My husband and I live over 1000 miles away from our families, and when we started planning our wedding, we decided that it makes way more sense for us to hold a wedding there instead of the other way around. We also didn't know anything about weddings when we started planning, and neither of our families had much experience with weddings either. Now that the wedding has been successfully planned, I thought I'd share what worked for me, what I was happy to have thought of, and what I'd do if I had to do it all over again. (Please keep in mind this was not an American wedding, so the customs might be a bit different.)Buy tickets well in advance (if you're flying in). This seems like a no-brainer; our wedding was in the summer, which means during the tourist season, so we bought the tickets as soon as we had our date confirmed with the venue. We also let our friends flying in from abroad know to buy tickets as soon as possible. However, some of our friends waited until much later, and subsequently paid a higher price.If at all possible, try to see the venue in person. You might be tempted to just send a trusted friend or family member to check the venue out in your place, especially if the wedding is happening in a place you know well (e.g. your hometown), but trust me, you have to see it for yourself, and I don't mean via Skype or photos. My MIL checked out some of the venues on our behalf and we quickly realised that even though we're familiar with those places, we can't really make a decision that way. We had to fly in ourselves and check the venues out, and eventually decided on one that we would have never picked based on photos/videos alone.Take advantage of local resources - both where you live and where you are getting married. For example, we got married in an area where Amazon doesn't deliver, which sounds like a complete non-issue, but I must have made about 20 last-minute purchases on Amazon before we flew out and Prime delivery was a life-saver. I got a lot of wedding things (such as drink tokens) for cheap on there that would have cost me much more where I got married, or would have been much harder to find. On the other hand, we saved quite a bit of money by using businesses local to our wedding destination - we had all of our stationery designed and printed there, we hired a local photographer, and we had our rings custom-made there as well. (Same for flowers and cake - you obviously can't ship those out, but in our case, they were much cheaper than they would be where we currently live.) If you're getting married in a place that's more expensive than where you live, this is trickier, but check if they have any resources that you'd otherwise not have access to (better quality printing, day-of coordination, etc.) Or you can always pay for your local photographer to fly out for your wedding - depending on the prices it might still end up cheaper.Delegate - but be cautious. Because you're so far away, people sorting things out for you is a huge blessing, but it can also be a huge pain if it goes wrong. You're not there to see what people are doing, and even close family members that you absolutely trust might be tempted to do things their way if you're not there to keep an eye on them. My mum sorted out our flowers for us, which was an amazing help because neither of us really cares about flowers that much. However, she tried to change the colours last minute to something more 'bridal', and if I wasn't there to stop her, I'd have weird flowers that clash with everything instead of the lovely arrangements I ended up having. So definitely delegate, but make sure to only use people you can trust, and to only give them tasks that are not absolutely crucial.Make sure your dress can fly with you. I didn't think about that at all, because I had this idea that you can always ask to have your dress hung up in the back. Turns out that if you're flying a budget airline, they often can't do that for you! I was lucky to be able to fit my dress in a suitcase, but make sure to double-check your airline's T&C before buying your dress.Packing lists are life-savers. When you're getting married a thousand miles away from home, there is no popping back for the rings or documents - you have to bring everything with you the first time around. I made my first packing list a few months in advance, and then added to it as the time went by. In the end, I did not forget a single thing - and because I went through my list when I was packing, I didn't have to worry about forgetting things either.Get a box. This one sounds ridiculous, but bear with me. About a year into wedding planning, I had amassed a bunch of wedding-related bits and bobs - shoes, hair accessories, clutch, earrings, favours, small chalkboards etc. - and while they all had to come with us, they were just cluttering up our flat in the months before our wedding. I was paranoid I was going to lose some of the things, so I got a nice big box from Ikea, dubbed it 'the wedding box' and put everything in it. I also got a much smaller box for jewellery and the like, which also went into the wedding box. This made packing for the wedding about a hundred times easier and less stressful - when it was time to pack, I just moved stuff from the wedding box into suitcases.Get there early. Unless someone else is coordinating things like cake and flowers, you will need to be there to sort it out. There might be some last-minute purchases that you simply forgot about. We flew out four days before the wedding, expecting to have some calm days together before everything goes down, but in the end, those four days were really busy. Any less and we would have been much more nervous on our wedding day.Take some time off. After it's all done, don't forget to take some time off. We spent a lot of our leave on our wedding, and decided not to take a honeymoon, but just visit a friend for a few days instead. I now wish we'd splurged on a proper getaway, even if just for a few day. We were exhausted after all the planning, travel, the wedding (which lasted two days), and the legal matters (had to change all of my documents before returning home) so we really just needed some time on our own and some pampering. This is the one thing I regret - spending a bit more money on this would have made our transition back to normal life much easier and probably save us a good deal of post-wedding blues. So make sure you recharge your batteries before returning to your everyday life!I think these were the most important things for me, and ones that I had to learn for myself - there was nothing online that prepared me for this. I hope this helps people who are in the same situation. And if you have any questions, just ask - I pretty much planned the whole thing myself (with a lot of input from my husband), and I'm happy to share my experience! :) via /r/weddingplanning http://ift.tt/2uIkLF8
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