You may consider us insane, for moving house, having a baby and getting married in the space of 7 months. And you wouldn’t be wrong. It would certainly have made more sense to spread the three most stressful events of One’s life out a little, but that’s just not how life goes is it? Has anyone ever actually made a 5 year plan that’s worked out how they thought it would? In the end though, there was definitely something pretty special about sharing our wedding with our gorgeous boy. 

Planning a wedding with a baby? Here are 10 top tips to make it to the end of the day in one piece! (Some we did, some we wish we did!)

1. Get a venue with accommodation on site! Baby can go to bed at their usual time and you can carry on partying! 

2. Involve them in your ceremony! We had our bridesmaid carry Oatcake down the Aisle, and also created a ‘memory box’ into which we put the first outfit he ever wore (amongst other things). We will open the box on our first anniversary and treasure it forever! 

3. Book babysitters from dinner onwards! We had babysitters for the evening and they were a godsend! However, it turns out 7 month olds aren’t fans of being stared at by 100 odd strangers who cheer and laugh loudly in their direction. Have someone who can walk them around in the buggy during the speeches, else your poor mother in law will miss the lot! 

4. Put them down. Unless you’ve got a very cuddly baby, being pass the parcel for 8 hours is NOT a fun activity for a baby! Give them a stint in a buggy or rolling around on a mat!

5. Set up a shady kids area, for said rolling around! Ours was near the ceremony area, so some parents watched the ceremony from there! 

6. Let guests bring their kids and babies! They are the highlight of a wedding, give strangers something to talk about and make for adorable photos! 

7. Distraction bags! Hit the 99p store, and stick a load of balls/toys/puppets in to keep little minds occupied during the dinner! 

8. Try out a travel cot in advance.. you probably need a degree to get those things up and down, plus they are so hard you may as well just stick the baby in a bath tub! So being extra blankets to lay on! Wrestling baby equipment? Not how you want to be spending the eve of your wedding! 

9. A breastfeeding friendly wedding dress! (A must!!). If you have a crying baby that you want to soothe or get back to sleep asap (so you can carry on partying), you definitely won’t want to be undoing 10 million tiny buttons! 

10. Make life SO easy.. we bought 8 ’emergency’ pouches of food and bottles of ready made formula as back up to the delicious home cooked food we planned on preparing. Naturally we used them all. Minimise stress, it’s just one weekend.. they’ll remember how to eat proper food again on Monday! 

11. (A bonus one for you)… Don’t also move house 4 weeks before the wedding… just if at all possible!