CONNECTICUT WEDDING GUIDE

How to Use this Connecticut Wedding Guide

Without a doubt, your wedding day will be one of the biggest moments of your lives. Admittedly, however, getting there will seem overwhelming at times. I’ve compiled this CT wedding guide which will hopefully help make it easier for you two.

Connecticut is one of the best places for weddings in New England, if not the entire United States. Our little state has plenty of charm and variety anyone’s big day.

Here you’ll find tips, recommendations, and general advice to help you with planning. Things are intentionally high-level in order to help a broad range of couples. It’s best if you take each tidbit and prepare to tailor it to your needs.

And of course, if you have any questions (or suggestions), feel free to email me at any point.

1. Start Wedding Planning

The bride and groom dance as the groom holds her bouquet. These two successfully followed this Connecticut wedding guide and had a great day.

Lay Out the High-Level Basics

Whether you’re aiming for a lavish wedding, a small elopement, or something on a budget, your nuptials will have a lot of moving pieces. Therefore, this CT wedding guide has to start with some rough ideas to consider at the beginning stages of planning your wedding:

  • The big picture: One or both of you have probably been dreaming about your wedding day for a long time. Right after your engagement is a good point at which to discuss what type of wedding you’d like to have. For example, will you have a conventional, micro, or elopement wedding?
  • The when and where: Some couples like to get married right away while others prefer to put it off for various reasons. As you would expect, your timeline affects your planning. So, try and nail that down, at least with a general timeframe.
  • Flexibility: Today, it’s a spring wedding at the top of a hill. Tomorrow, it’s a small fall gathering outside of city hall. Or, today it’s blue and orange and next month it becomes red and white. You get the idea: minds change when planning a wedding. Being flexible is one key to happiness.

CT Wedding Guide Resources

2. Choose a Wedding Photographer

I’m a wedding photographer. Therefore, it wouldn’t be ideal for me to write a Connecticut wedding guide without touching on this ever-important aspect of your day.

So brainstorm with me for a moment. You’ve got each other, your guests that you’ll be celebrating with, a venue, and all the other odds and ends for your wedding day. Now, how are you going to preserve the memories of that day and all its intricacies? That’s where your CT wedding photographer comes in!

Helpful Wedding Photographer Resources

3. Find a Wedding Venue

A bride and groom pose together underneath a mason jar chandelier during their Allen Hill Farm wedding.

You’ve popped the question–or responded “yes”–to the one you’d like to spend your years with. Naturally, you two will start thinking about where to get married pretty early on in the wedding planning process. Any CT wedding guide would be incomplete without helping you find a venue.

Remember: whether you choose to get married in your backyard or in a grand ballroom, your day is about you two and your love story. So, choose a venue that compliments what you’re picturing for your wedding day.

Think About Portrait Locations

Each time you visit a prospective wedding venues, pay close attention to the portrait locations it offers. Yes, beauty is in the eye of the beholding couple! But make sure that you two are liking what you are seeing; you’ll have your photos for a lifetime, after all.

Before we move on from the wedding venue aspect:

  • Bonus tip 1: Sometimes it can make sense to go off site (i.e. leave the venue) for photos.
  • Bonus tip 2: You really want to try and schedule about 90 minutes into your wedding day timeline for all portraits.

Guides and Resources for CT Venues

4. Have an Engagement Session

I highly encourage you to have an engagement session. Here’s why:

  1. They result in artwork that you can use to announce your engagement to friends and family, use for save-the-dates, and have as a pre-wedding keepsake.
  2. Other than their wedding day, many couples never take the time to invest in professional photos of just the two of them.
  3. The session gives you a chance to practice with your wedding photographer for your wedding day portraits.

To round this Connecticut wedding guide out, here are some things to consider about your engagement session:

  • When: Some couples like the cohesion of, for example, fall engagement photos to match their fall wedding. For others, it might be that the first date was on a winter night and they’d like engagement photos to commemorate that.
  • Where: Just like the when, the location of your engagement session may have significance to you and your partner. It’s perfectly understandable, however, if you simply want a pretty background with no specific sentiment attached.
  • How: More so than your wedding day, your engagement session affords you to a chance to really let your personalities shine. That’s because the engagement session is much less formal than your wedding day and it’s just the two of you plus your photographer. Have fun with it!

Tips for Engagement Sessions

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5. Find Your Other Wedding Vendors

Yup, I’ve already tooted my own horn about how important your wedding photographer choice is. The truth is, your entire wedding vendor team is key. We work together to make sure that your wedding day is the one of your dreams. Therefore, I wanted to make it a point to identify some great vendors in this Connecticut wedding guide.

