As someone who enjoys planning events, I was not prepared for the layers of decisions involved with planning a wedding .. it was decisions on top of decisions! Some parts were more fun (food tastings, party proposal gifts) than other parts (reading contracts, budgeting, logistics) and all I can say is, it’s another full-time job! In this post, I write my thoughts and reflection on wedding planning.
Values & Vision
After we got engaged, Thomas & I spent some time to soak in our engagement and then planned a staycation to share ideas on how we’d envision our wedding to look and feel and wrote what values we wanted our wedding day to capture and found out we aligned on our top values.
The wedding had to be big enough to include our families and our friends to be there to celebrate with us. We have a huge family as well as many friendships we’ve developed over our years together so being able to invite everyone was a priority for us.
The 2nd priority was food and beverages — we love to party and we wanted our wedding to be a party. The event had to have an open bar and it was important that our guests did not go hungry at our wedding.
I recommend The Budget-Savvy Wedding Planner & Organizer by Jessica Bishop if you don’t know where to get started. It provided us with a good starting point & has great tips for different budgets & styles for pretty much everything.
Choosing our Venue
When I first laid eyes on the Palm Event Center in Pleasanton, CA it was love. We attended Thomas’ brother’s wedding at the Palm Event Center in 2016 and I knew I wanted to get married there. So this decision was easy. From the romantic, intimate wine barrel-covered walls in the Estate Room to the open, inviting space in the Ballroom to the Vineyard Terrace overlooking the vineyards in the warm summer evening to the hospitality of the events staff.
We reached out to a few other venues in the Bay Area but ultimately it was a IYKYK (if you know, you know) situation 🙂
Once we finalized the venue, we had a sense of direction with the vibe & size and everything else flowed.
Staying Organized
Given that Thomas & I decided we were going to plan most of our wedding, we needed to stay organized and within budget (to a certain degree, lol). Google Workspace was our best tool with staying in organized and collaborating with each other. We used Google Slides to capture our vision with the color way, decoration, and floral inspirations and shared this with our florist & day-of coordinator. And Google Sheets helped us track the checklist, budgeting, wedding timeline, guest list, tea ceremony and reception dinner details, to our honeymoon planning.
Connecting with Vendors
We used Google, Instagram and tagged posts from wedding accounts, Yelp, and most importantly, recommendations from friends and family for our vendor team. It’s important to stick to your budget and communicate what will be worth the splurge and what won’t be .. because the prices do add up!
If you’re a Bay Area couple, I would recommend our vendor team to anyone. Tell them Shayna & Thomas sent you!
Our vendor team:
Event Planner: @jlevents_
Photo/Video: @heartfelt.media
Floral & Decor: @hamid_decor_
Venue: @palmeventcenter
Officiant: friend <3
Makeup: @nicolesvanity
Hair: @sarahbridalbeauty
Photobooth: @mediatrixphotobooth
DJ: @aceentbayarea
Cake: @cakesmadebyme
Chandelier: @fsesevents
Rentals (Chairs): @thechiavariguys
Looking Back
Yes, there were moments where the planning felt overwhelming – because if you think about it, we’ve never planned a wedding before! And there’s SO many to-do lists haha. I’m very lucky that Thomas helped with a lot of it, too which made it so enjoyable — we split up the work & he managed the DJ + Music, photography, wedding website, attended all our meetings w/ our vendor team, helped choreograph our first dance, and helped me with invites & seating charts.
Wow, I’m surprised we pulled it off. I miss our wedding day, but not so much the planning part 😉
Love, Shayna
