Wichita Wedding Blog

When to Book the Wedding Officiant?

1/8/2020

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You'll find that most conventional wedding planning lists and tips often place this vital To-Do somewhere near the middle or bottom of the list, in some cases it's simply over looked altogether.
The important take away from is, just because it's conventional wedding advise, that doesn't mean it's correct!

In the real world, you should book your wedding officiant immediately after securing your wedding venue.
Here's the real life order in which to should proceed.

Decide on Your Budget
Secure the Wedding Venue -Set Your Date
Book the Wedding Officiant
Order Wedding Invitations
Now you have a solid wedding foundation to work with.

The second priority is to place your focus on
the Live Vendors you wish to hire.

Wedding Attire
Photographer
Entertainment - DJ
Caterer
A Planner if needed
Transportation if needed

The third focus now goes to various products.
Wedding Cake
Flowers
Favors
Special Decorations

Save The Date - How It Works

Wedding Wisdom Tips
Wedding Officiant, How to Choose the One that's Right for You.
When to Book the Wedding Officiant?
Wedding Wisdom Tips for Wedding Planning in Wichita Kansas Wedding Rehearsal Considerations
Four Key Elements to an Amazing Wedding Ceremony.

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Wedding Wisdom Tips for Wedding Planning in Wichita Kansas

4/14/2018

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Goal One: Keep it Affordable

It's very important to stay grounded and realistic about your wedding budget. It's easy to get carried away with the latest and greatest wedding trends and implied must haves. Be sensible and creative and stay focused on the love your share and what that means, How will you choose to express your moment of marriage? Use this as your guide and you will know just what to do.

Goal Two: Keep the Details Minimal and Minimize Stress.

As you are entering into the covenant of marriage and begin the exchange of vows, both of you should be prepared to be truly 100 percent in the moment and fully present, mind, body and soul.

This means that neither of you should be distracted, preoccupied, frazzled or stress out as you enter into this covenant. The moment of marriage is one of the most significant life events you will ever experience. Therefore, everything else must be suspended in space and time while this is taking place.

All of your focus must be placed on your holy covenant to each other in the presence of God. This has more significance and influence on the health and wellbeing of your marriage long term than you could ever imagine. See the Wedding Wisdom Blog for more insight.

Goal Three: Keep Focused on the Marriage

Too often young couples place too much to their energy, time and money on making the wedding reception the primary objective of their wedding plans and far too little attention on their marriage moment.

Where this might seem like a great idea at first, most times this approach tends to over shadow the act of the marriage, resulting in a big party atmosphere as opposed to a celebrating a marriage if not kept in balance.

To be clear, wedding ceremonies, the act of getting married, and a wedding reception are and have always been two completely separate events.

A marriage is a precious, solemn and reverent event, the other is a celebration of such an event. If the prospect of having a big reception event is the main focus of your wedding plans. This is a red flag and needs to be assets carefully before proceeding into marriage. See Prepare for Marriage

Goal Four: Keep it Simple ...It's Beautiful.

How much is too much and what's truly important to you? This is a time when you want to be true to yourselves and each other. What do you want the focus and meaning to be when you think back on your marriage to each other?

What do you want to feel and experience in this most significant moment in your life? When you think about looking back on the moment when you became husband and wife and exchanged your marriage vows and entered the covenant marriage, what would you most like to remember?

When the waters of marriage get choppy and challenging, as all marriages do from time to time, what will you lean on and pull from that reminds you both that it's all worth it. Will the memories of that moment spur you forward to honor and uphold your commitment to your marriage?

These are vital questions and ones you need to discuss and put ahead of all other things when planning your wedding. Remembering, this is just the beginning of your journey of a life time as husband and wife. And in that journey there will be ample opportunity for many lavish parties, but only one opportunity for you to marry.

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Planning Wedding: Emotional and Financial Stress Should Not Be the Norm in Planning Your Wedding.

1/19/2018

Wedding Wisdom Tips

Once again it's time to bring to the forefront some very basic, yet essential axioms concerning planning your wedding and maintaining emotional and financial wellbeing.

As a Wedding Minister and Premarital Mentor with for many years, I know too well the problems that occur for couples that do not take the Big Picture into account.

So I was very happy to find this article to share with you out there in the first steps of planning your weddings.

Planning a wedding doesn't have to bring emotional, financial stress.

