Planning After the Wedding

After the wedding was over I thought, “Well, that’s that.  No more wedding planning for me.”  My sister is already married and most of my friends are too.  I figured I’d be done with planning but you know what, I’m not.  Guess what?  Remodeling/Building a house is like wedding planning.  Who knew?

Well, someone did.  My co-worker joked that remodeling his kitchen was like wedding planning all over again.  I didn’t understand then, but I do now.  Here are some ways wedding planning are related to remodeling/building a house.

First off, there are SOOOO many decisions.  What style of house or wedding are you going for.  French Country?  Modern? Art Deco? Ranch style?  Then there is size. Will you have 100 guests at the reception or will you be building with the intentions of someday adding to your family?  Let’s not even get started with color.  I could talk for days about color.  Color of the floors, walls, ceilings, tile, etc.

Second, there are just as many people involved in putting a wedding together as there are putting a house together.  Bridal parties, photographers , plumber, architect.  Here are a few things I figured out about the players

1. Main contractor = DOC

2. Lowe’s or Home Depot = Michael’s or JoAnn’s

3. Bridezilla = Home Ownerzilla

4. Weddingbee, Snippet and Ink, etc = Apartment Therapy, Coco + Kelly, etc

Third, the Budget.  Pretty bathroom tiles or flowers mean not as pretty light fixtures or just a minimoon.  Budgeting for the house has been hard because just like wedding planning, I didn’t realize how much things cost.  You budgeted for the church and building materials but did you budget for the mandatory premarital counseling or the extra permits? 

Fourth, now that I’m not looking for wedding inspiration, I’m finding it everywhere.  For example, I was looking for Frank Lloyd Wright inspired stencils for a project (see below) and thought it would be cute to stencil my own table runners.  Oh, I could have done that for our wedding.  That would have been really lovely, simple and inexpensive centerpiece base.

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Or how about these for centerpieces for a fall wedding?

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I saw this on Apartment Therapy and thought they’d be a cute alternative to carving.  But you know, they’d be super cute at fall barn wedding too.  The flower girl could even carry in a basket of little pumpkins. 

Lastly, sometimes you just have to DIY.  Can’t find the ring pillow you want or the perfect table?  Have them custom made.  We did both.  We sewed our own table runners and now I’m about to make my own living room rug with the stencil above. 

Planning our wedding has given me more DIY confidence.  We’ll see if that’s a good thing or a very bad thing.  Have you found your wedding planning skills to be useful after you said I DO?

P.S.

Here’s the partial result of our “home improvement” project from back when I was put on a crafting ban.  We didn’t want to finish it completely since we’re moving.  I think we’re going to paint the edged of the racks in a shade of blue (TBD) to match the color scheme of our living room.  We’re also going to attach the two racks together with a shared shelf in the front.