Texas-Dallas and Ft. Worth

Planning a Dallas wedding from CA

Hi everyone :)

I'm kind of freaking out a bit right now..  My fiance and I live in California but I am from Dallas and my parents are still in Dallas.  Well, we have booked our venue at Old Red courthouse and the church is booked as well for Aug 25 2012.  I'm visiting for the holidays and did some taste testing this week, but this is getting so stressful already!  Between the food and now going to look at dresses tomorrow I am realizing how hard this is going to be to plan from Ca!

If anyone has some advice on how to plan a wedding from out of town, please let me know!! 

Re: Planning a Dallas wedding from CA

  • betsf79betsf79 member
    First Comment
    edited December 2011
    One more question - how do you change the date and city attached to your name on here? 
  • edited December 2011
    I am in the exact same situation!  My fiance and I just moved to the Sacramento area and are trying to plan a wedding in Dallas for next October.  I don't even have a venue set yet and am starting to really stress out!  We are going home over Christmas and have so much to do while we're there!  Let me know if you get any good tips or have any advice!  :)
  • edited December 2011
    Do you have it in your budget to hire a local wedding planner to help you? I hired someone for "partial planning" and she gave me recommendations of most of my vendors, so I didn't have to research/investigate all the possibilities. I paid about 2k for partial planning help and her day-of services, although I know that's probably on the lower-budget-side and it varies by planner.

    Check out our knottie site (it should be linked from one of the sticky'd posts at the top of the forum) for the vendors we've all used and would recommend. Honestly, even though I'm local here, I didn't meet most of my vendors before the wedding. All the contact I had with them was via phone or email. I didn't do tastings of the food beforehand; although, it was an established caterer with tons of good reviews so I knew their food was good, and I'd already picked a set menu.

    Mine might be an unpopular opinion on the boards (I think most people do tastings and meet with vendors to make sure they are a good fit, etc) ... but I didn't meet any of them in person and it was just fine. They were all great. Then again, I did have a strong recommendation for them (in my case, my planner's, but if you can find enough reviews of them on the Internet or Weddingwire.com, that is probably just as good).

    HTH!
  • edited December 2011
    Agree with Marie.  While I am local, I really had no idea where to begin with planning my wedding.  I hired a coordinator to handle most of the difficult stuff, and she gave me recommendations for some of my vendors.  The rest I found on this board.

    I think Jen6826 (or some numbers) planned her Dallas wedding from Boston.  I haven't seen her much, but she might be a lot of help.
    Anniversary

    image

    image

  • juliebug1997juliebug1997 member
    Combo Breaker First Comment
    edited December 2011
    Your mom still lives in town right?  She might be able to help out with some things too!!!!  Just ask her.  If not, hiring a coordinator, if your budget can allow it, is a good idea. 

    Congratulations on getting Old Red though.  We love the museum there!!!!
  • edited December 2011

    This is kind of funny.  I am in Dallas trying to plan a wedding in Charleston, SC and running into the same issues.  My mother is a Harpest in Dallas that can help you with everything.  She has done over 2,000 weddings in the area and has found the best vendors and can give you recomendations I know she has done a lot of weddings Old Red Couthouse.  I hear her help brides all the time.  You should call her as soon as possible and she can help you get in touch with a lot of people (She has the best on speed dial.)
    Her name is Margaret and her website is http://www.4harpmusic.com I would give you her phone number, but never know about spammers. 

  • Jen6862Jen6862 member
    First Anniversary First Comment
    edited December 2011
    Hi Girls,

    I did plan my wedding from Boston and I did it without a wedding coordinator and everything went great!

    If you have it in your budget a coordinator could help--in this case my Mom helped out a lot. My suggestions are to do a lot of research online--the knot, weddingbee and the Dallas knotties are going to be a gold mine of information for you! When looking for my venue, which didn't have a lot of revues, I looked up wedding photos with the site name in Google. That gave me a really good feel for the space and then I had my MOH check it out for us. We took a gamble and booked it sight unseen, but we ended up with the perfect place for us.

    Schedule time when you are in Dallas to meet with vendors early on. We met our photographer (recommended by another Dallas knottie) at our engagement photoshoot about six months before the wedding and loved her!

    Also, create an email account for all of your wedding emails or create a dedicated folder for wedding related emails. You need to keep track of all of your conversations with vendors!

    Most importantly don't stress. I think the hardest thing for me was not being able to do all of the DIY projects I would have liked--because I wasn't there. But, in the end it was still a great wedding--even if I didn't end up making menus for the tables or making large initials of our names and putting them on the gates of the venue.

    We knew early on the having our family together was the MOST important thing to us and that they had a good time--drinks, dancing and good food. You have to make a priority list. This is also going to help when you start budgeting for things. Rank them in order of importance, so you know what you need to spend time and money on and what is more of a 'nice to have' instead of a 'need to have'.

    Good luck!

This discussion has been closed.
Choose Another Board
Search Boards