing shots from your bash. It should also be easy to remember, so guests can quickly type it in from memory after they snap a great shot at your ceremony.
Wed Me Good
Like a shot of your massive hashtag installation, maybe.
Creating an easy and unique hashtag is not as tough as it sounds, I promise. A great strategy is to combine your names (first or last) or the date together. A couple with unusual first names might just use those (#roccoandsamara; using “and” not “&,” there’s no spaces or punctuation in hashtags), while others opt to combine their new last name with the year (#kinsley2014). You can also try to get creative with other words related to your wedding. Rooster and I chose an alliterative phrase, #thewillifordwedding, for both our hashtag and wedsite domain to keep things consistent. Try adding words like “wed,” “wedding,” “bash,” “union” or “hitched” (or anything else a thesaurus can come up with). Or opt for something memorable that’s unique to your nuptials (like #kateandjackelope or #gardnerbeachbash).
How do you know if your hashtag is unique? Search for it on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or any other network your friends and family might share to. We originally chose #willifordwedding before we discovered that another couple had used it for their wedding a few years back. Tacking “the” to the beginning ensures it’s all ours (assuming everyone types it correctly—another potential snag you should consider).
Share the #love
Now that you have a hashtag, let people know about it! We decided to share our hashtag right away through our wedding website and save-the-dates so our guests could tag their social excitement immediately. Our save-the-date suite included stickers for our guests to mark their calendars, and I made sure one of those stickers featured our hashtag.
Guests who visited the website also might have seen the Connect page, where we encouraged guests on “team bride” or “team groom” to friend us both on Facebook, and also introduced our hashtag with this bit of text:
If you’re sharing on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, use hashtag #thewillifordwedding. It lets us collect everyone’s well-wishes and photos all in one spot on different social networks. Consider it a 21st-century guestbook.
It worked, since a few friends shared their excitement over receiving our save-the-dates right away via Instagram and Facebook.
I expect we’ll see a lot more tagging on the day of the wedding as our guests snap photos of their night. Which is why you might also want to…
Post Some Signage
As guests walk into the ceremony, remind them to tag their photos and updates with your hashtag by posting some pretty DIY signage outside. Or decide to include the hashtag on your ceremony programs or inside gift bags for the out-of-towners. I haven’t yet decided on how we’ll display or share our hashtag on the day of the wedding, but I love this inspiration photo of one bride’s awesome chalkboard sign.
The Knot
Do you, or did you, have a wedding hashtag? How are you sharing and displaying it?
Sharing Our Wedding Weekend with Pride, Part 2
Picking dates is hard to do. Rooster and I picked October 11th for no reason at all, after weeks of desperation waiting for the delayed SEC fall football schedule. It (of course) came out a week after we signed our contract. C’est la vie. We considered for a second switching the date, but it seemed silly to move our wedding for a football game. If there was something that was going to make us move our wedding date, it would have to be a huge festival or something. The kind that takes over the city and makes hotel rooms for our guests really hard to come by.
Oh, you mean like The Atlanta Pride Festival?
Yeah, like that. When is that again? Oh, October 11th? Bugger.
Georgia Southern
After we set our date and signed our contract, something compelled me to Google around for an events calendar in Atlanta. You know, just to discover if any big events would be going on that weekend that might put a wrench in our plans, or maybe even offer our out-of-town guests something fun to do during the wedding weekend. I was quickly reminded that Pride happens in Atlanta every Columbus Day weekend and connected the dots. We were going to be getting married in Atlanta in the middle of Pride weekend.
Atlanta Pride
As an ally, I love Pride weekend. It’s a ton of fun and brings a lot of people to Atlanta from all over the Southeast to explore our fair city and celebrate LGBTQ culture and demonstrate for the cause. I’ve seen firsthand how many people come out for Atlanta Pride. A lot of people. Good for Pride and the Georgia tourism industry, bad for anyone trying to find an affordable hotel room. You see, Pride is centered around the Midtown neighborhood, which is also home to the hotels closest to our wedding venue.
Rooster and I realized that it would be ideal to, you know, not host 90 out-of-town guests on the same weekend as Pride, so we reached out to our venue to see if we could move our date. But you know what? No dice. Monday Night Brewing was booked all October. We had to stick to our date.
