There are many reasons as to why you may be planning your wedding virtually ranging from having too busy of a work schedule to planning an out of state wedding. Regardless of what the reason is, virtual wedding planning can be as stressful as planning a traditional wedding, if not more. The good news is that with today’s technology nearly all of your wedding planning can be done virtually, making it easier than ever before to plan your wedding from a distance.
If you’ve recently become engaged and want to jump-start the wedding planning process, and are going to be planning your wedding virtually, keep reading for some helpful tips.
Plan Offline Details First
Before you begin reaching out to vendors or making appointments you should sit down with your fiance to plan any offline wedding details first. This includes creating an overall budget as well as for deciding a budget for individual vendors and narrowing down a month, possible wedding locations, and some specific dates you’d like to get married. You can also start discussing color schemes and wedding themes you prefer, flowers you like, who you’d like to include in your wedding.
You can also start to do some initial research on possible vendors by doing online searches, reading online reviews, and looking for local referrals from past brides in the area. Many wedding venues offer virtual tours of their venue (our virtual tour can be seen here). Take some time to review their work on social media, look through online portfolios and once you’ve narrowed down your options you can begin making appointments.
Choose Your Wedding Ceremony and Reception Locations
Your wedding reception venue and ceremony location should be the first two items you secure for your wedding. Without locking in both of these you won’t officially have a wedding date to use when booking your other wedding vendors.
If you are having your ceremony at a church, synagogue, or another house of worship you will need to not only inquire about date availability but also whether there are any steps you need to take like pre-covenant classes for example. If you plan to have your ceremony on-site at your location, you’ll also need to find and book a wedding officiant as well.
Most of the details regarding your wedding ceremony location can be done over the phone making it very easy to plan virtually. As we mentioned previously, for your wedding reception location inquiring about a video tour if you’ve never seen the venue in person can help you narrow down your options.
Once you have both your ceremony and reception location details booked, you’ll be free to make other wedding arrangements since you now have a wedding date!
Start Booking Other Wedding Vendors
Next up you’re going to want to start booking appointments with other wedding vendors like photographers, videographers, florists, limo companies, and hair and makeup artists.
As you reach out to vendors, ask for links to online portfolios, digital albums displaying their work, and to schedule a virtual meeting using platforms like Skype, Zoom, Google Hangouts, or FaceTime.
This will not only help you determine whether you get along well with your vendors (which is important for those you interact with throughout your wedding day like your photographer for example) but it will also give you an opportunity to brainstorm with them. Florists, for example, can help you choose alternative flowers or come up with table centerpiece ideas in real-time the same way they would during an in-person appointment.
The easiest way to tackle the task of booking all of your wedding vendors is to choose one vendor at a time to work on. For example, after you’ve booked your photographer, then move onto your florist and so on.
Tackle Smaller Wedding Details
Once you’ve booked the bigger wedding details, it’s time to shift your focus on the smaller details like wedding invitations, decor, and favors. Many of these items you would have shopped for online anyway which makes this an easy task to do virtually. You can even shop for your wedding rings and wedding attire online if you’re unable to do this in person.
Take Note of What Items Cannot Be Done Virtually
While the majority of your wedding plans can be done online, there are a few items on your list that you won’t be able to do virtually. This includes applying for your wedding license, getting dress and suit fittings, and any doing last minute wedding errands that have to be in person.
