With so many details to arrange, planning a wedding can feel overwhelming. Don’t worry! So long as you complete the following tasks in the order listed below, you’ll be just fine. Remember: This is about you, your betrothed, your families, and everyone you’ve ever met or might encounter! It’s possible (though by no means certain) that you’ll only do this once, so have fun with it!
12-plus months out
☙ Hire wedding planner
☙ Summon Council of the Wise
☙ Agree on a budget
☙ Order alchemical supplies for transmuting base metals into gold
☙ Hire personal trainer
☙ Plant magic beans
☙ Draw up your guest list
☙ Slay lion with impervious fur of gold and claws sharper than mortals’ swords
11 months out
☙ Hire vendors
☙ Check that contracts don’t mention first-born child
☙ Select color palette and create a mood board
☙ Drink three hundred casks of wine to the last drop
☙ Start cleansing, toning, and moisturizing your skin every morning and night – don’t forget to exfoliate three times a week!
☙ Start collecting horcruxes
☙ Make your guest list
☙ Slay nine-headed hydra that guards the underworld
10 months out
☙ Start shopping for your wedding dress
☙ Practice transforming into a crow, horse, bear, fish, swan, or seal
☙ Book hotel room blocks for guests
☙ Obtain wishing pearls from the Sea King
☙ Create your wedding website
☙ Capture alive the dappled doe with golden horns
9 months out
☙ Say YES! to the dress
☙ Practice transforming back from a crow, horse, bear, fish, swan, or seal into your human form
☙ Eliminate all white flour, sugar, processed foods and alcohol from your diet
☙ Bind in chains a boar of vast weight and foaming jaws
8 months out
☙ Register for gifts
☙ Eat three hundred oxen, skin, hair, bones, horns and all
☙ Hire the officiant
☙ Outfit bridesmaids with costumes identical to yours to confuse the evil spirits
☙ Hire musicians
☙ Redirect river to cleanse the stables of 1,000 immortally shitting cows
7 months out
☙ Book the cake tasting
☙ Carefully remove the rind from a piece of cheese, leaving not too little and not too much cheese behind
☙ Start laser hair removal
☙ Keep practicing that pesky transformation between animal to human form – you’ll thank us later!
☙ Order linens, chairs, draping, lounge furniture, dance floor
☙ Defeat the man-eating birds with beaks of bronze and bladelike metal feathers
6 months out
☙ Hire lighting technician
☙ Order Hermione’s Time Turner, Bridal Edition©
☙ Book the florist
☙ Reserve sacred springs
☙ Book rental chairs, tables, dishware, and linens
☙ Capture the Cretan Bull
5 months out
☙ Book transportation for guests
☙ Outwit the witch and kill her
☙ Begin premarital counseling
☙ Drink the sea
☙ Book the honeymoon
☙ Repel the Devil with virgin’s tears
☙ Mail invitations
☙ Tame herd of fire-breathing mares
4 months out
☙ Choose your cake
☙ Sort poppyseeds from dirt in Baba Yaga’s garden
☙ Buy wedding bands
☙ If unable to afford gold wedding bands, seek them in belly of a talking trout
☙ Hair and makeup trials
☙ Resist temptation to talk to magic mirror
☙ Plan the service
☙ Steal Hippolyta’s girdle
3 months out
☙ Order the invitations and hire a calligrapher
☙ Check that the golden threads being used to weave your dress aren’t invisible
☙ Start teeth-whitening regimen
☙ Politely remind Balrog that he shall not pass
☙ Write vows
☙ Avoid rash boons
☙ Start crafting DIY items
☙ Steal herd of cattle from three-bodied giant
2 months out
☙ First dress fitting
☙ Locate the time-traveling portal stones of Craigh na Dun from Outlander, start over
☙ Complete seating chart
☙ Unite the Seven Kingdoms
☙ Get spray tan
☙ Steal golden apples from the serpent-dragon
1 month out
☙ Pay vendors in full, put tips in envelopes
☙ Fetch ring that the queen has dropped into the Red Sea
☙ Break in those heels!
☙ Or ask local woodsman to chop off toes
☙ Get marriage license
☙ Capture the three-headed dragon tailed dog that guards the underworld
Final week
☙ Pluck eyebrows
☙ Sharpen sword
☙ Mani-pedi
☙ Take annual bath
☙ Pack bags for honeymoon
☙ Make fragrant bouquet of garlic and herbs to mask body odor
☙ Clean ring
☙ Resist urge to put the ring on and become invisible!
Your Special Day
☙ Eat a healthy meal
☙ Send word to the eagles
☙ Pack a clutch or small bag of personal items
☙ Begin the ascent to Mt. Doom
☙ Drink water
☙ Tread long, winding path strewn with animal skins and rusty nails
☙ Drink even more water
☙ Don red veil to deter evil spirits
☙ Lay out all the items (rings, invitations, etc.) that you want your photographer to capture
☙ Dodge fiery projectiles from volcano
☙ Make your vows
☙ Cast rings into the fire
☙ Say thank you to everyone around you
☙ Board the eagles
emily i love this so much. just in case you haven’t seen it: https://chaoscontrolled123.tumblr.com/post/76305632587/luke-and-i-were-looking-at-hieronymus-boschs
Emily, I wish I read this 10 years ago before I got married–even though it was only an inkling in your eye, perhaps.
My wedding preparations involved buying a second hand dress with the plan to gain a little weight so that it’d fit better. I amassed a dowry: a tupperware bin that I filled with every spare thrift shop utensil, plate, wine glass, and cloth napkin I could find. I was crazy about cloth napkins. Then, I bought small type to create stamps to make my own wedding invitations, reply cards, and thank you postcards.
I believe my journey to the grass plot between two trees where we married was no less arduous than those of others my age. Pre-marital striving and sacrifice (not to mention bloodletting) takes many forms. My dress was lace with sewn-in pearls.
Emily, I love this. So glad you included the annual bath!