[00:00:07] Speaker A: This is the EMG podcast.
All right. Welcome back once again to another episode of the EMG podcast. I am Michael Sawville, here with my partner, Mr. Michael Carleo. Mike, how we doing today?
[00:00:23] Speaker B: Readjusting my microphone so that you can see my mouth.
[00:00:25] Speaker A: Very nice. I told him we can't often see his mouth, which is a good thing for me, but a bad thing for the people who are watching. And today, we are talking about what you should be doing. Got a little horse. Take two. What you should be doing if you are twelve months out from your wedding day.
[00:00:42] Speaker B: Yes. So we're going to remix the one that we did in 2019. Well, we didn't do it. Tom and Maddie did it. And then we'll go through some of the stuff that we were discussing, pre production meeting for this episode and go over what has changed. Right. Because we've been doing this now for a few episodes. So we highly encourage you to listen to the twelve to 18 month out, the further you are out, and then listen to this one. But if you're starting at this point, we have some things for people that don't need that one because you have a short date.
[00:01:12] Speaker A: Starting with the overarching theme of a year out from your wedding is like the planning sweet spot.
[00:01:17] Speaker B: Right.
[00:01:17] Speaker A: It's the time where you're far enough out where you can still make some heavy considerations, but you are also sort of now coming inside of what we call that short date window.
[00:01:27] Speaker B: Right.
[00:01:27] Speaker A: Like, it's time to start getting things done. And I would say a good starting point, right. Is to finalize your guest list. We had talked about how guest list really necessitates or precipitates, I should say, a lot of what happens the day of your venue. You're this, you're that. So, like, finalize your guest list and figure out what your numbers are looking like. For sure.
[00:01:47] Speaker B: Right. Because in the last episode, we spoke about. That affects everything else. Right. And you made some good points. I think this is the sweet spot, maybe the most stressful spot, because you're far enough out to start finalizing ideas, but you're close enough where you need to start making decisions. Yeah. For. Right. So a lot of this stuff is going to be a little bit of a hybrid approach. We have some things where you start getting some ideas together and then some things that you need to be making decisions on last episode, they talked about, like, wedding bands. Mike and I, we talked about this. That's the running joke with our video podcast. Mike and I have the same exact wedding band.
[00:02:21] Speaker A: Put them together.
[00:02:21] Speaker B: We're not married.
[00:02:22] Speaker A: Let's put them together. Same wedding band.
[00:02:24] Speaker B: Just click the camera, clink it.
[00:02:26] Speaker A: Captain America.
[00:02:27] Speaker B: Yeah. Sorry, you said the guest list, the save the dates, those usually go out pretty, like right now. Yeah. Twelve months.
[00:02:34] Speaker A: Once you have your guest list, obviously, and, God, collect addresses, get a Google spreadsheet, open them up and save everything you can, then create labels from there. It's very simple, but save the dates out for sure.
Mike and I, I don't know what's happening today with my voice a little bit of. Oh, that's, that's a lovely thought. Ph, honorable mention. Phlegm.
[00:02:58] Speaker B: No.
[00:02:58] Speaker A: So with the save the dates, a lot of people wait until about like six or seven months out too close. Your actual invitations need to go three to four months out.
[00:03:06] Speaker B: Right.
[00:03:07] Speaker A: You and I maybe are a bit different, we think in terms of years, but I don't think it's a bad idea to get your save the date out around this time.
[00:03:14] Speaker B: Twelve months out. Little caveat here. I never sent out save the dates because I got engaged eleven months from my wedding date. So my invitations went out a little earlier.
[00:03:23] Speaker A: So you just kind of split.
[00:03:24] Speaker B: Right. So I split the difference. So I didn't do say the dates because I was eleven months out, basically twelve months. So if you're in this kind of like, Vortex where you have something that you're close to, I would suggest sending out the invitations five months in advance. Five to six months.
[00:03:39] Speaker A: Now we talk about making decisions when you were twelve months out from your wedding. You need to start selecting your wedding vendors. If you haven't done so already.
[00:03:46] Speaker B: Yeah. This is the decision part.
[00:03:47] Speaker A: This is the decision part. And it's not a time where you should be dragging your feet. Meaning if you're reaching out to your photographer, your entertainment team, your videographer, any of your wedding vendors don't think you have a lot of time to like, oh, I'm going to start reaching out and take some meetings and I'll make a decision in a month or two. The best vendors get scooped up first. And so when you are twelve months out, if they are left, you should jump on immediately the vendors that you want to work with.
[00:04:12] Speaker B: Big time. Yeah. Now to go to the opposite, the two ideas that you can do is definitely have fun with making your wedding registry.
This is like if you're doing a bridal shower or a wedding shower, things like that. Ashley and I, we were on our way to another wedding for a friend's weding in Florida when we were planning this point of the planning process. We chose target. Amazon is really good. Bed bath beyond is not doing anymore. Right. Because they're, I don't think they're, they're going out of business or whatever. Those were three that we did and have fun with it. Right. Do things of where you are in your life or where you think you're going to be. Ashley and I knew that we were going to be moving within a few years, so we did things for our future house. What did you guys do?
