IF YOU’RE in your 20s or early 30s, chances are your Facebook feed is filled with photos of your friends getting engaged or getting married. For many, this is the age of settling down and starting their own family. True enough, in the middle of the pandemic (and despite of it), many young couples got engaged in 2020.
For the entire month of June, Twenty Something will take time to talk about wedding preparations. We will have interviews with different wedding suppliers to guide you, brides and grooms-to-be in your wedding preparations.
Last Tuesday, June 1, 2021, we had a fun online talk with Camille and Kurt Laraya who got married on May 1, 2021 in General Santos City. They were joined by Judei and Kevin Tutor who got married on May 5, 2021 in Samal, Davao del Norte. The Laraya couple only had five months to prepare for their wedding while the Tutor couple had more or less a year to prepare. Based on their own experiences, here are just some of the tips they can share with the young couples who will also get married soon.
Start with your budget
After all the rainbows and butterflies during the engagement, the couple got into the practical side of planning -- to budget. Camille Laraya said they have been talking about wedding budgets even before engagement. She also said when preparing for a budget one must set a little allowance should things not go according to plan. Judei Tutor said she even used a Google Sheet to list down potential wedding suppliers and corresponding prices when planning for the wedding. This is to check and weigh down their options based on their budget.
Trust your wedding organizer
Both the Laraya and the Tutor couples hired a wedding organizer. Their decision for a wedding organizer was based both on friends’ recommendation and their own research. They said it is important to have an open communication with the organizer to make sure that things are according to the couple’s taste and budget. When working with an organizer, learn to leave things on their hands and to not stress over things that they can already do.
As Kurt Laraya and Kevin Tutor shared, wedding organizers are there for a purpose. It’s their expertise and they were hired to do their job. It’s unnecessary to stress over things you paid someone to do.
Things may not go according to the original plan but it will still be okay.
For Judei Tutor, her wedding gown was one of the first she paid attention and preparation for. She had a specific look in mind. The gown was planned to be sewn for her and she’s the first wearer. But one month before the wedding, the gown did arrive but it was not as she imagined. It didn’t fit perfectly. Good thing, she said, the wedding organizer got her back and gave her a plan B. The plan B wedding gown was not as how she originally wanted it but when she tried it on, it was still perfect.
Upon seeing her videos and photos from the wedding, one wouldn’t even suspect that something terrible happened during the planning of her wedding gown. The wedding still ended up seamless and perfect.
If there’s one important thing Laraya and Tutor couple learned in wedding preparations, it is to surrender everything in God’s hands and it will still come out as perfect (or even way better) than what you have imagined it to be.