Planning
Being the one who holds it
On the partner who ends up carrying the whole wedding in their head, why it happens without anyone choosing it, and what it costs.
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The Journals
Editorial notes on weddings, planning, and the space between yes and I do.
Planning
Do you need a wedding planner?
What a planner costs, what they actually do, and how to decide whether you need one. A plain account for couples weighing it up.
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When a friend offers to help
Accepting help from the people you love is one of the more complicated things a wedding asks of you. The generosity is real. So is the risk.
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The wedding day timeline, hour by hour
A running order is not a wish list. It is a sequence of real tasks, and the couples who finish the day without a sense of having sprinted through it are the ones who built in honest buffers from the start.
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Other people's weddings
Every wedding you have attended has left a deposit in your memory. The question is whether those images are yours or only what weddings looked like.
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How to do a wedding table plan without falling out
The table plan is not a diplomacy exercise. It is a logistics problem with a diplomacy problem inside it, and the order matters.
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Once there is a date
The moment a wedding stops being an idea and becomes a deadline changes more than the calendar. It changes the way two people talk to each other about it.
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Questions to ask a wedding venue that actually change the answer
Most venue checklists ask about capacity and catering. These questions get at something harder: whether the place will work the way you need it to, and whether the numbers add up the way they say they do.
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Day guests and evening guests: how to build a guest list
Most couples start with a number and work backwards. A more useful approach is to start with the structure of the day and let the list follow from that.
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What to keep
Not everything from a wedding survives contact with ordinary life. Knowing the difference beforehand is more useful than discovering it afterwards.
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Two families, one table
Blended families, stepparents, absences, and the quiet work of arranging a room around people who did not choose each other.
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The costs a wedding quote leaves out
A quote is not a total. Service charge, VAT, corkage, minimum spends: here is what to add back in before you commit to anything.
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The morning of
The hours before a wedding are not a gap to fill. They are the last ones you will have, and they deserve to be treated as such.
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The case for short days and early dark
A winter wedding is not a compromise made for cheaper rates or an open date. It is a different kind of day entirely, and the differences are almost all in its favour.
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Where the money actually goes at a UK wedding
The average figure gets quoted constantly and explained almost never. Here is what sits underneath it, and why the total so often arrives higher than expected.
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The money conversation
Talking budget with family before it talks for you. The conversation nobody prepares for, and why getting there first is the only way to stay in the room.
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Small, on purpose
The wedding of thirty is not a compromise. It is a decision, and there is a difference.
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What a venue decides for you
Choosing a place is not one decision among many. It is the decision that makes most of the others for you.
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The guest you did not invite
On the arithmetic of the list, the people it leaves out, and why that is not a failure of generosity.
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Looking like yourself
A calmer approach to wedding skin and beauty preparation in 2026. What consistency actually does, what the popular rituals can and cannot, and why the aim is rest rather than rescue.
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The first dance
The wedding songs couples are choosing in 2026, grouped by what they are for rather than ranked. The ones that endure, the modern standards, and where the year is quietly moving.
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The line of the dress
Nine wedding dress silhouettes, described by the line each one draws and the way it lets you move, rather than the body it is said to suit.
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Keeping your head
Ten things experienced planners do to stop the planning from taking over the months around it. How to plan a wedding without it consuming everything else.
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Looking back
What couples say once it is over, and what it quietly tells you about planning the day now. Wedding day advice from the far side of it.
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What the money buys
The average wedding cost is one of the most misleading numbers in planning. A clearer look at what a wedding budget buys at three levels, in pounds and in dollars.
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First, the order of things
The questions worth settling before any booking is made. A wedding planning checklist, sequenced the way the work actually unfolds.
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How to Plan a Destination Wedding: What to Know Before You Commit
Marrying abroad is a different undertaking from marrying at home. A guide to the legal, logistical, and human realities, written for couples considering it seriously.
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The Complete Wedding Planning Checklist: Every Task, in the Right Order
A considered, sequenced checklist for the full arc of wedding planning. Grouped into four phases, written for couples who would rather think clearly than scramble.
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How to Start Planning a Wedding: The Four Decisions That Hold Everything Else
Before the spreadsheets and the seating charts, four early choices shape everything that follows. A considered guide for couples in the first weeks of planning.
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Engagement is its own season
On the quiet art of being present in the time between yes and I do, before the logistics consume everything.
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