What Are The Wedding Planning Duties Of The Bride’s Mother?
What Are The Wedding Planning Duties Of The Bride’s Mother?
As soon as the wedding projects are underway, they become the main topic of conversation in the bride’s household, it may be convenient for you personally, as the bride’s mom, to take on many of the preparations and planning for the wedding. You may even provide a bit of sanity and calm to the excitement.
Your actual responsibilities are to see that the wedding and reception is a complete expression of just what your little girl expects on her special day. This includes attempting to keep her tastes foremost in your thoughts. Including her taste in flowers, color choices, music, food, her wedding gown and the very tone of the ceremony and reception. Even though it might be tempting to change some of her plans to be more like your wedding day, you have to remember this wedding is hers.
As the mother of the bride, you have five primary responsibilities :
The first responsibility is for helping your daughter select a flattering wedding gown. This is an important task which will, most likely, require both of you. In the event your daughter is crazy about a gown which is not to your liking, it might be best to support her selection unless of course, it tends to make her look like the Bride of Frankenstein. If that’s the case, you could be all on your own.
The second significant responsibility for you is to help your daughter and her fiance create a budget for their wedding. This should be done as early as possible in the planning process. Finances can be a difficult topic of discussion, but establishing a set budget, in the beginning, can save a lot of turmoil down the road. This will also help the couple openly discuss their expectations for this event. While it’s Traditional for the parents of the bride to pay for the entire wedding ceremony your available funds certainly must be taken into consideration.
Thirdly, it is your responsibility to contact the Groom’s Mother, if she doesn’t contact you first. Make a date to meet and go over the wedding plans with her and your children. It’s easy for the groom’s mother to feel left out of the planning excitement when all traditional emphasis that surrounds your daughter and her friends. Your families are going to be tied to each other through your children for the rest of your lives. You’ll share grandchildren, holidays, and your daughter; so reaching out to establish a friendship now will make things a lot smoother down the road.
The next thing you should do is help organize the guest list so that an invitation can be ordered. It is a good idea to get this done as early as possible and check with the Groom’s mother to see if there are any additions on his side of the family before placing the final invitation order.
Finally, making reservations for any out of town guests is also your responsibility. You are, however only responsible for taking care of the guests you have invited. The guests on the groom’s invitation list should be taken care of by the groom’s family. During the “best weather” months, weddings are the most popular. The earlier you are able to obtain the guest list, mail the invitations, and get R.S.V.P.’s from the guests, the earlier the rooms for out of town guests can be reserved. It’s quite common to get discounts on hotel room reservations if you can book them early enough in advance, so ask when you’re checking room prices.
Complete these tasks as early as possible in the wedding planning process and you will relieve yourself and the bride and groom of tons of last-minute worry and stress. As the wedding day draws closer, there will be new problems and details to work out and unless you have hired a professional wedding coordinator most of these details will be yours to handle as well. Using a good set of wedding planning checklists and marking of tasks as you complete them will allow you to stay on top of your wedding planning responsibilities.
