Don’t let winter confine your wedding ideas to the indoors – you still have plenty of opportunity to make big plans for the great outdoors. A blanket of snow or frost can provide the perfect backdrop for some stunning decorations outside the place where you get married or celebrate afterwards (or both). The white sheen of snow or ice bounces back light to draw attention to focal points you create.

In the last post (Winter Wedding Wonderland) I gave some examples of how you can use Winter to your advantage: twinkling lights, a dramatic fur cape, bright flowers for contrast – go back to the article to see all of the great ideas there.

Big Wedding Plans for the Great Outdoors

Bright Ideas for Winter White

Imagine these vibrant petals scattered on the snow along both sides of a path to your chapel – or in your outdoor wedding photos. If the canvas is white, you can literally paint with the petals.

Creative use of dance lights to paint a white landscape would also be effective for a nighttime event (or late afternoon – it can get dark quite early, another advantage to winter weddings!).

www.partylights.co.uk

Paper lanterns can also be beautiful (and budget-conscious) as long as they are needed for only a brief time (rain or even mist will damage them very quickly).

www.justartifacts.com

White on White

For an elegant look, you can avoid contrast and accentuate the whiteness by decorating with transparent or white objects – excellent for a clear, bright winter day. If your event is at night, you can use accent lighting to draw the eye.

tripadvisor.com

You can add your own icicles to nature to emphasize the season. For example, you could decorate with icicles made out of glass or handcrafted snowflakes.

www.glassicicles.com/

These snowflakes are larger than life at 4 feet tall.

www.shindigz.com

While you are bringing big ideas to your winter wedding – you can also incorporate it into the details at the same time. This really pulls the whole event together. Here is an example:

A beautiful snowflake headband

www.flutterbyweddings.co.uk

Planning Your Perfect Wedding Together

You’ve said “Yes!” when he got on one knee and popped the “Big” question and now you have the extraordinary but exciting job of planning for your wedding and becoming man and wife.

Now if anyone has ever told you this is easy, they are either lying or have never been married!
Fortunately, you can have a perfect wedding day no matter what your budget and resources available by planning and carefully preparing for your wedding day. Becoming engaged is relatively simple but planning and executing your wedding is the first real task confronting many couples.

The first step is to realistically budget for your wedding and this means deciding what you are going to actually include. No-one except the super-rich can have everything so this is a true test of your commitment to one another and how well you are able to compromise with each other.

Establishing the parameters of your wedding day is the part of this whole process where conflict is most likely to emerge; one side may insist on Great Aunt Ada coming to the wedding because they will get upset if not invited, or, you just simply must have a horse drawn carriage to take you away from the magnificent traditional church and the reception simply must take place at the most expensive venue in town!

Get used to the idea right now; unless you have unlimited pots of money you are going to have to give in on some things and accept others you do not like. This is about planning one day which leads to the rest of your life together and everyday together will require commitment and compromise.

Once you have established a budget, you are going to have to finance the cost of your wedding. The traditional idea that the bride’s parents will meet the bulk of the cost of your wedding is no longer a truism for couples getting married today. The sheer cost of getting married can be enormous and not everyone is in the fortunate position of having mom and dad able to write a large check. Today, it is more common for both side’s parents to contribute if they are going to help out financially and it is also even more common for the bride and groom to pay for the bulk of the wedding themselves.

The sooner you establish a budget and agree how you will finance it the less stress you are both likely to experience down the road. Saving for your wedding together is a good idea; it establishes good habits for you to have together as a married couple and also acts to make the bond between you even greater. More than this, the more money you are able to spend which you have accumulated rather than putting the bill on your credit card or taking out a loan, the more money you are going to have to start your married life together.

Starting married life in debt is not a good start – more marriages end in divorce because of financial pressures than for any other reason, so the less debt you take on from the start the more likely you will both have a successful marriage and long life together.

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