Kelsey & Josh – The Wedding

As many of you know, Kelsey and I were married on August 17th in Kelsey’s hometown of Ft. Collins, Colorado. It was, without a doubt, one of the happiest days of my life. Feel free to “check out a few of our pictures”:http://flickr.com/photos/kaufmajm/sets/72157594369111558/.

In an effort to give back to the internet community, here are a few things I learned while planning our wedding, as well as the full text of our ceremony. Hopefully they’ll help you or someone you love plan a wonderful and memorable wedding someday.

h3. 7 Tips for Planning an Enjoyable and Stress-Free Wedding

*1. Keep it just big enough.* While preparing, I talked with a lot of people about their wedding experiences, and it amazed me how many people who had huge weddings thought the whole experience was extremely stressful. When you have 300+ guests at your wedding, you and your husband/wife won’t be able to spend any significant amount of time visiting with anyone, and the whole event will seem like a huge blur. If you keep the ceremony to family and a few close friends, everyone will have a much better time. We had around 100 guests at our wedding, which was the perfect size for us.

*2. Work with vendors you like and trust.* It’s amazing how easy planning your wedding can be if you find great vendors and let them handle the details instead of micromanaging everything. Our wedding was held at the “Tapestry House”:http://www.tapestryhouse.com/, a wonderfully restored historic home right outside of Ft. Collins. They’ve hosted a lot of weddings, and their staff superbly handled all of the logistic details, which let us focus on having fun. Our caterer was Michael Calocino from “Behind the Scenes Catering”:http://www.google.com/maps?hl=en&hs=9Z7&lr=&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&q=behind-the-scenes+catering&near=Fort+Collins,+CO&radius=0.0&latlng=40585278,-105083889,13844785464195590509&sa=X&oi=local&ct=authority, an old friend of Kelsey’s during the time she worked at a dinner theater in high school. We completely trusted Michael’s taste in food, presentation, and wine, so we gave him free reign to work his creative magic with our reception. “Dave Beegle”:http://www.davebeegle.com/ and Glenn Schull’s Little Big Band provided the music, and we let them pick the majority of the playlist. In all cases, giving our vendors the freedom to do a great job and bring their skills and creativity to the table made planning the wedding much simpler for us.

*3. Find a great photographer.* “Mark Cafiero”:http://www.sixpeeps.com/ did our wedding photos, and Kelsey and I are absolutely thrilled with his work. Mark is a photojournalist by background, and he is superb at capturing people in spontaneous and emotional moments. We kept up with Mark’s website and blog for a long time before signing him on, and our research paid off big time – after hiring Mark, we have some of the best photos of our family and friends ever taken. Before hiring a photographer, make sure you know his/her work and understand exactly what you’re getting for your money – Mark provided digital retouching and rights to all electronic files as part of the package, which was a very big deal for us. Photographers can be pricey, but be prepared to pay for quality – wedding photography isn’t a good place to scrimp. You can “check out Mark’s work here.”:http://flickr.com/photos/kaufmajm/sets/72157594369111558/

*4. Write your own ceremony.* Sure, it’s a little easier to just rip a ceremony out of a book, but the event will be more meaningful if you and your significant other design a ceremony to reflect your beliefs and philosophy of life. Instead of using a traditional ceremony, I wrote the ceremony myself, using the net to search for good ideas. (I’m forever in the debt of “Elle Cayabyab Gitlin”:http://withever.org/, who wrote what are perhaps the most perfect wedding vows in the history of the world.) Kelsey and I will remember the details of our ceremony for decades to come because we cared enough to craft the words ourselves. You can read our entire ceremony at the bottom of this post.

*5. Seriously consider having a cocktail hour _before_ the ceremony.* At every wedding, there will always be a few people who will be running late, and they’ll be worried that they’ll miss the big event. By having a little party before the ceremony, you build in a buffer that will allow all of your guests to be present, relaxed, and happy well before the main event. It also allows family and friends from both the bride and groom’s side to meet each other in advance of the reception, which makes the reception even more fun for everyone! (Two quick tips: (1) don’t put the cocktail hour on the invitation – make it a surprise for your guests; (2) save the alcohol for the reception!) Everyone who attended was thrilled about this “wedding innovation”.

*6. Focus on your priorities so you don’t break the bank.* It doesn’t make much sense to start out your married life in crushing debt, so make sure you keep your spending within your means. Our wonderful parents helped out with the venue and the food, and we were careful to keep our priorities clear and reasonable: a beautiful but simple location, great food, and great music. Everything else was secondary. By investigating our options, we were able to throw a great party without overspending. For example, the natural beauty of the Tapestry House grounds meant we didn’t have to spend much money on extra flowers. We also decided to axe bridesmaids dresses and tuxedos – there’s no sense in spending money on clothing that will only be worn once, and that left our friends free to wear something they actually like.

*7. Don’t expect perfection.* If you go overboard in planning each and every detail of your wedding in an effort to make everything 100% perfect, you’ll only succeed in stressing yourself out and taking the fun out of the entire event. (There’s a reason the term “bridezilla”:http://www.wordspy.com/words/bridezilla.asp exists, and grooms can sometimes be prone to equal levels of fickleness.) Inevitably, something will not go as planned, so be willing to go with the flow of things. Believe it or not, it rained and _hailed_ 30 minutes before our outdoor ceremony. Luckily, it only lasted for 15 minutes (yay for Colorado weather), but it could have been a huge source of stress if we had been in a perfection-oriented mindset. Because we weren’t expecting sublime flawlessness, we stayed relaxed and happy, which made the wedding a lot more fun for both ourselves and our guests.

There you have it… 7 tips to help you plan an enjoyable and stress-free wedding. May all of your celebrations be happy, and all of your memories lasting.

If you’re interested in reading the entire ceremony, here it is…

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This entry was written by Josh Kaufman, posted on November 16, 2006 at 5:05 pm, filed under Essays. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.