The Budget
Working out what we can afford, where the money needs to go and which things are worth spending more on has been one of the biggest parts of planning.
Try Our Budget Calculator →
Our Wedding
Planning Our Own Wedding
We're Matt and Angela, and we're planning our wedding in the UK. This is where we're documenting what we're doing, what we're learning and the things we wish we'd known before we started.
So, How Did We Get Here?
We matched just before Christmas 2022 and had our first date in January 2023.
Somewhere along the way, the conversations about what we wanted from life turned into conversations about building a life together — and eventually, into planning a wedding.
We're not approaching this as professional wedding planners. We're simply a couple who has discovered just how much there is to organise when you're responsible for putting together an actual wedding.
And that's exactly why we started Wedding Planning Hub.
Why We're Sharing the Journey
There's an enormous amount of wedding information online. There are inspirational photographs, supplier directories, venue showcases and endless lists of things you could buy.
What we found more difficult was finding practical information about the process of actually organising a wedding.
How do you keep track of everything? How do you work out what things really cost? How do you make a seating plan when there are family dynamics to consider? How much time should you allow between the ceremony and reception? And how do you make sure that all the little details don't get forgotten?
We've found ourselves building spreadsheets, lists, timelines and little systems to answer those questions.
Rather than keeping them to ourselves, we're turning the useful ones into resources that other couples can use too.
What We've Had to Work Out
These are some of the real planning challenges that have influenced the resources on Wedding Planning Hub.
The Seating Plan
Seating plans sound simple until you actually have to fit real people, real relationships and real tables together.
Seating Plan Resources →The Wedding Day Timeline
A wedding day is effectively a chain of events where everything needs to happen at roughly the right time. We've been working through how all those pieces fit together.
View Wedding Timeline →The Photography
We've been thinking carefully about the photographs we actually want, the combinations of people that need to be captured and how to make the formal photographs efficient.
Photography Planning →The Music
From the ceremony and entrance music to the music during the meal and evening celebrations, we've had to think about both the music itself and the practical side of playing it.
Wedding Music Planning →The Little Details
Timings, stationery, signs, speeches, suppliers, equipment and all the small jobs that don't seem important until somebody has to organise them.
Explore Our Templates →We're Not Trying to Plan the "Perfect" Wedding
One thing we've realised while planning is that there is no single definition of a perfect wedding.
A wedding can be huge or tiny, traditional or completely unconventional, expensive or carefully budgeted. What matters is that it works for the people getting married.
So the purpose of this site isn't to tell couples what they should spend, what they should wear or what their wedding should look like.
Instead, we're trying to share practical information and useful starting points so couples can make their own decisions with a little less stress.
Things We're Learning Along the Way
Wedding planning has a funny way of turning apparently simple decisions into much bigger ones.
A seating plan isn't just a diagram of tables. A timeline isn't just a list of times. A wedding budget isn't just a total number at the bottom of a spreadsheet.
Each decision affects something else.
That's why we're trying to document not just what we're doing, but why we're doing it.
As we get further through the planning process, we'll add the decisions we've made, the things that surprised us, the mistakes we've made and the things we'd do differently.
Turning Our Planning Into Useful Tools
One of the reasons we created Wedding Planning Hub is that we've found ourselves repeatedly creating things from scratch.
Once we've built something that works, we'd rather make it available to other couples than have everyone reinvent the same spreadsheet or checklist.
That's why the site includes free planning tools, calculators, templates and downloadable resources alongside the articles.
The aim is simple: if something can be made easier with a useful tool, we'd rather build the tool than write another thousand words telling you how to do it.
Follow Along
This page will continue to evolve as our wedding gets closer. We'll add more of the decisions, costs, plans and lessons from our own experience.
Eventually, we'll be able to look back at the finished wedding and show exactly what we planned, what we actually spent and what we'd do differently if we had to start again.
Hopefully, by then, Wedding Planning Hub will have helped a few other couples get there too.
Planning Your Own Wedding?
We've built the tools and resources we'd have wanted when we started. Hopefully they'll save you some time, money and stress too.