[00:04:57] Speaker A: We did a lot of kitchen stuff. We didn't have a lot of good kitchen stuff, so we did a lot of that.
That was most of what stores bed bath and beyond at the time. We did pottery barn, some of those other. We got a lot of good bed sheets.
[00:05:15] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, definitely jump on. Don't skip on sheets.
[00:05:19] Speaker A: 300 thread count or bucks.
[00:05:21] Speaker B: You know what I mean?
[00:05:23] Speaker A: Egyptian cotton. That's what we need.
One cool thing Tony did was, I don't know, the website, but obviously if you're listening to this, you're more immersed in the wedding world than at least the registry part of it than I am right now. You can register in multiple places, but then there's websites like wedding wire than not that bring everything together. So that's nice because then you don't pigeonhole yourself. Oh, Creighton barrel was another big one.
[00:05:45] Speaker B: Oh, smart. Yeah. Which is very cool.
[00:05:46] Speaker A: Really nice.
[00:05:47] Speaker B: And then the other one was start having fun with ideas of where you want to go for your honeymoon, whether that's immediately or a little bit after. Both you and I went on honeymoons way after the wedding. I couldn't go immediately because we had a wedding the day after. I didn't go. I did both.
[00:06:02] Speaker A: You got married in November and went away in January, right?
[00:06:05] Speaker B: No, I went away in March.
[00:06:06] Speaker A: Oh, march.
[00:06:08] Speaker B: Remember, Covid?
[00:06:08] Speaker A: Yeah, whole thing. No, we went away right away.
[00:06:10] Speaker B: Oh, that's right. And you split it up.
[00:06:12] Speaker A: We did like a part two later in the summer. That wasn't really the honeymoon. We just called it that.
[00:06:16] Speaker B: But I would have whatever reason to go back to Greece.
[00:06:19] Speaker A: I do have a tip of the week. I don't know how to use this.
[00:06:20] Speaker B: I got. All you got to do is relax. Tip of the week.
[00:06:25] Speaker A: Listen, tip of the week, honeymoon travel. Twelve months out. You have enough to plan with your wedding right now for sure. Use a travel agent if you are an EMG client. We have a partner in better together travel that specializes in Honeymoon travel. But even if you're in Wisconsin right now and you're not using EMG, Wisconsin find a good travel agent, you have enough to plan. I was someone who always planned my own travel. I loved doing it. And then I used a travel agent for the first time. I will never book another trip for myself ever again. So when you are twelve months out from your wedding, you have enough stress going on. Get yourself a travel agent and take out some of that stress from planning the honeymoon.
[00:07:03] Speaker B: What a great tip of the week. I love it. So you're going to fade that out. You're going to press this button.
[00:07:07] Speaker A: There's too many rules.
[00:07:07] Speaker B: You're going to fade it back up because now we're getting to the new stuff.
[00:07:10] Speaker A: There are too many rules. All right. So when Mike says new stuff, we recorded this episode four years ago, three years ago, four years ago. So we have obviously the benefit of time and Hindsight here. So, Mike, what is sort of the biggest takeaway here for number one?
[00:07:26] Speaker B: The biggest takeaway is that now everything has shifted, I think six months earlier. Right. So when you're saying book your vendors, you're lucky if the really good ones are left a year out. Right. But there are five points that we came up with. I think the first one is that kind of goes. It's a sleeper pick. You have to book. Sleep. Yeah, sleeper pick. You have to book your rehearsal dinner space because that's a venue. Right. And whether you're doing that during the week or if you're getting married on a Saturday or Sunday, that's most likely going to be the day before or two days before, which means it's on a Friday or Saturday, popular dates. Right. So you have to book that out pretty quickly, especially if you have a big wedding party and you have a lot of family that's flying in.
I had a small wedding party and not a lot of family flying in. So I think, what was it, like 20 people? You had like 60.
[00:08:18] Speaker A: Yeah. Another reason why you got to figure out your guest count your guest list.
[00:08:22] Speaker B: Right.
[00:08:23] Speaker A: If you have a big wedding party, everybody will have like we did.
[00:08:25] Speaker B: Plus one.
[00:08:26] Speaker A: Plus one. So the numbers kind of skyrocket for sure. Number two, you want to finalize your wedding block for your hotel. Twelve months out, you need to get your hotel block sort of situated. Another sleeper tip here.
Underestimate the amount of rooms that you need.
[00:08:43] Speaker B: Yes, always.
[00:08:44] Speaker A: I was shocked at how many people did not stay. And we had a lot of out of town people coming in. And when you call a hotel to make your weding room block, you have to guarantee them a certain amount of rooms.
