Starting Your Wedding Planning Checklist

Whether you are a bride, groom or someone planning a wedding in Colorado, this podcast is a must listen. Join Josh and Brian as they interview a variety of wedding experts including vendors, wedding planners, florists and more. Get ready to plan your dream wedding day and celebrate your love in the beautiful state of Colorado.

Josh and Brian, seasoned wedding professionals, understand the stresses and challenges of wedding planning. They are here to share their knowledge and help you plan a unique and stress-free wedding day. 
  
In this episode, Josh and Brian begin the podcast by discussing the importance of making your wedding day your own. They emphasize the importance of choosing the right wedding party, keeping your budget in mind and hiring a wedding planner. They offer insight into different wedding styles and encourage couples to take their own unique vision for their special day. From rustic to elegant, they cover it all. 
  
Planning a wedding can be overwhelming, but with Josh and Brian's guidance, you'll have the tools and inspiration to create a wedding to remember. Tune in to learn valuable tips, tricks and shortcuts to reduce wedding stress and ensure a smooth planning process. A comprehensive checklist to help you get started can be found on their website at ColoradoWeddingGuides.com

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Colorado Wedding podcast. We hope you found our tips insightful for planning your Colorado wedding.

For all the free wedding planning tools, checklists and guides go to ColoradoWeddingGuides.com

Don't forget to rate us on Apple and Spotify and be sure to follow us on Instagram @COweddingpodcast

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Brian: If you have a sister that you hate, um, and maybe that's a little bit much, but if you have a sister that just ruins every single day makes it about her, then maybe she doesn't need to be in the wedding party. That sounds. Pretty extreme, but it definitely, sometimes I wish that would happen.

[00:00:14] Josh: Welcome to the Colorado Wedding Podcast, the ultimate place to plan your Colorado wedding.

[00:00:19] Brian: From luxury weddings to intimate elopements, we'll guide you through planning your wedding in the beautiful state of Colorado.

[00:00:25] Josh: We're your hosts, Josh

[00:00:27] Josh: and Brian,

[00:00:28] Josh:and we're here to give you insider tips and advice from all kinds of Colorado wedding experts,

[00:00:32] Brian: join us and discover the best ways to reduce wedding stress and design your unique wedding day.

[00:00:38] Josh: Welcome to the Colorado Wedding Podcast, the ultimate place to plan a Colorado wedding. I'm Brian. And I am Josh. So planning a wedding is stressful. There's so many pieces that go into it. You're hiring all sorts of vendors, you're coordinated with so many people, and a lot of brides are just stressed on their wedding day, and it's a problem.

[00:00:57] Josh: Brian and I have been in the wedding, we've been in the wedding industry for years and we've seen all sorts of stuff happen. So we started this podcast to help you plan the perfect wedding and take out the stress. We're gonna teach you all the tricks and tips to make it go smooth. And so you don't have anything to worry about on your wedding day.

[00:01:16] Brian: Yeah, totally. I think that everybody wants an awesome wedding day, right? It should be. It should be the best day of your life. Uh, maybe the second best if you have kids, but I think that it's just. So awesome to be at weddings, love being at weddings. It's such a blast. We have such a good time filming those weddings and telling those unique stories.

[00:01:34] Brian: The biggest thing is we want that story to be unique, right? Like, we want your story to be about you, and I feel like so many people are obligated just to go down the standard checklist. Just say, you know, Hey, we have to do this, we have to do this. My mom said we have to do this. And you know what?

[00:01:48] Brian: There's flexibility in freedom. Yeah. Yeah. Your wedding is, yeah, your wedding is about you and, uh, you guys are getting married for a reason and your wedding day should celebrate that. So we're gonna be interviewing a bunch [00:02:00] of vendors, a lot of, uh, wedding planners, a lot of wedding venues, florists, DJs, whatever we need to, to get the right advice for all the people planning weddings out there in Colorado.

[00:02:11] Brian: So I, I think it's gonna be really, really awesome and it's gonna be a short shortcut to save some time too.

[00:02:16] Josh: So, I'm Josh, the owner of Ascend Media. We're a video production and film company here in Colorado, and we do wedding videos, um, and photos.

[00:02:25] Brian: Yeah. And I'm Brian Edman. I'm the owner of Bookend Photography.

