When my husband and I got engaged, I was so excited to plan our wedding. Being a TV producer, I pride myself on knowing how to get shit done. I already had a wedding checklist, so I thought, ‘How hard could this be?’

Ha ha ha!

Well, lesson learned. It turns out that putting a wedding weekend together that involves two religious ceremonies, (a Hindu and Jewish one) plus a rehearsal dinner, and a big celebratory party for 200-plus people is not so easy. But, I would lie if I said I didn’t have fun organizing all of the details.

Were there moments of stress? For sure. But touring the venues, meeting with florists, lighting designers and caterers was exciting because I was creating the vision for our wedding. The process very much felt like producing a show, except, in this case, the end result was our wedding.

Now that we are celebrating our four year anniversary (where does the time go?!), I wanted to share 5 things I learned when I planned our wedding, (plus some of our most memorable moments). I hope these tips help you pull together a festive event that is full of love, romance, and most importantly, reflects the two of you!

1. The location isn’t just about you

When my husband and I were first engaged, we toyed with the idea of a destination wedding. We both love the North Fork of Long Island and were keen on the idea of getting married at a vineyard.

But when we did our research, we realized that it would be a challenging destination for many of our out of town guests to get to, especially the ones flying in from overseas. On top of that, the planning would have been a bit of a logistical nightmare for us since there aren’t many large hotels on the North Fork, plus most vineyards require you to source everything you need for your event, including a kitchen for your caterers and porta-potties.

Ultimately, we decided it was more important to have all of our family and friends celebrating with us rather than getting married at a vineyard. And since our alternate location was Brooklyn, we were pretty confident we’d find an equally cool venue that felt like us and had the visual aesthetics we wanted for our big day.

2. Skip the Saturday wedding and save money

We didn’t want a long engagement so we started looking at venues right away. After we ruled out the North Fork and focused our attention on venues in Brooklyn, we quickly realized that all of the places we really liked did not have Saturday night availability for at least a year!

We did not want a long engagement so we decided to compromise. Instead of settling on a venue that neither of us liked, we decided to get married on a Sunday afternoon instead, right at sunset. We chose an event space we both loved as soon as we saw it – The Liberty Warehouse in Red Hook.

And guess what? It turns out Sunday is a much cheaper day to get married than Saturday. So even though it wasn’t our initial intention, the choice to get married on a less popular day saved us a ton of money and helped us stay on budget.

3. Music is more important than the food

The thing that Prash and I remember most about our wedding is our time on the dance floor with our family and friends. It’s where we spent the majority of the evening, dancing, laughing, and celebrating.

Even though we had a cocktail hour laden with food plus four a course meal provided by one of the top caterers in New York City, that’s not what people noticed. The one compliment we still receive to this day is how much everyone loved the energy of our wedding.

I attribute a lot of that to the DJ we hired. He knew how to set the mood and get people on their feet, dancing and having a good time. So even though this tip might be a bit controversial, I recommend that you invest your time and money in finding the right band or DJ to help create a memorable night.

4. The details matter

The aesthetic details of our wedding were very important. I’m a visual storyteller by nature, so when people walked into our wedding reception, I wanted it to feel magical and glamorous. Pulling this off was no easy feat, but two vendors helped me do it, our lighting designer and our florist.

The venue where we got married has an industrial vibe, with brick walls, large wood columns and windows overlooking NY Harbor. I wanted to bring warmth and a vintage glamor to the room while still keeping things a bit rustic.

We were able to do this with all of the little details we added. In addition to fall flowers in blush and purple colors that were in season, our florist added organic elements like succulents and berries to create lush floral arrangements. To complement the flowers, we upgraded our table linens to textured ones woven with gold thread and placed custom mercury glass candle holders of various heights around each arrangement. Our lighting designer added string lights over the dance floor and muted colors around the room. And one of my favorite touches were the hanging votives in the windows.

Walking into our reception felt like pure magic. It was exactly what I had envisioned. It was so rewarding to put so much effort into creating something and then seeing it fully executed, exceeding what I originally imagined.

So my one piece of advice is to not skimp on the details! The little things can make all the difference.

5. Invest in a good photographer and videographer

This one I learned the hard way. We absolutely loved our photographer and videographer, but I made one mistake. Since I’m a TV producer and direct and edit for a living, I decided I would have a colleague shoot footage at our wedding which I would edit after the fact. I thought I’d be so excited to put together our wedding video. But guess what…it’s four years later and it still hasn’t happened! While we have lots of great video from the day, I realize now that I should have hired someone to take care of everything for me.

If you’re not sure whether or not you want a photographer and videographer, my advice is it’s worth the expense. Our wedding day went by so fast. Now, I wish that I had a video I could watch to relive all of the memories. Yes, I have the raw footage, and I know I will get to it someday, but in hindsight, I wish I had paid someone to do it for me!

Are You Ready to Plan Your Wedding?

If you’re getting ready to plan your wedding, there’s one more piece of advice I’d like to share. Hire a day of planner to help you run things on your wedding day. I did not do this and it’s the one thing I regret. Even though I loved planning all of the details of our wedding, I could have used help with the logistics on our actual wedding day so that I could fully be in the moment, enjoying everything.

And that’s it! I hope these tips help you when you plan your own wedding!

If you’re already married, what pieces of advice would you share with others who are planning their big day? Please comment below.

And if you’re planning a wedding in Brooklyn, here’s a list of my favorite local spots you can recommend to your guests.

Happy planning!