How To Begin Restarting Your Wedding Planning

COVID has made planning your wedding hard. You basically lost the last year because for various reasons it just didn’t make sense to plan a wedding with all the uncertainty.

But, with all the good news regarding vaccinations, declining COVID rates and states opening up, you’ve decided it’s time to restart your wedding planning.

Or perhaps you’ve started to think about restarting your wedding planning.

But how do you pick it back up given all the time in-between?

Here are 3 steps to help you get back to planning with ease.

3 STEPS TO RESTARTING YOUR WEDDING PLANNING

Newlyweds walking on the beach at their tropical beach wedding in Hawaii by destination wedding planner Mango Muse Events creator of Passport to Joy the online wedding planning course for couples — _{^{(Photo credit: What a Day! Photography)}}

Step #1: Review and rebuild your foundation

First, you have to start with your foundation. Because you need your foundation to be solid before you do anything else.

So, review what you discussed and decided on and make sure it’s still what you want.

Because a lot has changed over the last year.

And what you care about and what you want for your wedding may have changed as well.

Maybe you want less guests or maybe you want more. Maybe your budget has changed and has gone dramatically up or down. Or maybe you now want to stick closer to home or you now want to get away.

Talk through all the pieces of your foundation and see where you fall out.

You may find that your foundation still makes perfect sense. Or you might find that you need to rebuild it (or parts of it) from scratch.

Whatever the case, go through this process again so that everything feels good before you move on.

Wedding guests enjoying dinner at an outdoor wedding reception at the Los Altos History Museum by destination wedding planner, Mango Muse Events creator of Passport to Joy the online wedding planning course for couples — _{^{(Photo credit: Bethany Carlson)}}

Step #2: Review anything else you started

Now that you have a solid foundation, you want to review anything else you started working on before your planning got put on hold.

That could be venues, dresses or save the dates. Or anything you started looking into.

Review what you’ve done and then ask yourself if those options still apply given your foundation.

Do they still make sense?

Really think about it. Then keep what does still make sense and discard the rest.

Now you don’t have to literally discard it, but start a new spreadsheet or a new folder. Keep or transfer what’s still applicable and let go of the rest.

Because you’re restarting your wedding planning, you’re essentially starting all over again.

And you want to be able to start fresh.

And part of starting fresh is letting go of what no longer makes sense.

So let go of what needs to be let go, keep what makes sense (if anything) and then…

Calistoga Ranch restaurant and lake a beautiful luxury wedding venue and honeymoon location in Napa by destination wedding planner Mango Muse Events creator of Passport to Joy, the step by step online wedding planning course for couples — _{^{(Photo credit: Kate Webber)}}

Step #3 – Start Fresh

Armed with your foundation and the information you gathered that still applies, it’s time to start your search from the beginning.

But, you want to go into it with fresh eyes.

As if you were planning for the first time. Not the 2nd, 3rd or the 10th time

Now that can seem hard since it’s not actually the first time.

But treat it like it’s new. Because honestly, it is!

Things have changed.

Not only are you potentially looking for different options than before, but the previous options may no longer be available.

Not to mention that you restarting your planning is really about starting fresh.

So, get a new binder, make that new folder, start a new google doc.

Start fresh with a fresh piece of paper (so to speak).

It will feel good and make it easier to restart.

And here’s the good news… you’re actually more experienced this time around! So things will move quicker and be easier than before.

But, there’s one important planning tip you need to remember before you begin…

Don’t forget about COVID!

While COVID might not be as much of worry, it’s still here. And will be for sometime. Perhaps forever!

And while you’ll want to forget COVID and just plan your wedding as if COVID didn’t exist, that’s not smart.

While there is a large amount of the population not vaccinated, it’s important to still plan with COVID in mind.

Because you may have guests with a variety of vaccination statuses. And you want to make sure you’re taking care of all of them.

Restarting your wedding planning can be daunting. But, don’t let the hill before you stop you!

Use these 3 steps and restarting will be easy and dare I say it, fun! And if you’re looking for guidance through the entire process from your foundation to your wedding day, become a Passport to Joy member!

We’ll help you every step of the way.