Experts say marriage is one of life's greatest causes of stress, exceeded only by events like death of a close family member, divorce and personal injury or illness. And most everyone involved with planning a wedding feels the pressure at some point.
Sterling Shumway, Ph.D., of Texas Tech Medical Center's Department of Neuropsychiatry, says managing yourself by sticking to daily routines is the first step in controlling stress.

"Eating right, getting enough sleep, exercising and spiritually enriching activities are very important," he said. "Yet because of the time demands of planning a wedding, these basic activities often are the first things to be abandoned. We need to make sure that we continue with the regular routines of life."
Managing your reaction to events is the second step in controlling stress, according to Shumway. He emphasizes the importance of expecting the unexpected. "If you are prepared for these surprises, it will minimize over-reacting and prevent the problem from eating up more of your precious coping resources than it should."

He notes that friends and family, despite their best efforts to help with wedding plans, can often create more stress. "Family members may be concerned with feelings of loss, financial issues, societal expectations and time constraints," he said. "We need to include them in the planning process, but we also need to take some time out for ourselves and for our significant other.
"Our family and friends affect our level of stress and our level of stress affects them," he continued. "It is important to be able to say 'no' when it is appropriate."

Shumway noted that managing the amount of stress is the final step in keeping things smooth when planning a wedding. "We need to think about managing our time and finances better," he said. "Develop a plan of action, take smaller bites, manage money and other resources more realistically and avoid excessive debt.
"Remember, you can either manage it now or pay for it later."
Source

Now that you have this tidbit of information under your belt, take the time to sit down together and really talk. What are the most important things about your getting married vs. planning a wedding? There is a distinct difference between the two.

Be clear about your priorities with each other. It helps to remind yourselves that in reality, couples should focus primarily on the act of being married and all that is entails.

After you are both clear and in agreement on this, then it's time to consider the party-wedding planning.

There should be a clear separation between these two goals and objectives. Marriage is to be for a lifetime, whereas wedding parties are to be for a day.

Prioritize accordingly to create what is healthy, affirming and balanced. When you place the correct things in the correct order of importance, it provides a strong relationship foundation as husband and wife. Always put your love and marriage above all else.
See You at the Alter,
Rev. Allie

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Venue Suggestions

Budget Friendly Home and Park Wedding Options

2/3/2017

With a little imagination and some planning you can save loads on your wedding and reception budget and at the same time create an amazing and very personal wedding event.

Home weddings lend a kind of intimacy and closeness to a wedding that simply can’t be duplicated when using an outside wedding venue. If your home isn’t quite large enough to accommodate the number of guests you have in mind, you might consider asking a family member or a close family friend with a larger home if they would be willing to host your wedding for you. Chances are, whoever you ask would be delighted to host your wedding for you. A home wedding can provide you with the best of all options. It’s a relaxed and light hearted event, you’ll have the freedom to naturally express who the two of you are when celebrating your nuptials among your closest family and friends.

However, if this isn’t an option, then you are likely to have a local community center near or a public park center that offers venues or covered shelters. It you select a covered shelter, normally family and friends will jump at the chance to help you decorate. Public parks generally offer a variety of beautifully landscaped options to choose from. Many community parks offer delightful ponds, stately fountains and / or impressive waterfalls to use as the perfect backdrop for your wedding event. Also, with community parks and community centers, the price is very economical compared to traditional wedding venues. Of course, the possible downside to using a community center or park venue will be that they generally don’t allow alcoholic beverages. But if that isn’t a concern for you, then you can have a perfectly beautiful wedding location for a minimal price. Another excellent consideration is a Wedding Chapel.

You’ll likely find that as you announce your intention to have a Home or Park Wedding to friends and family, many will likely step forward to offer you the use of their hobbies and the skills to help you pull your wedding event together in beautiful and surprising ways. So stay open and receptive to those that volunteer their special assistance. Imagination, creativity and flexibility equal amazing and unique one of kind a weddings that everyone will remember and cherish always. Collaborating with those closest to you and remaining open to suggestion, you may well find that creating your wedding event has become more fun than you could have possibly imagined. And if you are the kind that enjoys going with the flow and delegating then the wedding planning stress will be minimal. A very good thing!

So feel free to take inventory of everyone’s generous and heart centered intentions to help out with the wedding plans, you’ll likely have an absolute treasure chest of wonderful options at your disposal. If you are going for the community center or community park wedding option, keep in mind that even these venues book up well in advance, and most defiantly be sure to reserve your Wedding Officiate as soon as you decided on your wedding location.

