Listen Here!

Episode Description:

And just like that, we're in the thick of Fall wedding season! In the first few years of her career, Beth planned luxury weddings at high-end venues throughout Philadelphia, and has seen firsthand the mistakes couples make again and again that take the joy out of the entire process. In this episode, Beth gives tips from her years as a wedding planner, and her time as a bride, so that you can actually enjoy every moment, and avoid becoming overwhelmed with tiny details that truly do not and will not matter to you.

Links mentioned in the episode:

Podcast:

The Type A Plus Podcast Instagram

Host:

Beth Lawrence LinkedIn

Beth Lawrence & Company Instagram

Beth will be back each week, delivering bite-sized tips (15 minute episodes or less) on how to optimize your life and work.

Episode Transcript can be found below:

Hello, and welcome back to the Type A+ podcast. I'm Beth Lawrence. And this week we will be talking about secrets to enjoying your wedding. Now as a type, a plus person, and someone who has planned weddings for a living, I know firsthand that wedding planning can be extremely stressful. And especially for someone who is very organized and detail-oriented. It can feel very overwhelming. So today ahead of fall wedding season, actually we're in the thick of fall wedding season. Right now. I wanted to share my experience today, not only as a former bride but also as a wedding planner who has planned weddings before, in very high-end locations throughout Philadelphia.

The first tip and this is really overarching, is to pick the top three things that you truly care about, and that you cannot live without at your wedding. You know, the big thing with wedding planning, I think is that so many families become involved.

And obviously, there are a lot of nuances there, right? If someone's paying for a certain aspect, they usually give their opinion. But for all intents and purposes today, I wanna talk about for you and your partner, how to enjoy your wedding and how to have a wedding that's reflective of the two of you without putting too much pressure on yourself externally to make it perfect.

So the first thing is with events and weddings, you are never going to have a perfect event. I have done hundreds of thousands of events in my career, and though I don't recall any that have crashed and burned, they're like performances, right?

The audience usually doesn't know what's happening, if there's anything that's going wrong or off the timeline, but you as the bride and the planning team can really get sucked into that whole aspect of staying exactly on time and making sure that every single detail is exactly the way you want it the entire time. And of course, that's the goal. But the first thing is I think, just to put pressure on yourself and realize that every event is going to have something go differently or didn't go according to plan. My biggest advice to any person getting married, any couple, getting married is to pick the top three things that each of you truly cares about that you cannot live without on your wedding day.

So for me, it was my dress, it was the music and it was the food. And thankfully my husband, his preferences were the same. He wanted to get a custom. We really wanted our guests to feel at home and make sure that they were taken care of because we did have, an eight-hour event. We wanted to make sure that there was enough food for everyone on each floor and that there was music that people would enjoy, in each aspect of our wedding.

Second thing is to get real about things that you don't care about um, and that can be actually a little bit more difficult because there are so many things that we think that we should quote unquote, have at a wedding. So for example, like, do you care about having a program for your ceremony, a printed program that you give every person? What about a wedding video or a scrapbook for your wedding, or do you care whether you have a band or whether you have a DJ, if you don't care about it, don't invest your money in it, or don't invest, you know, parents' money in it or your spouse's parents' money in it. Don't invest money in something that you don't care about. It's not going to have as much of an impact as you think it's going to, and frankly, there are so many details on a wedding day. You can absolutely miss it.

Another thing to remember is there will always be compromise during the wedding planning process, whether that is with your own family and friends, whether that's with your spouse or partners, family, and friends, whether it's between you two interpersonally, remember that it's practice for marriage, right?

I mean, there's always going to be compromised; if there's something that your spouse really wants and really, really, would make their wedding day. And it. Bring down the house for you? Really think about the fact that it's their wedding day two, right? Practice marriage by compromising.

On the day of the wedding, when everything's happening, take just a second to step aside with your new life partner to take it all in the funny line, dancing, the merging of families, and the barefoot bridesmaids. That moment together, it's gonna be a memory. If you can take those five minutes to find a quiet corner and just look around, look around the dance floor; look at your photo booth; look at all the tables; look at the people that are interacting with one another on both sides of your families and take it all in create that memory. Make sure that you don't forget it because, at the end of the day, it's yours.

It's your day and your spouse's day and that's it. And there are a lot of things that complicate it along the way. But if you keep remembering that, that you get one day to celebrate, and this is a celebration of you and the person that you're marrying, if you keep remembering that, that will be your north star, and you'll always be able to make those compromises, you'll always be able to know how to move forward, whether you want a band or whether you want a DJ, whether you wanna do a first look or you don't wanna do a first look, keep it between the two of you, make sure that you make those decisions together and make sure that, if there are other folks who have opinions, or are invested in the wedding, when it comes to paying for certain aspects of it, make sure you bring them in on the fold too.

That's really the main thing is just making sure that you remember that this is one day to celebrate it's, you know, at the most 12 hours of everyone that you love in a room together. So make the most of it and don't stress about the little things.

I hope that this was helpful. If you are a bride if you are a groom, if you are a partner, if you are a spouse, if you are a family member of someone who's getting married, or if you're in a bridal party, We are all Type A+, we all wanna make sure everything is perfect, but at the end of the day, we also need to make sure that we are living in the moment and experiencing the joy and the beauty of what a wedding celebration should really be.

So that's it for this week. I hope that you enjoyed it. I hope you had fun getting to know Amanda Jefferson and just know that there will be more bonus content coming like that.

I had a really good time interviewing her and upcoming, we will have more guests on the podcast periodically, and I'm also going to be releasing more bonus content. So please stay tuned and have a great week.