My Most Boring Post Yet (It’s About Change)
WWow, if that title up there didn’t want to make you read this blog post, I don’t know what will.
Anyway, here we go…change can be endless when you are planning a wedding. Justin and I think of new people we would like to invite almost every day. Sometimes we think of something we forgot to add to our registry. I can’t make my mind up about shoes and have purchased three pairs now. Other times the change is bigger like when we realized I made a rather large mistake with the budget (more on that later). Justin bought a suit but thinks he might want something different. I almost changed my mind about my wedding dress, I even tried a different dress on few weeks ago. Justin and I aren’t even indecisive people, these kinds of things just happen during the months while you are planning. And I’m sure the longer you are planning the more changes you will have.
Project management has a system for controlling change called control plans in which the project manager documents the change, evaluates the impact of change on the project, determines the level of approval required, submits a change request form, changes the associated documents, and communicates the change to all involved. Again, as I have said in past posts, this process is much, much more in-depth than I need if it is just me, myself, and I planning the wedding. But there are some good steps in the project management process that can be adapted for wedding planning.
Evaluating the impact of change on the wedding is a biggie because in the end it’s always going to impact the budget. Inviting more people to the wedding can increase the budget and in turn impact other parts of the wedding in order to stick to the budget. If we add additional items to our wedding registry we might have to pay more money out of pocket for the honeymoon since the main part of our registry is for the honeymoon. If my shoes aren’t nailed down before my dress fitting, I will have a problem with the length of my dress which could add additional costs. We can’t pick out what the groomsmen are going to wear until Justin makes up his mind about the suit which could lead the planning off schedule.
About that budget mistake I made, I neglected to include some things like the rehearsal dinner, Justin’s suit and wedding band, and a shuttle for the guests. All of that can add up to a pretty large sum. It could have completely derailed the wedding. Luckily we were able to fix things and work in everything that we wanted and needed. Plus, Justin learned his lesson about trusting me to make a budget.
I think the key to controlling change while planning a wedding is open communication between all the bridal and groomal contributors (stakeholders) and working through the impacts of change may not stop your budget from growing but it will probably prevent it from becoming a big, blue, fuzzy, scary monster with three eyes.
Sorry about the bore of a read. For the life of me, I couldn’t think of anything funny, creative, or cute to write about. Major writers block isn’t conducive to writing an entertaining blog. I promise the fun will be back next time.