[00:02:29] Brian: We do photo and video, uh, done hundreds of weddings and still love doing it every single day. So, uh, I have a wife, three kids and life is crazy, but loved, love, love, love doing weddings in Colorado, so, so blessed

[00:02:41] Josh: to have that. Yes, I'm also married and one kid, and one on the way.

[00:02:46] Brian: Dude, it's coming up quick.

[00:02:47] Brian: By the time this comes out, you're gonna have two kids.

[00:02:50] Josh: So, yeah. Awesome. Well, today we're gonna go through a checklist for planning your wedding. I mean, all the things you need to do starting from maybe a [00:03:00] year out, all the way till start at square one the day before. There's a bunch of things and it can be overwhelming.

[00:03:05] Josh: I remember when I got married, it just, it just seemed overwhelming, but we're gonna boil it down to just some, some simple things just to, a simple approach to tackle it, and we're gonna. Tackle each one.

[00:03:14] Brian: Yeah, we're, we're not go, we're not gonna go through every single thing in your wedding timeline. That would be a four hour podcast.

[00:03:19] Brian: That's not what we want. So we're gonna go through some high level stuff, but on our website, Colorado wedding guides.com, we're gonna have the, the guide, the, the checklist that you can go through and use to plan your wedding. And that hopefully it makes that easier for you. And, uh, you know, we're, after we talk to people and talk to other vendors who have other tips, maybe we'll change that.

[00:03:37] Brian: But we're gonna make sure you have, uh, an overall checklist to get started, which, Hopefully it'll be helpful for you

[00:03:43] Josh: guys, right? Yes. Cool. We'll, we'll dive right in. Okay, so the first one is budget. There's all sorts of weddings. Prices can range all over the place. You can throw a crazy a hundred thousand dollars wedding, or you could probably do it for five grand if you're really smart.

[00:03:58] Josh: So, um, [00:04:00]

[00:04:00] Brian: yeah, yeah, you just wanna know who is gonna be contributing to that. If you're gonna be paying for it for yourself, you know you're gonna make different decisions then. If you have someone else paying for it, if it's parents, if it's whatever that looks like, and correct me if I'm wrong, Josh, but like we, we don't believe that your wedding should put you in debt.

[00:04:20] Brian: It shouldn't cost you your life. Right? I mean, like you said, there's so many different kinds of weddings and you can have an amazing wedding. What? You can have an amazing elopement, you can have an amazing, huge wedding. You know, you can have. Whatever you want. Whatever people you want there, that's really the most important.

[00:04:36] Brian: But budget is really gonna determine a lot of the other things on your checklist.

[00:04:39] Josh: Yeah. Whatever that is. Depending what vendors and what, what venue you can afford and all

[00:04:45] Brian: that. Right. And we know that budget is gonna, different vendors are gonna cost more. More and some are gonna cost less. And you know, sometimes that will determine quality and sometimes it won't.

[00:04:52] Brian: So we'll talk more about that in other podcast. Yeah.

[00:04:55] Josh: Okay, Brian? Um, Can you talk us through planning a wedding [00:05:00] date and picking your venue? What is that like in Colorado?

[00:05:03] Brian: Yeah, so Colorado is crazy with venues. I mean, many of them are for sure a year out, if not two years out. If you're looking for a Saturday wedding, it is gonna be pretty booked up.

[00:05:14] Brian: And so there are a lot of Colorado wedding venues and, and we will talk to a lot of those venue owners, but most of 'em are gonna say that you need to book. One to two years out, probably 18 months. And so you could get lucky. If you wanna have a wedding on a Tuesday, then that's totally different. If you wanna have a wedding on a Sunday, you're gonna have more options, but your wedding time of year and is really gonna be affected by what the venue has available.

[00:05:36] Brian: And obviously some people don't wanna wait 18 months to get married, so you know, you might have to be flexible to have it on a holiday or have it on a day that, uh, the wedding or that the venue has open. So,

[00:05:47] Josh: so you could still book something for. Five months out.

[00:05:50] Brian: Yeah. I mean, I, I've heard of that, right?

