There are two ways for wedding preparation. One way is the dream wedding way, try your best to prepare a perfect wedding. Search many places around before deciding what is the perfect decoration, the perfect dresses, the perfect reception, the perfect banquet, basically everything has to be perfect. The pro is you will have the wedding you truly desired if everything goes as planned. The con is Murphy’s law always gets into your way. Unless you have a deep pocket to hire a really good wedding planner or have lots of free time to plan the wedding, the dream wedding way usually result in lots of stress.

The second way is the engineering wedding way. In term of engineering, everything has to be practical, and the result is judged only by the end.  Having the perfect or having a pretty good wedding makes no difference to most of the guests.  In the perception of the guests, a wedding is yet another wedding, unless it is really screwed up. Like studying for exam, it is quite easy to get 90%, but it takes a lot more extra work to get the remaining 10%. The same principle also applies to wedding planning. It is relatively easy to get a pretty good wedding, you can reuse the experience and tips from friends married ahead of you. However, trying to customize the wedding to be your perfect wedding is like getting the remaining 10%, it takes lots of time.

The return of investment for a perfect wedding does not justify its cost. Probably other than the couple themselves, no guests would pay any attention to the small details that make the wedding a the prefect wedding.