[00:08:53] Speaker B: Well, it depends on the hotel. Right. So my hotel did complimentary and guaranteed. Right. So the complimentary one was you can ask for 20 blocks and if 15 book, you don't have to worry about those extra five. But you get less benefits from it if you guarantee the room block. Like, say we're definitely going to get that. That's going to happen. And the reason why, because it has some really cool perks out of it. My hotel ended up giving us an entire party bus, two party buses for shuttles back and forth from the venue. I had a lot of people stay because my after party was at the bar at the hotel. So we ended up having two full shuttle buses that were complementary because of how many rooms that we ended up booking. So it affects other things. You had limousines and also shuttles, right? Oh, no, we drove.
[00:09:42] Speaker A: We drove neither. We had neither.
[00:09:43] Speaker B: Yeah, but no, you had a limousine from the. For us, the church.
[00:09:46] Speaker A: That was it. But not for after the weding.
[00:09:48] Speaker B: Yeah, got it.
[00:09:49] Speaker A: So definitely jump on that. For sure. Number three, this one is near and dear to my heart. You have to start to figure out your dress tucks situation or your suits, whatever you're getting. Start that process and don't wait so often. So many people wait until the last minute. Right.
Mostly on the guy side.
[00:10:09] Speaker B: Right.
[00:10:09] Speaker A: You're going to want to make sure again, the earlier you start making decisions in this topic or anything else, the more options that you have.
[00:10:18] Speaker B: Well, the reason why this one, we're using this as a particular topic that we wanted to talk about is because when we went through it, the lead time of getting those suits and tuxes, it could be pretty far because of fabrics and things like that. It may not be in. So I'm going to put a little, another little plug in here that buying versus renting. Tommy did a blog on buying versus renting for tuxes and suits back in like what, 2017 or 2018? Like our most hit page on the website, we both bought and we still utilize the suits that we have. But your lead time was pretty long. My lead time was extremely long. I think we started doing ours twelve months out. We didn't get our suits in until like six months out. Yeah.
[00:11:06] Speaker A: I mean, on the buy versus rent thing, for guys listening to this, we are pretty biased. We always buy. We get a lot of use out of our stuff. Now, I understand some people don't wear a tux more than once in their life.
[00:11:18] Speaker B: Yeah, but it's not always a tux. Right.
[00:11:19] Speaker A: But if you're getting a suit, definitely buy. The price differential is nominal. Is very nominal and with custom or purchasing, you can get it made to fit you better and you get more use out of it and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[00:11:31] Speaker B: We're pretty biased. Yeah, the price difference is so small, it's worth doing it and you get multiple uses out of it. Right.
[00:11:38] Speaker A: I forgot what number we're at now.
[00:11:39] Speaker B: I think we're on number five. We're on last one.
[00:11:41] Speaker A: Number five.
[00:11:43] Speaker B: Okay, you're killing it. Five.
[00:11:44] Speaker A: That was probably number four.
[00:11:46] Speaker B: No, we're at number five.
[00:11:47] Speaker A: Okay, cool. You're going to want to start finalizing your activities, right? Meaning, like for the weekend, your wedding weekend. What do you have going on? Right. Is there welcome drinks, rehearsal dinner? Are we doing a brunch or a breakfast the morning of the day after? What does that whole weekend look like?
[00:12:06] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, my really good friend Matt Priori got married in June. He wanted to golf. So you have to really kind of start finalizing those ideas of what's going to happen. Because a trend that is now turning into an actual thing that's happening during these weddings now is that it's not just the day, it's the weekend, it's the entire week. There's a lot of things that are going on. So it's not just the day of, it's the day before, it's a day after, it's a day after that. People are making complete weekends out of these things where the next day is a brunch and the day after that is activities and celebrating still and doing lunches and stuff.
[00:12:42] Speaker A: We work in events and I opted to do. We did a breakfast the next morning and then it was like, goodbye, everyone. We needed a little downside.
[00:12:50] Speaker B: That's three days in a row, right? Four days in a row. If you count all the stuff with all the travel that came to your house and your wife's family starts to.
[00:12:58] Speaker A: Get into town earlier, so you do something the night before the rehearsal dinner, then the rehearsal dinner, then the wedding. So that's it. If you're twelve months out, you should end listening to this episode right now and start. You got to start moving and planning, and we will see you back here for the next one, which is five to eight months out, correct?
[00:13:14] Speaker B: Yeah. Six months out, actually. Six months out. Okay.
[00:13:17] Speaker A: I don't know what's happening here.
[00:13:18] Speaker B: Yeah, he just listens and sits in.
[00:13:20] Speaker A: And does everything and don't remember or please do remember that number five. Nope, that's not the right button.
[00:13:26] Speaker B: What are you looking for?
[00:13:27] Speaker A: Honorable mention. Fleb phlegm.
[00:13:30] Speaker B: Bye.
[00:13:33] Speaker A: You can find
[email protected] or on Instagram at elegant music group.