[00:05:52] Brian: It's gonna be a completely rolled ice, but this should be a priority in your checklist. It, it just has to be, and if you don't think ahead on, on, you know, a lot of people think that [00:06:00] you pick a wedding date and then you go out and find a venue. It's not really like that anymore because say you pick June 15th, that's a Saturday.

[00:06:06] Brian: I'm just making that up. It might not be a Saturday, but if you pick June 15th and then you go around and everybody's booked June 15th, all of a sudden, you know, you've already told people your wedding date and. It's just not viable. Yeah. Summer. Yep.

[00:06:18] Josh: Priority number one or number two right there. Yep. Okay, cool.

[00:06:22] Josh: Um, great. So plainly your wedding party, um,

[00:06:26] Brian: yeah. Yeah. This is very important. I think that people think that this is just a thing that's gonna be automatic, but there's a lot that goes

[00:06:33] Josh: into it. Yeah. So big, big or small. I mean, we've, we've seen stuff from elope mints where it's just us and. Bride and grew, um, and then all the way up to, I've seen up to eight or nine on each side.

[00:06:46] Josh: So that's just a huge wedding party. Yeah. And things get complicated with photos, but it's a, with photo and video, but it's a lot of fun. Oh,

[00:06:54] Brian: the energy is insane. I, I love it. I, I think like a big wedding party is great. I think a small wedding party is great. And [00:07:00] yeah, again, going back to it's your story and yeah, you shouldn't feel obligated to have certain people mm-hmm.

[00:07:05] Brian: In your party. I know. Look, everybody has family drama, friend drama. I know. Yeah, I do. So, It's hard, right? You're gonna have to kind of play that. But when it comes down to it, it is your wedding. And I think you should want the best people around you that are gonna bring up that energy, gonna give you positive energy.

[00:07:22] Brian: Like if you have a sister that you hate, um, and maybe that's a little bit much, but if you have a sister that just ruins every single day makes it about her, then maybe she doesn't need to be in the wedding party. That sounds. Pretty extreme, but it definitely, sometimes I wish that would

[00:07:35] Josh: happen. It is one of those days where you really do get to make it all about you.

[00:07:39] Josh: Yeah, for sure. It's one of the exceptions where be

[00:07:41] Brian: harsh. No, but yeah, I mean, that's gonna be up to everybody. Yeah.

[00:07:48] Josh: Okay. So another huge, huge important thing to do is hiring the wedding planner.

[00:07:55] Brian: Yeah. So, so this can go a lot of different ways, right? So if you're planning your own wedding, if you're out there listening to this, then we can, [00:08:00] we're gonna help you plan your wedding.

[00:08:02] Brian: By using some of this advice. I think that that's awesome. You know, you have mothers or sisters or cousins or friends who can help you plan that wedding, but just be aware it's gonna be a lot more work. I think that wedding planners in the industry are kind of undervalued, to be honest. I mean, they, you can literally hire a wedding planner and then all the things on the checklist that you see that's gonna be taken care of for the most part with some of your advice.

[00:08:26] Brian: So just hiring a wedding planner. I, I personally would recommend it if you can afford it. And if you can't, that's great too. It's just be aware that it is, it's, it's just like going to, uh, having a job at your house that you're trying to fix the sink or something. You're gonna go to Home Depot five more times than you think you are mm-hmm.

[00:08:43] Brian: Than think that you would. And so that's true for wedding planning too. If you think it's gonna take 50 hours, it's gonna take 150 hours. So just

[00:08:51] Josh: be aware of that. What does your relationship with the wedding planner look like through the whole process? Like how much do they coordinate with you? Yeah. And what does that.

[00:08:59] Brian: It [00:09:00] totally depends on, on wedding planners, you know, there's day of wedding coordinators. Um, but what, what we're, what I'm mainly talking about here as a wedding planner, they, they might even help you find the venue. You know, you may find the venue first, then the wedding planner, if that's the case, I mean, they're gonna help you find vendors.

[00:09:12] Brian: They probably know vendors that they can trust and you know that they're, so, you can, you know, going through the wedding planner that they're gonna be high quality. They're gonna help you with your timeline. They're gonna help you with bringing everything in. You're just gonna have less errands. You're gonna have less chores, less text messages, less emails, less communication with.