CT Wedding Vendor Recommendations

I’ve had the chance to work with some great vendors. Here are some recommendations:

Caterer/Baker

  1. Multiple great CT food trucks
  2. Chocolate Rose Bake Shop (Griswold, CT)

DJ

  1. After Hours Events of New England (East Windsor, CT)
  2. Welcome Entertainment (Winsted, CT)

Dress Shop or Tux/Suit Rental

I have a guide on wedding dress shops here. For suits and tuxes, I had a great experience with The Black Tux (online; nearest physical studio is in Natick, MA) for my wedding.

Facilities

If you happen to be considering a backyard wedding (or a wedding at a venue that requires you to find all/most of your own services), you’ll have to make sure that you hire the right facility wedding vendors. These include considerations like furniture rentals, restrooms, tents, etc. In my planning a backyard wedding guide, I go over this in a lot of detail.

Florist

  1. Honey Bee Florist (Torrington, CT)
  2. McKenna’s Flower Shop (Norwich, CT)

Makeup Artist

  1. Blush and Wave (Litchfield, CT)
  2. Lorna Pulver, LE (Stonington, CT)

Officiant

  1. April Smith (North Stonington, CT)
  2. Marie Tyler Wiley (Stonington, CT)

Planner

  1. Plan-It Vicki (Avon, CT)
  2. Pink Olive Events (Cheshire, CT)

Transportation

  1. First Student Charter Bus Rental
  2. Party Bus Meriden

More CT Wedding Vendor Resources

6. Establish Your Wedding Day Timeline

A bride feeds wedding cake to her groom. Helping couples find a great cake baker is a must for any useful Connecticut wedding guide.

Whether you’re having a small or big wedding, your day-of schedule is vitally important. This aspect of your day–when everything is supposed to happen–deserves a fair amount of attention from you and your partner. It’s also something that you’ll need to discuss with your vendors, of course.

When a new couple inquires with me, I start out by asking questions about what they have decided so far. Once they book, I draft a suggested timeline for them in a pretty, easy-to-read format. Discussing with them and their planner, if they have one, is also something I strive to do.

There are some things you might not think of when considering your wedding day timeline; this is why I think it’s important to touch on this subject in this CT wedding guide. For example, you really should try and schedule 90 total minutes for portraits (this shows up in the cocktail hour portion in the example timeline below).

Generally speaking, here’s what a typical eight-hour wedding day might look like, assuming you don’t have a First Look:

Sample Wedding Day Timeline (No First Look)

Getting Ready Timeline

  • 8:30 AM: Breakfast, morning routines and preparation
  • 9:00 AM: Getting ready and dressed, with hair, makeup, barber, stylist, etc. appointments for each partner and wedding party members
  • 2:00 PM: Both partners are dressed, individual formal photographs, separate family and wedding party photographs, pre-ceremony down time
  • 2:10 PM: Each partner reads their love letter / opens their gift / First Touch (a First Look would be good here, too)

Ceremony and Cocktail Hour Timeline

  • 3:00 PM: Guests begin to find their seats for ceremony
  • 3:15 PM: Wedding party in position for ceremony
  • 3:30 PM: Ceremony starts
  • 4:00 PM: Ceremony ends, cocktail hour and mingling begins, formal group photographs, formal couple photographs
  • 5:30 PM: Formal photographs end, cocktail hour and mingling ends, guests find their reception seats

Reception Timeline

  • 5:40 PM: Wedding party and couple intros
  • 5:45 PM: Couple’s first dance, individual partner and loved one first dances
  • 6:00 PM: Dinner service begins
  • 6:15 PM: Speeches
  • 6:30 PM: Party time
  • 6:35 PM: Quick couple sunset formal photographs
  • 7:50 PM: Cake cutting
  • 8:15 PM: Sparkler exit
  • 9:30 PM: Reception ends

For my couples, I work closely with them to nail down the details and revise the schedule along the way, finalizing it a week or two before their big day.

7. Think Ahead to After Your Wedding

The fun doesn’t end after your reception! No Connecticut wedding guide is complete without mentioning what you should be doing after your wedding day. Here are some things you won’t want to forget to do:

  1. Plan your honeymoon. Ironically, this can be one of the best parts about getting married, yet it happens afterwards.
  2. Return rented items on time, such as your suit(s)/tux(es), dress(es)/gown(s), furniture, floral arrangements, etc.
  3. Open gifts and make a list.
  4. Send thank-you notes.
  5. Call the town hall and figure out how you’re going to receive your marriage license.
  6. Handle name changes.
  7. Update financial stuff, insurance, and other benefits. Remember to save physical pieces of mail for proof of address.
  8. Download and back up your professional wedding photos.
  9. Ask friends and family for cell phone photos and videos, collect and save everything in a single spot.
  10. Share wedding photos with family and friends.
  11. Write reviews for your awesome wedding vendors.
  12. Make sure that your wedding photographer knows how to reach you for print delivery, etc.

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