I'm a wedding planner. Here are 12 common pieces of advice couples should actually ignore.

• I'm a wedding planner and I've seen couples get some bad advice while planning their nuptials.
• Don't immediately book your venue or feel pressured to invite kids if you don't want them there.

As soon as you get engaged, it can feel like everyone in your world has something to say about wedding planning.

These two cents often come from a place of love — but that doesn't make hearing them any less tiresome and, in some cases, toxic. And as a wedding planner, I've seen some terrible tips and guidance.

Here are pieces of advice I've seen couples who are planning a wedding receive and why you should ignore them.

Contrary to popular belief, you shouldn't immediately book a venue

Textbook wedding advice is to book your venue(s) first so you can answer "Where are you getting married?" and "When are you getting married?"

Alas, rushing into venue tours is the no. 1 way couples end up blowing their entire budget within a month of getting engaged.

So, take a breath. Pause. Get right with what the goal is of your wedding. If you need help, try this exercise.

No, your wedding will not be ruined if you don't hire a wedding planner

Perhaps this seems ironic, coming from a wedding planner, but I mean it.

It may be messier and less organized and, depending on how well you and your partner delegate tasks like cleaning up at the end of the party, more stressful for people you care about but it will not be ruined.

Anyone who tells you differently is probably trying to sell you something.

There's nothing impolite about asking for money

The "traditional" registry of household goods was beneficial when couples didn't live together before getting married. These days, that's much less common and couples prefer to have cash instead of a new toaster.

It's OK to ask for money because what any good wedding guest wants is for you and your partner to be happy.

For my husband and I's own wedding, we tied requests for cash to specific activities ("Buy us a date night" or "Buy us a dinner at this restaurant we love").

The cash gifts all went into the same pool but this allowed people to feel like they were buying us a thing we actually wanted.

You're not setting yourselves up for failure if you have your parents pay for things

In an ideal world, yes, everyone would pay for their own weddings because this would give them 100% control over how they spent their money.

But when a wedding in the US costs, on average, tens of thousands of dollars, it's impractical and often classist to assume a couple has that kind of cash available (and if they do, that they want to spend it all on a wedding).

It's not a bad thing if you're fortunate enough to have family members who are able to contribute in a large way.

It's not rude to exclude children

It's more impolite to resent your guests who brought their kids because you didn't tell them not to.

If you're looking for a nice middle option, provide childcare at the venue or in a secure location like a hotel room with a vetted childcare worker.

You aren't doomed to look bad in photos if you do your own hair and makeup

There's no need to feel weird about doing your own hair and makeup, especially if you know what you like.

For my wedding, I hired a professional stylist to give me a one-hour lesson on how to do my makeup a few months prior. I wanted to know what to buy and how to give myself a little extra polish.

This worked great for my needs and my budget. I also really like how I look in my wedding photos.

Having a destination wedding doesn't mean mean you can invite more people because you don't think they'll come

Do not use your destination wedding as a way to invite people you don't actually want to attend your wedding in person.

At least one of them will surprise you and come and then you're stuck together in a faraway location.

Weekday weddings can be worth it

They aren't common, which is a real shame because a weekday wedding is a gift. Couples will save thousands on the rental cost and have a wider variety of vendor options.

It's also not as much of an inconvenience for guests as people think — sometimes they have to take at least one day off work to go to a wedding because they're traveling.

Overall, prioritize the needs of the people you must have at your wedding but don't immediately rule out a Tuesday because it's a Tuesday.

You don't have to invite everyone to the post-rehearsal dinner

In recent years, some post-rehearsal meals have turned into mini weddings.

For some couples, this brings a lot of value — they want two hours of welcome drinks the night before they get married because they have a lot of out-of-towners whom they never get to see.

For other couples, the expectation saps the fun out of what, at its core, is meant as a way to keep hanging out with the people you just hung out with at the rehearsal. I've seen truly excellent post-rehearsal meals done where it's the core group of five or 10 people all eating pizza in a living room.

This does not have to be a big thing if you don't want it to be because remember: You're also hosting a wedding.

Assigned seating is perfectly acceptable

Please tell your guests where to sit. This can be as loose as assigning a table number and they pick their seat or as clear as assigning a particular seat at a table.

Bonus points if you give people the tools to introduce themselves to one another. An idea I particularly like comes from experience designer Julie Comfort of The Experiential Wedding: Assign a host for each table.

Provide each host a list of three to five icebreaker questions to help people discover the commonalities that inspired you to group them together.

If you're getting hair and/or makeup done professionally, you do not have to pay for everyone

This is a lovely gift if you can afford it but if you can't, that's OK.

Just be clear about this so people can know what to expect. In some cases, people are even relieved because they have a certain way they like to style their hair or do their makeup.

This is YOUR day, but don't let it get to your head

The core premise of this popular advice is sound: This is your day in that it's OK to ask for what you and your partner want and set boundaries you two need to feel the most joy on your wedding day.

Unfortunately, this is rarely how people use this advice. Instead, they weaponize it. "This is YOUR day" becomes shorthand for justifying actions a couple takes that don't take into account the humanity of their guests or their vendors.

For example, "This is your day and the fact that your bridesmaid broke her arm and needs to wear a cast in your wedding photos shows how terrible she is!" or "This is your day and the fact that your photographer asks to be fed during an eight-hour shift is cause for a bad review!" (Both of these are true stories. Don't let them be true for you.)