Having a wedding the same weekend as a big event in Atlanta has lead us to do things a little differently in planning. Namely the hotel blocks. We wanted to get them reserved early, and in huge numbers. And it turns out it was a really good idea to start early. In the two weeks between when a hotel representative quoted us a block room rate and when we went in to book, he informed us that the rates went up by a lot. Apparently he caught wind of Pride before we signed the contract. Thankfully, we were able to negotiate a rate in the middle that’s more reasonable. We actually have more rooms than we need between two hotels because we just didn’t want any of our guests to be left high and dry paying hundreds for a basic hotel room.
Having a wedding the weekend of Pride also leaves me in a precarious position of if, when and how to tell our guests. I want to warn guests about the events happening in our ‘hood during the wedding weekend (like the parade on Sunday morning) since it will surely impact their travel and traffic in the city, but I don’t want to come off as if I’m warning them about the mere presence of the gays. Rooster and I are allies, and many of our friends and family are either LGBTQ or allies themselves. But there’s people coming to the wedding with whom we’ve never breached that topic. I hope all our loved ones are on the same side of the debate, but I don’t want to start that conversation, you know?
As of right now, we’ve told some friends and family that it’s Pride weekend and to please book your rooms soon! And there’s a warning on the Accommodations page of our wedding website that warns the bash is “during a busy weekend in Atlanta” and encourages them to book sooner rather than later.
Should I be doing more to inform our guests? I don’t know.
There’s just one lesson to take away from this: Google first, book later.
Sharing Our Wedding Weekend with Pride, Part 1
Picking a wedding day is kind of a big deal, yeah? Something you shouldn’t just throw a dart at a calendar to decide. In retrospect, I feel like Rooster and I probably should have thought about it more.
We didn’t think we’d ever be in the position to just pick a date out of the blue, but our venue had a wide open calendar. We set our sights on October because it’s a beautiful time of year and stays mostly dry (we’re praying to the rain gods here). And why did we pick October 11th? No real reason. It starts to get chilly towards the end of October so we thought the first half of the month might be more temperate. But why not October 4th? Or October 18th? I don’t know. We just didn’t think about it. We just picked a day.
Target Practice Dart Calendar, by Studio Dorogaya via Behance
The truth is, I was looking for something to guide our date selection. Specifically, the SEC fall football schedule. As a born and bred Gator fan and University of Florida alumna, Southeastern Conference football is like a religion to me. The same goes for most of my family and all my friends from college. As soon as we decided on a fall wedding, it was imperative that I pick a wedding day that didn’t fall on a big game weekend. (This is not an isolated problem, people.) Or else I’d have to talk Rooster into moving the wedding to The Swamp.
Dream Day Cakes
The thing is, the announcement of the 2014 SEC football schedule was strangely delayed last year. Like, a lot delayed. Rooster’s prized Michigan Wolverines had a 2014 football schedule in place since May 2013. But we picked our venue in July 2013 and still had heard nothing from the SEC. Before that football schedule comes out, picking a Saturday in October to get married is like running through a minefield.
So even though we knew exactly where we wanted to get married, we decided to wait for the SEC schedule to pick a date and sign a contract. So we waited. And waited. And waited. And in no time, we found ourselves in the middle of August with the SEC schedule still missing in action. We really wanted to lock in our venue, so Rooster and I decided we couldn’t wait any longer.
We closed our eyes and picked October 11th, 2014 as our date, and signed the venue contract on August 16th.
And on August 21st, the SEC announced the Gators’ schedule. You saw that coming, right?
Our wedding just happens to fall on the same day as the Florida-LSU game. Only one of the biggest games of the year for Florida, with our long-standing cross-division rival (and Miss Pyramid’s team). And it’s usually an evening matchup, meaning the game will start at probably the exact same time as our evening ceremony. Oops. Our friends and family will just have to choose—us or the game. (Although more than one of them has asked if it’s OK if they bring an iPad to watch during the ceremony—I think jokingly, but who knows.)
We considered changing our date for the game, but decided it wasn’t that big of a deal. At least not until Rooster and I realized we would be sharing our wedding weekend with Pride. Literally. Part 2 →
