When you are finally ready to get married, making sure that you do absolutely everything possible to make your day as memorable as possible is very important. Focusing on the details makes all the difference in the world, especially if you can’t afford to pay a professional wedding planner to take care of all the details for you. However, with so many important things to remember as your wedding date approaches, having a solid checklist of things that you need to get done can make the whole process much easier to accomplish. Since each wedding is different, there isn’t really one checklist that works for everyone. Here are some things that you need to consider and put on your wedding planning checklist to ensure that everything goes smoothly on your wedding day.

Religious or Non-Religious Ceremony

One of the most important things to figure out in advance is whether or not you want your wedding ceremony to be religious. Most couples include their religious beliefs into their wedding ceremony in some regard, but there is a difference between reading from the bible and having your wedding at a catholic church. Knowing the answer to this question ahead of time can help you choose the right venue for your ceremony.

Budget

Discussing money can be a tricky topic regardless of what you’re thinking about buying, but it can be particularly stressful when planning your wedding. Chances are you are going to want to aim for the moon but barely get a quarter of the way there, so knowing your actual budget can help immensely. Instead of hiring a fireworks company to do a huge show for your reception, you can buy wedding sparklers for your guests to save money. Instead of hiring a live band, you can hire a DJ to play music instead. By knowing your budget limitations in advance, you can plan a fabulous wedding without any regrets and keep it at an affordable level.

Do Your Research

After you figure out your budget but before you start making purchases, you need to research all the things you’ll need for your wedding ahead of time. Keep in mind that things such as your wedding gown, wedding invitations, flowers, wedding rings, and the reception hall are all going to cost money and come out of your initial budget. By creating a list of these things ahead of time, you can estimate how much you want to spend and stick to those numbers to ensure you have enough money for everything.

Don’t Forget the Honeymoon

Once you have everything budgeted out for your ceremony and reception, you need to make sure you have enough left over for your honeymoon. A lot of couples forget to include this as part of their budget, and they end up staying home or going out to the movie theater for their “grand” celebration. Make sure you a lot enough money for your honeymoon, and if the numbers are too tight you should go back over your wedding budget and trim expenses wherever possible to make it all work out in the end.