My husband and I were lucky enough to get married in the winter of 2019, a simpler time where COVID didn’t exist and 'pandemic' was a word I would not be using in a sentence.

I can’t imagine how difficult it must be for 2022 brides, with the added stress of having backup plans to reschedule, downsize or cancel their dream wedding.

Wedding planning is already a stressful place, with a million elements to bring together and the pressure of social media on top of it all (for me, this was particularly true, as I was working full time in social media at the time of our wedding).

Watch: The things people never say at weddings. Post continues below.

We were married within seven months of becoming engaged, and as a perfectionist who regularly has a computer-crashing-amount of Google Chrome tabs open at one time, I was determined to make my planning as efficient and stress-free as possible.

I embedded the following two things into my mind in order to achieve this, and I believe they are applicable to a bride pre, during, and post-COVID:

1. Advice I read in the very early days from a bridal mag. Be decisive; it's so easy to screenshot/save too many ideas and become overwhelmed with choice (as I mentioned, opening too many tabs is literally the story of my life so this was like, the most helpful and resonating thing I could have read).

2. The only thing that matters on your wedding day is that you get to marry your best friend! This was so true and helpful for me, that I held it close to my heart and put it in my wedding speech.

Yes, both of the above points are very important, but we all know the finer details are cool too. Below is my unconventional guide to the perfect wedding, with tips which are applicable whether your day will involve two or 200 guests.

Organisation and planning.

I am an obsessive Trello user and struggled a lot to manage the wedding board I created, which once populated with to-do’s stretched about 1km wide.

My favourite website/app, Trello, became way too much to handle, so I migrated to my second favourite program, Google Sheets - best decision ever.

Google Sheets allowed me to share it with my husband, and others involved in the planning process who could make live changes.

Google Sheets also allowed me to go through and filter by different status. I chose 'to do, in progress, canning, completed'. When something was completed, I refreshed the filter, and the list became smaller. #HACKS!

Other important Google Sheet tabs to manage ourselves/everyone else included:

The Hens.

Whilst this didn’t apply to me, a timing element worth noting is, if possible, space out your hens/bucks more than two weeks prior to your wedding date.

This ensures no one comes down with COVID from your respective parties and, depending on your state government restrictions and isolation policies, no one is stuck at home unable to attend your wedding as a result of the hens/bucks (most importantly you!).

Wedding day survival kit.

Throughout the planning process I added to an ongoing 'wedding day survival kit' list, which included:

Lipstick.

If makeup is something you take seriously, choosing lipstick is a task that you do not want to wind up doing on the day of the wedding.

I made dedicated trips into Mecca and the Chanel counter at DJs and struggled hard to choose with the unnatural lighting and overwhelming options.

In the end, I went with my all-time favourite Cha