The Big Four

The most important wedding decisions you’ll have to make (aside from who you’ll marry, of course) involve what we call the Big Four:

1. Picking the date
2. Setting the budget
3. Choosing wedding and reception locations
4. Selecting members of the wedding party

While they’re separate issues you’ll have to consider individually, the Big Four are intertwined; each can affect your decision about the others. For example, let’s say you want your best friend, Karen, to be in the wedding, but she’ll be right in the middle of final exams on the day you’ve chosen to get married. You could change the date, but the church you’ve wanted to get married in since you were a little girl is booked solid for months after that. Because you’re a member of the church, using it would be free; a change in location could jack your costs up by hundreds, even thou-sands, of dollars. So what do you do?

This one hitch in selecting your wedding party affects the other three factors of date, location, and budget, and makes the difficulty of pulling the Big Four together on a tight schedule all the more difficult.

Because this is bound to happen, you have to be flexible and willing to consider several alternative scenarios in the early planning stages. Begin by prioritizing the Big Four: Which of the four is the most important to you and your fu-ture mate? Using the example above, let’s say the location is your top priority but you still would like your friend to be your maid of honor. Try tweaking the date a bit. The church may be booked every weekend for the next few months, but what about weeknights? Would you be willing to get married on, say, a Thursday evening a week after Karen’s finals are over? Or maybe the date is etched in stone and can’t be changed. If Karen had enough notice to prepare for her finals early, could she fly in for the weekend or just the wedding day? With a little creativity, you’ll be able to adjust the date, budget, place, and people until you find the mix that will work for you.