[00:09:29] Brian: Whoever else is taking care of that. So I, I per less stress. Stress, it's less stress taken all out. Yeah. I personally think it makes your wedding day way better and I've heard brides and groom say if we didn't have this wedding planner, it would've been a negative experience. And uh, so definitely something to think about.

[00:09:44] Brian: That being said, I've, we've have worked with tons of brides who have used their family and their mother and their father and their, whoever else to help plan their wedding, and it has been amazing. So, but just be aware, there's

[00:09:55] Josh: some work there, but the big piece, just getting that stress off of bride and groom.

[00:09:59] Josh: Yeah. We're, we're, [00:10:00] we're,

[00:10:00] Brian: we're a fan of those

[00:10:00] Josh: stress, right? Yeah. So if someone can help you Yes. Do all that planning. Yeah. That's gonna be great. Yep. Cool. So, Um, wedding style. A lot of brides have a lot of different styles and a lot of 'em have been dreaming for years about that perfect wedding. Yeah.

[00:10:18] Brian: And the wedding planner would help you with this if you have one, but Yeah, I just, but being aware of what that looks like.

[00:10:23] Brian: Yeah.

[00:10:24] Josh: So with, with style, um, what, what are the different styles you've seen, um, range from super Oh, oh my gosh. Boho to, yeah. Just simple rustic.

[00:10:36] Brian: Yeah. I, I think. The more effort you put in the style, the more it shows. But that's important to some people and not important to others, right? So some people are really, really into, you know, what their table settings look like, uh, what their colors look like, and other ones are a little bit more casual.

[00:10:50] Brian: And again, we're gonna say this a million times, but make it unique to you. But yeah, the styles, I mean, there's, there's tons of different wedding styles and we will have a podcast interviewing someone who knows more than Josh and I do [00:11:00] about the particular wedding styles. But one way is to make a Pinterest board, right?

[00:11:03] Brian: Uh, every vendor out there is gonna hate me saying that probably. But Pinterest boards, uh, can be a nightmare. But they're an amazing way when it's about the bride and the groom when it's about. Whose wedding it is. It's a really good way to visually see, it's hard to explain visually what your style's gonna look like.

[00:11:18] Brian: Yeah. So we don't need to go too much more into that right now, but I think that that's something that you should make about you. So I've had people who were really into Legos so that their, you know, the flowers that they had, had little Legos in them. You know, I had people who were into Lord of the Rings, and so

[00:11:31] Josh: Yeah.

[00:11:31] Josh: I've heard that the Imperial

[00:11:32] Brian: March people walk. Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah. The music is amazing. So, It's already written for you. So, you know, that's nice little soundtrack for your wedding. Yeah. Uh, but yeah, I think like really put those unique details in there when it comes to your style because it will make a world of difference.

[00:11:47] Brian: And from a videographer and photographer standpoint, I. It really helps tell that story. So when you look at it 30 years later, you go, oh, I remember we did that. It was even, even if it's funny, it seems goofy. I, I think, you know, being willing to do that, and if you [00:12:00] want to go really luxurious and you want to have a high level luxury wedding, you think about that too.

[00:12:04] Brian: If that's your personality, I think that it, it should fit.

[00:12:06] Josh: Yeah, totally. One more point we're gonna talk about, this is a big one, is hiring all your different vendors. Yeah. So if you have a wedding planner or not, it's important to get those booked. If you can get 'em a year in advance, it's, it's awesome cuz you can grab their availability.

[00:12:22] Josh: But w what do you think about Brian when you're hiring your different vendors? Do you go through any platforms? If you don't have a wedding planner, how do you get 'em yourself? Yeah.

[00:12:31] Brian: Yeah. So, I mean, a lot of people use wedding wire or the knot or, or something like that. Um, this is different for every person too, but mainly I think it should be a personality fit is a huge part of it.

[00:12:42] Brian: And so that's why, that's one thing that's nice about working with a wedding planner, right, is that they can hire vendors that they know they work well with the, you, you're gonna have to do some price shopping too, right? Like, let's just be real that it's gonna depend on your budget. But yeah, I think a big thing is personality fit.

[00:12:56] Brian: Try to meet your vendors, whether that's over zoom or in person. Look [00:13:00] at their stuff on Instagram, look at, um, their websites and, and really do that research. Obviously we come from a video and photography background, and so you can visually see what your stuff might look like. But the biggest thing that I've heard from brides and grooms is the thing that can ruin your wedding day is a bad vendor.

