Planning from afar tips?

sdolander

My wedding will be next summer in July, but both my fiance and I are in school two hours away from where the wedding will be. Since he's getting ready to graduate, and I'll be doing introductory methods for education (which requires field experience and lesson planning) along with other classes, I'm finding it to be very difficult to plan this wedding.  I'm only able to make it home maybe once a month for a weekend, and my family gets upset if I'm not spending it with them and running around getting wedding errands done. I'm sure there are plenty of other brides in this boat - has anyone found a rhythm or plan that works?

crb2013

Ahh no suggestions, but I'll be watching this topic because I'm in a similar boat!
We're going to be getting married in my hometown, 2.5 hours away from my college town. So I know that I'm going to constantly be back and forth once we start planning.

faith415

This is what I did. I was in school 5 hours away from where I'm getting married. Whenever I came home, I had a list of things that I needed to get done. My family was a big help. I had my parents look up locations, caterers, and things like that. Then I would look up the things they liked online and go visit when I came home to pick them. It saved me a lot of time becuase I didn't have to do a lot of the initial looking. I also had different people assigned to things that I didn't care that much about. For example, we're doing a candy bar, I knew I wanted all different glass vases, but didn't really care what they looked like. So my mom offered to be in charge and she bought all the vases, scoops, and candy. It didn't matter that much to me, and then I knew it would get done without me having to worry about it.

Another suggestion, prioritize!!! During my student teaching I would be so tired when I got home that I didn't want to do anything else. I was really grateful that I had almost everything done already and didn't have to focus on the wedding. Get the big things out of the way early, location, caterer, florist, DJ, etc. Once those big things are done there isn't a ton that HAS to be done. That way, you can do all the little details that you want as you have the time for them, but if you find yourself running out of time it won't be a huge deal if you can't get to them all.

I'm a week out and only have to finish up the escort cards since we just finalized our head count. I have two crafts that I'd love to finish up, but they're just extra things so if I don't get to them oh well. Good luck with everything, it's definitely possible and I can tell you that I've been stressed only a few times doing things this way.

sdolander

That's awesome! We do already have a lot of the big things taken care of: the venue (it's the same for ceremony and reception, and they also do centerpieces and food, and it's an outdoor wedding overlooking a valley of trees, so I'm not doing much decorating), the DJ, photographers, my dress, fiance's tux, parties' outfits, and invitations.  One thing that I'm finding really hard to get done is meet with the officiant... our venue has a house officiant company that they always work with and have had great reviews, but our schedules just haven't lined up for the past two months! I know that's something I'll have to take care of myself.  I know I need to get a cake baker, but that's something I think my mom will enjoy investigating...

Thanks for the tips! I'll be sure to talk to my family this weekend and see if they're able to help! Happy Holidays!!!

MoonlightSilver

Skyping can be really helpful if you can't find time to take the trip. I've actually booked a vendor without ever actually meeting them, based upon the recommendations of my local board, weddingwire reviews and our emails.

faith415

For the officiant, see if you can do some of that over the phone/ through email/ or skype. The only thing we actually did face to face with our officiant was pre-marriage counseling, but he told us he would do things over the phone if needed.

You sound like you have most of it done already so I'm sure you'll be fine!

sdolander

I had never even thought about taking advantage of the wonders of Skype - what a great idea! I'll have to email my officiant and see if that's an option. Thanks so much, everyone!