7 Easy Wedding Planning Tasks To Give To Family And Friends
by Raj Desai | 12/16/19
Family and friends LOVE to help. And when it comes to wedding planning, you should let them! I know, I know. For those of you cringing right now you’ve probably got some well-meaning friends and family who get carried away. Maybe they are excited to help, but they want to help in their own way and offer their opinions about what gets done and how. And that doesn’t fly when it comes to executing your wedding events in your vision. So before you take a look at the 7 tasks, establish some ground rules for yourself and for them.
Ground Rules
- Don’t assume that people want to help. Ask them instead! If they do offer help on their own, accept it graciously and think about what they would be best at.
- Be specific! First, about how you need their help. You don’t want your tone deaf Masi offering to sing at your wedding reception or your notoriously unorganized cousin in charge of letting you know when vendor deposits are due. Secondly, be specific about your vision and your expectations. If you enlist someone to plan your bridal shower and their style is totally off from yours, you probably won’t be happy with the end result or enjoy yourself. There’s nothing wrong with having a really specific idea of what you want in mind, but there IS something wrong with expecting your helpers to pull double duty as mind readers, too.
Task 1: Organizing a list of friends and family who want to perform at the wedding
Set up your helper for success and make this really easy on them. If you already have an idea of who wants to perform at your wedding, put together a list of those people (names, contact info) so that the person in charge of this task can get in touch with them easily. Conversely, refer anyone who reaches out to you about performing to this person so you don’t have to deal with it. Whoever is in charge of this needs to be sure to:
- Relay to you who and how many people want to perform in case you need to consolidate the list and spread the performances out across different events.
- Force those people to send MP3 files of their songs WELL in advance, which will then need to passed forward to the DJ.
- Communicate with your performing friends and family so they know what events they’ll be performing at and in what order.
Task 2: Organizing a list of family and friends for after-ceremony photos
We all know that at South Asian weddings you’ve got to have the obligatory post-ceremony photos with every relative, and you want to have photos with all of your friends. Choose your most organized and control freak family member or friend to:
- Devise an order of who gets their picture in what order;
- To inform your family and friends well in advance that they will be in the photos after the wedding;
- The order in which they’ll have their photo taken so they don’t run off;
- And if necessary (especially if you don’t have a day-of coordinator or planner), to boss everyone around for the photos so your wedding runs like a well-oiled machine.
Task 3: Planning your bridal shower
You’re planning a sh*t ton of events already, so unload one off of your plate and let someone take the wheel on your bridal shower. Choose one person (or multiple people) – all whom you trust – so that the only thing you have to worry about is showing up and having fun.
Task 4: Putting together welcome bags and organizing wedding favors
If you’re super detail oriented and want to include welcome bags for out-of-town guests and favors as goodies for reception-goers, enlist some help to put those bad boys together. This is such a mindless task that you can even get some kiddos in your family involved. Put ’em to work!
Task 5: Decorating for at-home events
Saving some money by not hiring a decorator for your mehndi or any other events you’re having at home? This is another place for family and friends to jump in and help. Again, set them up for success by being specific about how you want the party to look and having the decorations ready for them to put up. And give them a big enough window where they can fit in decorating in their schedules, too.
Task 6: Keeping you organized
Wedding planning doesn’t happen in a vacuum – you have a life going on outside of wedding planning and maintaining that PLUS planning a big fat wedding is a lot to manage. If you’re worried about forgetting something or getting things done on time, have a relative or friend keep you on track with a wedding checklist (check ours out here).
Task 7: Give them tasks for your wedding week
Not only is there a lot to get done during the wedding planning process, but you’ll also have a need for friends and family during your events. Don’t substitute friends and family for people that you should be hiring (be reasonable, people). DO ask friends and family to help with tasks that are simple and you can trust them with. Do your grandparents or elderly relatives need help walking into the ceremony space and finding their seats? Do you need someone to collect wedding cards and your gift box during and after your reception? What about dropping off wedding welcome bags to the hotel before guests arrive? And handing off touch-up makeup products back to your hair and makeup team at the end of the night? How about setting up your hotel hospitality room at the beginning of the weekend and getting the leftovers out of there at the end of the weekend? You’ll find that a lot of these tiny tasks will need to get taken care of and you won’t want to be the one having to handle them.
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Raj Desai
Founder & Chief Visionary, proud fur mom of 2, amateur artist, Netflix binger, wino, and chocolate addict.
