Planning a wedding requires many small and large decisions. There are many decisions that make a wedding reflect your style. Where do you start?!

Define your style:
The first decision is to spend some quality time looking at your home, your car, how you dress, what you do for fun, your job, the colors you love. Many times these factors can help you realize what your collective style is. There is no right or wrong answer. The more honest you can be with yourselves, the quicker it will help you develop a clear idea for the type of Chicago wedding you envision. This first step will help you make all your decisions much easier.

Some couples want the best of everything with 400 guests at a swanky downtown hotel; while others may want just a fun party at a nice hotel in the suburbs.

Many couples never do this and end up letting their budget dictate what they choose. As a result, they sometimes have an uneven wedding: Great venues, bad band, great flowers, average food. Always buy the best quality you can afford that fits into your overall budget.

Establish Your Priorities:
-What’s most important to each one of you? This will help you determine how to divide your wedding budget so you both get what you want and have the funds set aside to do so.

Your Chicago wedding should only include the People, Music, Food, Flowers and Colors you love.

Here are some other ideas:
Think about the best weddings you’ve been to. What did you enjoy about them?
-Think about the worst Chicago wedding you’ve ever been to. What did you hate about them?
-Ask your married friend, “If you could do it over again what would you have changed?”
-Look through wedding websites and magazines, what do you love or hate? The more specific you can be the better.
-Make sure any ideas that worked well for others fits YOUR style. That’s all that matters.

Other factors to consider:
Your Age
Your Ethnicity and traditions
Your Family Size
Your First or Second Marriage
Your Number of Guests

Start with the Big Decisions:

1. The Bride and Groom:

You found each other. That’s the biggest decision. So give yourself some credit!

2. The Date:

What time of the year would you like to get married?
Do you want a Saturday Night Chicago Wedding?
Or a Sunday or Friday Wedding?
You can many times get better quality vendors for a discount for non-Saturday weddings? The same applies for January through March wedding.

3. The Venue:
Estimate how many guests you are planning on inviting.
Eliminate venues that are too small or too large.
Do you want a downtown hotel or one in the suburbs?
Think about if you have many out of state guests that may need accommodations. Can the hotel accommodate that number of guests?
Is your wedding ceremony going to be at the same venue or at a separate Church?
How far away is the church from the venue?

4. The Food:
- If your venue doesn’t have in-house Chicago catering , you will need to secure an outside catering company. Many times the venue will have a select list of preferred companies they work with. I suggest using their recommendations, it will make the wedding run much more smoothly. The company will know the load-in information, the facilities, the layout of the room. It will make service that’s much easier and quicker for you and your guests.

5. The Music
Picture yourself 2 years from now. Your friends are all gathering for a Summertime BBQ. Your friend says, “We had the best time at your wedding, your flowers were so beautiful.” That means that you had a boring wedding. What they should say is, “We had the best time at your wedding, your band was awesome! We were dancing all night.” The quality of your music is what people are going to remember.
Think about what styles of music you love.
Think about the age of your guests
Think about if you have a song that is YOURS.

There’s nothing worse than spending top dollar for a great venue, delicious food, and have to settle for a lousy band or even worse, a DJ. All the other wonderful aspects of your Chicago wedding will quickly be forgotten.

Find a music company that is flexible and experienced enough to perform the songs that you love.

6. The Dress

Like all the decisions you’ll be making, the dress should say something about you and who you are as a bride. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Take the feedback of your family and friends, but ultimately you will be the one wearing the dress on the biggest day of your life. How do you feel when you are wearing each dress? If you feel like it’s a perfect extension of you then you may have found the dress for you.

7. The Flowers

Flowers have been described as “Nature’s way of smiling”. Chicago Florists are far more sophisticated than years ago. The best florists are truly artists. Communicate the style, colors and table size for your wedding. They will be able to give you several beautiful examples to choose from.

8. The Photographer

There are many excellent Chicago photographers with a variety of styles. Some use an older style with pull down screens for portraits and photos of guests at each table. Others use a more real life style. They act more like guests at the wedding that happen to be taking a lot of photos. You and your guests just act naturally. Websites can be a great resource for seeing their work. After you visit their website and review their sample work on their site, I recommend setting up a meeting with them. The personality of the photographer is important. He will be with you for 10 hours on your wedding day as well as for years after your Chicago wedding. Find someone that is flexible, professional and easy to work with. Remember, it’s your wedding.

9. The Videographer

Just like Chicago photographers, there are many talented Chicago videographers to choose from. They all have different styles. Some use multiple cameras, some shoot in HD. Obviously you’ll want to see as much of their work as you can. If they have referrals, ask for them. The quality of their equipment, usually but not always, indicates their level of commitment to their craft. Ask them what their turn around time is for a completed DVD. For both your Photographer and Videographer, they should be experienced and will guide you through the planning process. Let them know what your preferences are. For example, “Aunt Louise and Uncle Henry are celebrating their 50th anniversary that same day. I’d like a photo of the four of us.”

10. The Additional Services

This category includes Chicago transportation companies, linens, wedding favors, table, chair rentals among many other smaller decisions. Just keep in mind, do they fit my style and my budget?

Multi-racial couples are marrying more frequently. With this increase comes a need for possessing a multi-cultural feel. With so many lovely traditions that hold a large amount of significance to plenty of families, it is important to concoct a wedding that may celebrate the cultural variety instead of focusing on one culture and neglecting the other. Whether or not the couple feels deeply about having their heritage represented, it is important to think about the viewpoints of familial relations too. Whilst the wedding is for the couple and they should typically plan it as they deem fit, this should not be done at the risk of hurting the feelings of members of the family by neglecting their culture in the ceremony and reception.

One of the simplest tactics to deal with a multi-cultural wedding is to permit one culture to dominate the wedding ceremony whilst the other culture dominates the wedding reception. At the ceremony, care may be taken to be certain that the clothes, words, music, decorations and procedures stick to the culture of either the bride or the groom. If the culture of the bride dominates the ceremony, then you might permit the culture of the groom to dominate the reception. This could be done by providing food, entertainment and toasts that dwell on the time-honored traditions of the groom’s cultural background.

There are numerous variations for blending the practices of two cultures into the wedding ceremony. For instance, you could consider having both the bride and the groom dress in the customary attire of one of the families, but have them enter the ceremony to traditional music of the other family. Another variation on this idea is to have the bride dress according to her cultural customs whilst the groom dresses according to his cultural customs. This would prove the fusing of the two cultures with the union of both individuals. You might even consider having the bride and the groom dress according to each other’s cultural customs as a symbol of their being prepared to embrace the other culture in their union.

Cultural weddings may also be merged at the reception in a few ways. A way to try this is to serve foods that apply to one culture and supply entertainment associated with the other culture. This separation may appear too insensitive for some couples and they may need to fuse their cultures in a more delicate way.