Planning a wedding can be difficult in more ways than one - there's never enough hours in the day, there's new ideas popping up on Pinterest every day making you question your decisions and one can never afford the gold plated wedding cake and unicorn drawn carriage that you dreamt of as a child. Here are 10 simple ways to spread the to do list between the friends and family that keep asking to help. 1. Organising Out of Towners Picking loved ones up from airports/train stations is a brilliant and inexpensive way for friends and family to do you a huge favour close to the finishing line that is your wedding day. If you have people travelling to your wedding and want to arrange a more personal pick up than the local taxi company - having someone else do it will take a huge weight off your shoulders.
2. Beauty Help We all have that one cousin who kills it with their make-up and hair at every family wedding, or whose eyebrows are always on fleek. Asking them to help with hair and makeup on the day of your wedding instead of or as well as hiring a professional will not only help with wedding costs but it will also help with your nerves the morning of, to have someone you know helping.
3. Collection of items If your pick up list is growing and growing for the eve or eve eve of your wedding, see if someone could give you a hand. Assign your maid of honour to dress collection duty, the mother in law to cookie favours collection and your sister to flower collection. They should be more than willing to help in this way, and a lot of the time, you can find someone who lives nearby to the supplier.
4. Performing If you're lucky enough to have a musically talented friend, or any kind of performing talent for that matter, see if they would be willing to perform for a little while at your wedding. Whether its a 20 minute acoustic set during welcome drinks or a full band in the evening - they will likely be honoured that you want them at your wedding.
5. CAKE
I probably shouldn't be saying this, but if there's a budding cake maker in your family or friendship group, see if they would be willing to make your wedding cake. If they aren't comfortable with making the actual wedding cakes itself, ask them to make some extra cupcakes or brownies to go alongside a professional cake or to use instead of dessert from caters. *Warning* if they would be making a tiered cake, make sure they are comfortable with the structural needs - we have heard about too many toppling cakes when it comes to hobby bakers.
6. Ceremony Readings A great way of getting someone involved in your wedding is asking them to do a reading at your actual service. Very good friends of mine had beautiful readings at their church wedding - one bible reading and one from The Notebook. They has 2 members from each side of their families read both passages - one family in English, and one family French. It was the perfect way of bringing the ceremony together for both families and the perfect way of involving family members. I didn't cry.. I swear..
7. Moving decorations from ceremony-reception
Using decorations for your ceremony as well as for your reception is the perfect way to save money and to save on waste. The thing that can put a lot of people off this method is the logistics. If you can ask someone to help coordinate this on the day, it will save you a lot of stress and also stop the chance of things being forgotten about. As an example, you could have some milk churns full of flowers outside your church doors and then rope the groomsmen into moving these to the front doors at your reception - no flower left behind!
8. Decor items
This can be a call to arms for all of your guests to help you out. Do you want to have blankets out in the evening in case your guests get cold but you don't want to go out and buy 20 blankets. Do you need empty jam jars or gin bottles for your centrepiece flowers and you aren't going to get through 12 bottles of Hendricks in the next 8 months. Pop up a facebook status or a note on your wedding website to see if people can save some for you along the way.
9. Crafty Tasks
If you have someone close to you who is really crafty and creative, see if they can help you with something along these lines. Maybe they can help make your invitations/save the dates. Maybe they could make you a cake topper or some bunting. They could even make your wedding favours for you. Whatever it is, they will be thrilled you want them to help and they will feel that bit more connected to your day.
10. Daycare
Whether it's kids or dogs, see if you can assign the 'keep an eye on...' job to someone. If you have a doggo that you are having at your wedding, you don't want to be worrying about them all day so get a few people to share the tasks. If you have a lot of flower girls or pageboys, get someone to be in charge of them during the ceremony, rounding them up or keeping them from screaming.
When friends and family offer a hand, it's (usually) because they want to help and be involved. Take them up on it! Sophie x