What I Learned About Project Management By Planning My Wedding: Part 2
Photo by Luigi Pozzoli via Unsplash
Lesson #2: Know Your Dependencies
One of the first things many project management courses cover is identifying your dependencies. In plain English, that means figuring out what you need to do first, so that subsequent steps can be taken later. In a construction project, that would look like building a foundation before you put up framing for walls (the foundation, then, is a dependency for the walls).
For my wedding, I spent a lot of time stressing out until I really took time to think about the dependencies in this project. For the first week, I remember sitting at a coffee shop and looking up websites, dress designers, catering options, and just about everything else. I rapidly started feeling lost and stressed out with all of the things I needed to decide… Until I ultimately realized was that almost everything I looked at, whether it was a catering quote or a dress shop, or a DJ, everyone had the same first question: what is your wedding date?
Ultimately, my wedding date was decided by the venue. We got engaged in July of 2022, and as we started to look at venues, we realized that a lot of COVID cancellations and reschedules had already booked up most of the 2023 dates. However, we got lucky and found a few places we liked that were available in April 2023. So, if I could go back in time to that coffee shop in July, I would tell myself, “Stop looking at dress websites. You don’t need to pick a bridesmaid color just yet. What you really need to do is book a venue, because that will determine your wedding date, and knowing your date is a key dependency for almost every other thing. No, really, stop looking at wedding website vendors- all you need to focus on right now is booking a venue.”
If you read my last post, you are probably already sensing a theme here, and you would be right. This lesson goes hand-in-hand with the first one (focus on one thing at a time), and using them together really helped me get a handle on my wedding planning and my stress levels.
Now, I will say, there are plenty of resources out there about planning weddings. As a project manager, my one critique of them is that none of them do a great job of explaining dependencies. Whether you look at The Knot or Zola or any other site, you will find a comprehensive list of tasks. You’ll also find recommendations about when to execute those tasks. However, you won’t find a lot of guidance about WHY you need to do things in this time-based order. I eventually got a wedding planner (a truly amazing and delightful human who also happens to be a friend from high school - the one and only Daniel Holtz) to help me identify key dependencies and areas to focus on, and even then, I still ran into some difficulties… The biggest being that I had my first dress fitting without the shoes I would be wearing on my wedding day. Turns out, they really want you to wear those shoes to the appointment so that they can start measuring how they will need to adjust your hem… Luckily for me, it was not the end of the world, but it was a very stressful three or four weeks trying to find shoes before my next fitting…
To help others avoid The Great Shoe Debacle of 2023, I’ve put together this list of major wedding dependencies. If you are getting married or know someone who is getting married any time soon, I hope it will help you make a plan that will be as stress-free as possible.
Major Wedding Dependencies (according to me- a non-wedding professional)
First and foremost, book your venue (this may be both a church and a reception site- so this may be a two-step process).
I would say that setting your wedding date is the ultimate dependency. From that one decision, almost everything will fall into place.
Additionally, your reception venue may only work with certain caterers or DJs (or may even provide some/all of those services), so once you pick the venue, you may inadvertently make some subsequent decisions.
Next, book your photographer. They can help you start a draft timeline of the day, which will be very useful when you…
Third, book your caterer. Food is probably important to you and your betrothed, so to make sure you have as many options as possible, look to book your caterer as soon as you’re done finding your photographer. You can attempt this one in parallel if you divide it up and have one partner focusing on one type of vendor.
Next, pick your color scheme… That will allow to:
Book your florist (and tell them what your colors are/your preferences)
Pick a color for your attendants dresses/ties/suits/attire
Choose a particular gown/suit/attire for your attendants (unless you want to let them choose their own)
Design your wedding website
Design your invitations
Next, book your DJ/band/reception entertainment.
If you’re buying a wedding dress, select a style and put an order in about 6 months prior to the wedding date (longer if you are going super fancy and your dress shop tells you to).
BEFORE your first fitting, buy your shoes. You will need to wear them to your first fitting.
There are A LOT more tasks that you will need to do to get a wedding planned, but if you follow the above steps in order, I think your early planning days will be fun, and most importantly, doable. Don’t give in to overwhelm- identify your dependencies and proceed in order!
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
Have you planned a wedding, or other big event? Do you remember any dependencies that tripped you up? Do you have any other major dependencies to add to the list above? Drop me a comment and share your ideas!