[00:13:17] Brian: One bad vendor can ruin your wedding day. So I've had ones where the cake came and it was smooshed and melted and it was. Horrible, and like that's all they thought about for the next hour or two hours. Mm-hmm. Right. So make sure you have vendors that

[00:13:31] Josh: And the attitudes Yeah. Of the vendors. Like, are they gonna make it work?

[00:13:34] Josh: Are they encouraging, are they stress free? Yeah.

[00:13:37] Brian: Yeah. And Josh, I mean, like, what do you think about like how involved the vendors should be? Or like, how, how do you communicate with those vendors throughout the, throughout the

[00:13:44] Josh: planning process? Yeah. So as a, as a video and photo guy. We like to have everything planned and just be as stress free for especially the bride.

[00:13:54] Josh: Mm-hmm. And groom during wedding day. So we don't want to ask them any big surprises or really [00:14:00] inconvenience them. We're just there to support their day. So if they don't want photo and video at Sunset and us take 'em out somewhere and they want to be at the party, we're gonna make it work. Yeah. Whatever they want, it's all about them.

[00:14:13] Josh: Yeah.

[00:14:14] Brian: That vendor list can, can sometimes get long. Right. I mean, some venues will have. Some of that stuff included, you know, they'll have some of the design included or the food or Yeah. You know, that's all gonna be in one and other venues will be just a blank slate. So just something to think about. And we're not gonna go through the entire list here, but you know, we're talking about photographer, videographer.

[00:14:29] Brian: Uh, wedding planner would be florist, florist, caterer, caterer, desserts. I mean, I'm DJing. Yeah. Design. It could, it could be a lot of stuff. So just be aware that there's a, there's a long list there. And try to get those knocked out earlier than later. I just heard about a lot of stress. If you kinda wait till the last

[00:14:45] Josh: minute to do that.

[00:14:45] Josh: Yeah, it's possible, but not, uh, encouraged.

[00:14:49] Brian: Yeah. So I, I think for the most part, those, those are kind of just our beginning tips for, for planning. Like I said, you can go onto Colorado wedding guides.com and download our wedding planning

[00:14:59] Josh: [00:15:00] guide. Yeah. It's more comprehensive. It's got every single thing. Yeah.

[00:15:03] Brian: It's a checklist. Yeah. Yeah. And, and we'll have other ones that'll dive into those, those things a little bit more, but I think it's a great place to start. And you know, like I said, we just want to make sure. That you kind of cross your T's and dot your i's, but in a way that's not stressful, you know? Yeah.

[00:15:17] Brian: So there's a million things of value out there where you can go on. I mean, if you search wedding planning Colorado and you look for guides and YouTube videos, I mean, you could spend hundreds of hours. So we're trying to kind of get that down to a shorter

[00:15:31] Josh: Yeah. Colorado wedding podcast. We're boy and.

[00:15:34] Josh: Everything down to what you need to plan, just the perfect Colorado wedding and all the tips and tools and all the resources you need in one place. So, yep,

[00:15:42] Brian: and we'll be posting on Instagram some of those things too. And so feel free to reach out to us and, and just. You know, any, anything that you want to hear about, you know, if you're like, Hey, I really need to understand this.

[00:15:51] Brian: I can't find a good answer on it, let us know. We're happy to find a vendor or we can talk about that. Yeah.

[00:15:56] Josh: Well, um, thank you guys for tuning in today and we're excited to [00:16:00] release more, more valuable content, um, in the coming weeks. Yep. Thanks guys.

[00:16:04] Brian: Appreciate it. Bye. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Colorado

[00:16:08] Josh: Wedding Podcast.

[00:16:09] Josh: We hope you found our tips insightful for planning your Colorado wedding.

[00:16:13] Brian: For all the free wedding planning tools, checklists, and guides, go to Colorado wedding guides.com.

[00:16:18] Josh: Don't forget to rate us on Apple and Spotify and be sure to follow us on Instagram at co wedding podcast.

[00:16:25] Brian: We appreciate you and hope you have the best wedding possible.

[00:16:27] Josh: See you next time.