Your wedding will arrive before you even know it. After months, if not years, of planning, you’ll suddenly be only one month away. This month is an important time, as there are dozens of little things you need to do to make sure everything goes according to plan. Here are some of the most important to take care of first.

Perhaps the most important thing you need to do is send out your wedding invitations. You should already have planned them, designed them, printed them, and have them sitting in addressed envelopes stuffed away safely in a box somewhere in your house. Once you hit the one month mark, it’s time to send them out. It might be a good idea to do this a little earlier too, so that you aim to have the invitations ARRIVE at the on month mark. Make sure that all the addresses are up to date, and that anybody who requires a little more time to get theirs (such as people who live overseas) gets theirs mailed out earlier.

Once they are sent out, you’re going to be spending the rest of the month following up with people and receiving their confirmations in the mail. Throughout this last stretch, make sure you block out some time every day to handle this matter. While you’re checking people off the list, it’s a good idea to arrange and rearrange all your seating charts as needed as people inform you of a plus one or not, and whether they are attending or not.

During these last few weeks you’re going to have the final fittings for yourself and the wedding party. People’s bodies change, and a lot of people work extra hard to lose weight prior to their wedding, so earlier measurements just won’t be accurate. This is also a good time to finish up any arrangements or purchases that need to be made for your party and guests. Make sure you have your wedding party favors and wedding guest favors purchased and safely stored. Make sure you’ve worked out any accessories that everyone will be wearing, and that you have enough for everyone involved.

Finally, there are a lot of little official things to take care of at this stage. This is the time to make sure that all the newspapers have your announcement, and if they don’t then this is the time to send it out. This is the time that you want to make sure you have your wedding license, and if you don’t to put in your paperwork for it in time to get it by the wedding. You’ll probably start receiving your gifts, so you want to track them and start putting together your thank you notes. You need to finalize your agenda and schedules for the days before and the day of. Finally, you want to confirm everyone and every location that’s involved in the affair- from the rehearsal dinner space to the location of the ceremony.

Because there can be so many things to take care of and check on, it’s a good idea to make a really detailed calendar with all these dates and things to check on them. If you’re working with a wedding planner, then they should take care of this and have it available for you. Make sure you have a copy, and double check it at every chance you get to ensure that no little detail gets messed up that could derail everything.

Aaron Hu has authored on an extensive range of topics related to the wedding industry. If you are looking for wedding guest favors, E-WeddingFavors.com has the biggest selection available. You will also find Unique Wedding Favors and much more, all at very affordable prices.

One sad thing about gifting newborns is that the intended receivers of the gift never really get around appreciating it or understanding it as a reflection of your fondness for them. This is especially bad if you are a close relative like the baby’s grandmother or aunt or cousin and know in the years to come you both would share a very special relation to be nurtured with love and care. Besides, a huge sum of money is often spent in gifting babies on baby showers, baby christening, etc. It surely makes sense if you want to give something that not only looks imaginative and useful, but also deals with these conflicts. This is where the concept of baby keepsake comes in.

Baby keepsake is a gift you give to the baby, or rather hand over to the baby’s parents such that they can preserve it for years to come. They can be simple show pieces that can be kept for decades, or usable items that do not tend to get replaced easily on a daily basis.

Nowadays, we have innumerable choices of gifts that can be used as baby keepsakes, which means that you never have to compromise on what you really want. Some of the favorite things are products made in silver with messages, baby’s name or simply the date of birth embossed into them. This could be anything like a silver coin, bracelet, spoon, pendant, etc, that could be stored for generations to come by the family and always cherished.

In case you wish to be a little more unconventional, you can gift fancy gift items too, such as a mould for baby hand and foot print, baby carriage messengers, photo albums and frames that store a number of pictures of the baby during their period of growth, and store innumerable memories.

You may also like to think about baby keepsake books where the parents could write about their little one and cherish for years to come. Because believe it or not, most of the times people tend to forget about flower bouquets and baby apparels and bath sets that you gifted. But nobody ever forgets it if you give them a keepsake!

There are a million and a half things to take in to consideration when planning and putting together your wedding. Do you want a priest or a non-denominational public official? Do you want to get married inside or outside? What wedding gifts are you going to ask for and what wedding accessories are you going to wear? One of the most important aspects you should start planning as early as possible is your wedding’s music.

Music is one of those things that we don’t necessarily think of first when planning our marriages. After all, while we all know that the music is important, it just seems like there are so many other higher-priority things to take in to consideration- like the dress or the venue. Still, the music you choose will set the tone for the whole affair, and affect people emotionally far more than you might think.

Consider how music works in movies. It keeps things moving, it transports the characters around and connects them even when they are nowhere near each other, and most importantly it carries the emotions of what you’re seeing. It cues you in on how to feel and what to feel, and it does all this while being mostly imperceptible. Most of the time when watching a movie we don’t think about how great the soundtrack is until after it’s over. All of these things are true for music at weddings too. The music paces the ceremony, it creates subtle and not so subtle shifts in feeling as the different phases of the ceremony move along, it keeps everything moving forward and feeling propulsive, and it cues you in and deepens what you are feeling. While it might just go on in the background, the music you choose will have a significant effect on how you and everyone else feel about the whole day.

One of the biggest decisions you’ll have to make regarding the music is whether you want to go the traditional route, or whether you want to do something new and different. If you’re going for a traditional wedding, then some sort of small group of stringed instruments will work best. You can go for a full quartet, or you can do a smaller combination such as a cello and a guitar. Whatever you choose, just make sure they are versed in and comfortable playing the standards such as Canon in D. Most string players will be just fine with those songs, though sometimes it’s best to simply hire a band that is accustomed to playing weddings.

If you decide to go the non-traditional route, just make sure that the whole ceremony reflects this. There’s not much sense in having everyone walking calmly down the aisle in their finest formal wear, if the music is going to be hard rock or punk.

Choosing you’re the band for your reception is a little bit easier. You really only need to make sure about one thing with them- that they can play both low key music and fast dance music. You want some low key contemporary background music playing while everyone is eating and mingling and talking, but you want to make sure there’s something to dance to as the party picks up. Most jazz or swing bands are great for this, as they can easily tackle both sides of the musical spectrum.

Aaron Hu has authored on an extensive range of topics related to the wedding industry. If you are looking for wedding gifts, E-WeddingFavors.com has the biggest selection available. You will also find Bridal Shower Favors and much more, all at very affordable prices.