You're Not Just Choosing a Wedding. You're Choosing a Planning Experience.

Photo: Rachel Welling Photography

When you start planning your wedding, you find yourself asking questions like:

• Who do we want to invite?

• How much do we want to spend and who's contributing?

• Where do we want to get married?

• What do we hate about the weddings we've attended?

• What do we love about the weddings we've attended?

• Band or DJ?

• What aesthetics do we love?

• Who do we want standing up with us?

• What kind of experience do we want our guests to have?

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But one question I don't see couples asking themselves is:

What kind of planning experience do we want to have?

Because here's the thing, when you choose a wedding format, you're not just choosing a wedding.

You're also choosing a planning experience.

A couple planning a traditional ceremony and reception at an experienced wedding venue will face a very different planning journey than a couple planning a three-day wedding weekend, a camp wedding, a backyard celebration, or a highly customized guest experience.

Neither approach is better than the other.

But they are different.

And in my experience, many couples spend a lot of time thinking about how they want their wedding day to feel and very little time thinking about how they want the 12-18 months leading up to it to feel.

Every Wedding Is a Series of Trade-offs

When couples start thinking about their wedding, they often focus on what they want the celebration itself to look and feel like, but what gets overlooked is that every wedding vision comes with a corresponding planning experience.

For one couple, a meaningful wedding might look like a highly customized guest experience. Every detail is thoughtfully considered. Guests receive welcome bags, the weekend includes multiple events, and there are countless personal touches throughout the celebration.

For another couple, a meaningful wedding might look completely different. They want to get married, celebrate with their favorite people, and continue living a life that feels largely unchanged during the year leading up to the wedding. They still want weekends free for travel, hobbies, home projects, date nights, and the other things that bring them joy.

Neither approach is more meaningful than the other.

But they do require very different things from the people planning them.

A highly customized wedding experience requires more meetings, more decisions, more logistics, and more coordination. A more traditional wedding format often allows couples to simplify those decisions and preserve more time and energy throughout the planning process.

The question isn't which approach is better.

The question is which experience aligns best with your priorities, not only on your wedding day, but throughout the time planning it.

The Hidden Cost of Personalization

Of course, personalization can come with a monetary cost, and sometimes one that is difficult to project. How much does it cost to buy out Wrigley Field for a Welcome Party? I honestly have no idea! We can certainly figure it out, but how do we plan for something that isn’t the standard? We don’t. We have to remain flexible. When you're doing something that falls outside the norm, there often isn't a roadmap. Instead of relying on established expectations, you have to be willing to navigate uncertainty and adapt as you go.

This same philosophy applies to the practicality of planning a highly personalized event. 

An established venue that was built to host events already has things built in, like bathrooms, lighting, and a rain plan. A camp property requires more planning for basic event infrastructure and hiring vendors to build that infrastructure.

A florist designing your wedding centerpieces in their studio is straightforward, but hosting a floral workshop at your welcome party, where your guests design the centerpieces we use at the wedding the next day, comes with transportation, storage, refrigeration, and design logistics that need to be planned for.

Having a dhol player lead your baraat is easy to arrange, but having the Chicago Bucket Boys lead your baraat requires providing a lot of communication with the musicians to educate them on what a baraat is and what their role in it is.

These are the kinds of details that make highly personalized weddings so memorable.

They're also the reason highly personalized weddings require more time, more decisions, and more flexibility during the planning process.

All of this is why I encourage couples to spend as much time thinking about their planning experience as they do their wedding experience.

Some couples thrive on customization. They love brainstorming ideas, solving problems, making decisions, and dreaming up experiences that have never been done before. For those couples, planning a highly personalized wedding can be one of the most rewarding parts of the engagement season.

Other couples find decision-making exhausting. They want to get married, celebrate with the people they love, and spend the year leading up to their wedding focused on their careers, relationships, hobbies, travel, families, and the countless other things that make up a full life.

Most couples fall somewhere in between.

Know Thyself

Before deciding what kind of wedding you want to have, spend some time considering what kind of planning experience you want to have.

Ask yourselves:

• Do we enjoy making decisions, or do we find them draining?

• Do we have the time and capacity for a highly customized planning process?

• Are we excited by endless possibilities, or do we prefer clear options and structure?

• Do we want wedding planning to become a major part of our lives for the next year?

• What are we willing to trade in exchange for a more personalized experience?

  
  

There are no right answers here.

The goal isn't to choose the easiest wedding or the most unique wedding; it’s intentionality.

When couples think about wedding planning, they often focus on the celebration itself. They think about the guest experience, the design, the food, the music, and the memories they hope to create.

Those things matter, but so does the experience of getting there.

The most meaningful wedding isn't necessarily the one with the most moving pieces. And the easiest wedding isn't necessarily the least personal.

The best wedding format is the one that aligns with your values, your capacity, and the season of life you're currently in.

Because when your wedding vision and your planning experience are aligned, the entire process becomes more enjoyable.

And at the end of the day, that's what intentional wedding planning is all about: creating a celebration that feels like you, without losing yourselves in the process of creating it.