Planning a Valentine’s Day Wedding

Valentine’s Day is the perfect day to hold a wedding ceremony. But bundled with the day’s uniquely loving atmosphere are a few problems you have to be aware of.
To hold a wedding on Valentine’s Day, book your venue long in advance. Many other couples will have the same idea, so venues may be difficult to come by. Similarly, advise guests of your wedding date further in advance than normal so they can keep their schedules clear (send your save the dates and invites earlier).
Other than this, planning a Valentine’s Day wedding is just like planning any other wedding. Below, we’ve detailed a step by step guide to planning your wedding. Afterwards, we’ve listed our favourite Valentine’s Day wedding ideas to get you off to a good start. So, read on!

Step 1: Book Your Venue

You can’t have a wedding without a venue. But if you’re planning on having a Valentine’s Day wedding, you may have to book your venue much further in advance than normal. Most couples book their venue a year in advance, which is usually sufficient for a regular date.
But if you tried booking only a year in advance, you may find that venues have no slots available for Valentine’s Day. That’s because like certain Summer dates, Valentine’s Day is immensely popular. You do have options, though, if you’re having trouble:
- Broaden your venue search. If you planned on getting married in a church, you may have to look at country houses and similar instead.
- Think about booking the year after. If your venue isn’t available for next Valentine’s Day, you may have to book for the Valentine’s Day the year after.
- Ask venues to inform you if any couples cancel their Valentine’s Day bookings. This may not leave you much time to arrange the rest of your wedding, though.
Booking for the year after isn’t ideal, but it’s your only option if there aren’t any venues available. There’s no hard and fast rule as to when you should start looking for venues… Apart from ‘as soon as possible!’

Step 2: Send Save the Dates Long in Advance

In addition to securing your venue further in advance than normal, you may also benefit from sending save the dates further in advance too.
That’s because your guests will have their own ideas for how they’d like to spend Valentine’s Day. Some would have special days out or nights in planned, and others may book holidays. So, whereas most guides suggest four months between sending save the dates and your ceremony, you should allow a longer period if your wedding is on Valentine’s Day (or any public holiday).
How long you leave it depends on the kind of wedding you’re having. Etiquette is that for a local wedding, you allow four months between sending the save the date and the date of your ceremony. This should be enough for most of your guests, as it’s rare for anybody to plan things for Valentine’s Day this far in advance. But you may want to increase this to a six month gap, just in case.

Step 3: Decide on Your Theme

With that out of the way, you can start thinking about the wedding day itself. At this point, the planning process normalises into something you’ll be more used to: picking a theme, ordering wedding stationery, sending invites and so on.
Most couples getting married on Valentine’s Day would pick a romantic theme. After all, that’s what Valentine’s Day is: romantic. So, your colour scheme could be largely red or pink, your stationery could be adorned with hearts and Cupid’s arrows… And there are lots more romantic ideas you can run with (which we’ll address in our ‘Ideas’ section below).
But don’t let the date shoehorn you into a theme you aren’t comfortable with. You should still feel free to pick any theme you like, be that a rustic theme, an elegant and formal theme, or something else altogether. You could still have ‘nods’ to the date like the odd love heart in your decorations, but you don’t have to. It’s your wedding, so it’s your choice and nobody else’s.

Step 4: Arrange Your Wedding

This final step is an easy one: arranging everything else that needs to be arranged before you can get married! This guide won’t go into this point in any depth, because the rest of the things you have to think of are all the same.
You have to order wedding stationery, formally invite guests, arrange transport and so on in the same way as you would for a wedding on any other date. This takes a lot of time and a lot of effort, unless you hire a wedding planner.
But one thing that can save you lots of time is using the Bride & Groom online wedding stationery store. We stock everything you need from save the dates and invites to Thank You cards. You can order everything you need, all in one go, at a reasonable price. And better yet, you can personalise all of your stationery before we professionally print it for you.

Valentine’s Day Wedding Ideas

With the admin out of the way, it’s time to think about how you can make your wedding day special. And if you’re getting married on Valentine’s Day, it makes sense to include as many references to romance as you possibly can! Here’s a brief list of all the easiest ways to do just that...
Set the Tone with Themed Save the Dates & Invites
Your save the dates are the first impression that anybody has of your wedding. For some people, especially not close family, they may even be the first that the guest has heard of your wedding. As such, you want to pick ones that set the tone for your day and help your guests understand what kind of wedding you’ll be having.
Finding a save the date that does that for you isn’t hard in the Bride & Groom Direct online store. Look for save the dates and invites that have:
- Red as part of their colour schemes (accented with something elegant like gold)
- Flowing, elegant scripts
- Flowery designs
The first thing your guests will notice is the romantic theme, and you can pick out similar invites to carry that feeling forward.

Valentine’s Day Wedding Ceremony

The ceremony itself is where you can really let your creativity shine. There are so many ideas you can incorporate into your ceremony, but here are a few to get you started:
- Red bridesmaid’s dresses, red wedding dresses, red ties and red pocket squares
- A pure white dress with red accents
- A romantic song to walk down the aisle to
- A bouquet made of red flowers
- Red chair covers, or red sashes around the chair covers in your venue
- Especially romantic vows
Your wedding ceremony is your own to plan, but if you like these ideas, use some or all of them. Alternatively, use them to come up with your own, more personal ideas. Whatever works for you!

Valentine’s Day Flowers for a Wedding

One of the easiest ways to create a Valentine’s Day feel is with the flowers you choose. The obvious choice is the red rose, a well-known symbol of love; and for contrast, there are lots of different colours of rose, too.
The great thing about using red roses is that you can have them decorate both your ceremony and your reception venue. So, for example, you could carry a bouquet of roses down the aisle, and have vases of roses at each of the tables in your reception. Flowers can also form part of the rest of your decorations.

Love Hearts as Party Favours.

Here’s another idea for your wedding reception. If you didn’t know, each guest at a reception gets a party favour, which is a little toy or sweet left at their place at the table for them to find. Common ideas include tiny champagne bottles filled with bubble solution, plants, or chocolates.
Instead, why not use Swizzel’s Love Hearts? They might be cheesy, but they definitely fit with the romantic theme. And better yet, they’re cheap, which means you can save a reasonable sum too.
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