You don’t want to be the “Bride to Be” that's so distracted with the wedding planning end of things that you completely forgot about having a Wedding Officiate reserved to officiate your wedding! Yikes! Just like Wedding Venues, Wedding Officiates also book well in advance. Once you have these two areas secured, “Wedding Venue and Wedding Officiant”, then you can dedicate yourself completely to planning your wedding details. Jump into your creative zone, stay receptive and flexible, then have a blast making the most incredible wedding ever!

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Which to reserve first, officiant or venue?

6/9/2016

Easy Fix! Do Both at the Same Time....

The Wedding Party Line Up. In what order should they be?

4/10/2015

Planning the Ceremony

Q: In what order should they be?
Should they be lined up as to the importance they play in my life,
or should they be lined up according to their height for the aesthetic value and visual presentation?

A: Let's look first at the "importance" factor that these individuals play in your life part of the question.

As we think about this for a moment, we soon realize that everyone you have selected to be in your wedding party plays an important role in your life. Otherwise, they wouldn't be in your wedding party, right? So, it's unlikely that you'll want your dearest friends and family to feel as if they are important to you within some specific or limited pecking order sort of way.

The fact is, they are all very significant and important to you in their own special and unique ways. One is not better or more important than another, they are simply beautifully different. Yes? Yes!
So how can your beloved family and friends be presented as more valued than another without creating a most unpleasant and awkward undertone that will likely create hurt feelings? You can't...it's that simple.

Another way to view this is, can you imagine throwing a dinner party in which everyone invited was lined up in order of importance and relevance of a perceived value. Now, can you image from their perspective how much they would enjoy themselves at your dinner party? That's right, not very much at all. So then, why should your wedding celebration be any different?

Each person should be made to feel loved, honored and appreciated as a whole and spared the needless indignities of some outdated and irrelevant protocol. A wedding celebration is all about honoring love and valuing each other for who they are. Keep that in mind throughout all of your planning arrangements and you'll always know just the right thing to do. Just think with your Heart and you'll always get it right.

My recommendation is:
Go with the neutral aesthetic approach.

This is the most fair and loving way to deal with The Wedding Party Line Up issues.
If you are aware that perhaps someone within your wedding party is sensitive about there height, let's say in this instance, someone is short and they may still have emotional buttons about it.

Then arrange the line up in such a way as to make their height The Aesthetic Focus during the Wedding Line Up, turn it into to something special, made it a positive contribution.
There are a number of ways to achieve this. Ask your wedding photographer for ideas and techniques. They will be able to offer many wonderful suggestions to you.

Aside from that fact that you have likely paid out a good sum of cash for a professional wedding photographer and their artistic skills, by all means, utilize them. In fact, ask your photographer to attend the wedding rehearsal and to give their artistic input about the wedding line up arrangements and to coordinate with your wedding officiate in order to get the best possible shots throughout the entire ceremony from the processional to the recessional.

By taking this approach you'll get the best possible photo opportunities and everyone in your wedding party will feel that they are an important contributing factor in the success and beauty of your wedding, which is one of the reasons they accepted your invitation in the first place, right? They want only the best for you both. Be sure to return that loving intention to all that attend your Wedding Celebration without limitation and you'll have a madly successful wedding celebration.
Have a blessed and beautiful wedding ceremony!

Copyright © 2012 My Life's Precious Vows and Celebrations

Wichita Kansas Wedding Blog

When to Book the Wedding Officiant?

Wedding Wisdom Tips
Wedding Officiant, How to Choose the One that's Right for You.
When to Book the Wedding Officiant?
Wedding Wisdom Tips for Wedding Planning in Wichita Kansas Wedding Rehearsal Considerations
Four Key Elements to an Amazing Wedding Ceremony.

Wedding Wisdom Tips for Wedding Planning in Wichita Kansas

Goal One: Keep it Affordable

Goal Two: Keep the Details Minimal and Minimize Stress.

Goal Three: Keep Focused on the Marriage

Goal Four: Keep it Simple ...It's Beautiful.

Planning Wedding: Emotional and Financial Stress Should Not Be the Norm in Planning Your Wedding.

Wedding Wisdom Tips

Budget Friendly Home and Park Wedding Options

Which to reserve first, officiant or venue?

Easy Fix! Do Both at the Same Time....

The Wedding Party Line Up. In what order should they be?

Wichita Kansas Wedding Blog
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Precious Vows Ceremonies

Open Prairie Elopements & Weddings

Starting Your Journey Together as
Husband & Wife

Truths About Weddings You Won’t Read In Etiquette Books

Family Values
Talking Points Before You Marry

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