Anyone that has planned a wedding or helped someone plan a wedding knows that it can certainly be a stressful and involved process.
When you throw in the challenges provided by a large city such as Chicago, the stress and expense can multiply quickly.
The most important factor in planning any wedding in any city is certainly the wedding planner.
Whether you choose to hire a professional planner or utilize an electronic wedding planner, this will be critical to helping you keep your cool and keeping things organized and on-track.
After you've selected a wedding planner, the first step is identifying a venue.
Of course, this can be very tricky in a city of six million people, which can have up to 500 weddings in a single weekend.
For this reason, you must ensure you get a venue locked down early in the process.
This will help you determine your wedding date.
The next step is understanding how many people will be invited and how many will actually attend.
This has a major impact on many of the early decisions you'll make and it dramatically affects your budget if you're planning to serve food.
After you've nailed down an estimate of guests, the fun can finally begin and you can start the shopping and spending.
You'll need to select wedding invitations, a wedding gown, bridesmaids dresses, reception venue, reception menu items, wedding rings, flowers, honeymoon destination, tuxedos, and a wedding cake.
Fortunately, any good planner will walk you through each of the associated processes step by step and inform you of the appropriate timing for each decision.
The most important and often the most difficult task is to remember to stop and enjoy the process in the heat of the planning.