Entered a lull at 5 months out - what are we forgetting?

I would figure out if you want to hire hair and makeup artist or if you want to just do it yourself. If you want to hire someone I would do that ASAP. As for the officiant, if you will need to check the rules where you live to determine who can perform the ceremony. I would also start looking at bridesmaids dresses.

I would start ordering dresses/suits soon as well as your accessories. You can work on designing your invitations and ordering them soon as you never know how long production and shipping will take.

How about booking a honeymoon?

Favors? Menus? Programs? Welcome bags?

Gifts for the bridal party and parents?

Good luck!!

View Quoted Comment

Thanks! I've been trying to communicate with hair and special events MUAs in our area but they've been super busy and not great at getting back to me. They said it would be calmer after the holidays, so that's high on my list of details to sort out in January. It's been super frustrating though!

We are familiar with the officiant rules in our state, and hoping to pay for one of our friends to become a Justice of the Peace so they can officiate our ceremony (it seems like the most official, least cumbersome, non-religious option we have in NH). We did ask one friend, but he isn't eligible, so now we have to figure out who else we might want to ask.

My MOH (my only bridesmaid) lives in a different state so I haven't seen her in person since my FH and I got engaged, but I've chatted with her a bunch and given her some general guidelines and looked at dresses online with her. Since she's my only bridesmaid there is really no pressure for her to match anyone, so I'm fairly confident we can get her in something quickly if needed. I am hoping to visit my home state and go shopping with her and my mom for dresses soon!

Thanks for the suggestions for next steps!

View Quoted Comment You're welcome! We wanted a non-religious wedding as well so I looked online for a celebrant. I ended up hiring someone that was a major. I wanted to make sure I hired someone with experience as opposed to someone with no to little experience. He is the one that wrote the ceremony script. If you have a friend do it then you will need to write the ceremony script which to me sounds like extra work I wouldn't want to do.

View Quoted Comment

Thanks!

My FH wants to do a trip with his groomsmen to the city (Boston is about 2 hours away) to get fitted for suits. They are ordering made-to-measure suits through Indochino, so the turnaround time is only 2 weeks!

Ugh, lots to do still, I see!

View Quoted Comment

That's a good point. I do really want our ceremony to be unique to us, but some guidance would probably be helpful. I feel like I'm trying to balance having a personal connection with the person marrying us vs having the person who marries us having experience officiating weddings. It just feels like it would be so much more special for the person who says "I now pronounce you husband and wife" to be someone who knows us vs a stranger. I was thinking our best man would be a fantastic officiant, but we also have a friend (not someone we are close to, but someone we know and kind of see at parties regularly and stuff) who is a lawyer and a JP and has definitely officiated weddings before. I think I'll try to ask him for some insight!

Sounds like you’ve got a pretty good plan set and know what else needs to be done!


Honestly just enjoy the calm lol. Between like 8 months and 3 months I felt like I was doing nothing and was itching to get more planning done. Then as soon as 3 months hit, it got CRAZY. I felt like I was doing something wedding-related with every free moment. It was fun, but exhausting lol. But there’s some things you just can’t do until it gets closer, so that’s the way it goes.
Enjoy the calm while it lasts! And really just make tons of lists (what needs to get done, when you should start working on it, and when you need to be done with it by). That’ll help you a lot in a few months.

Have you picked out a baker yet for a cake or is it included in the catering? Sometimes bakers book up months in advance.

View Quoted Comment That definitely makes sense about not wanting a stranger to officiate your wedding. We didn't really have a choice. Our officiant made sure the ceremony was unique to us. He had us fill out a very detailed questionnaire in order to create the ceremony script. Our ceremony included the story of how we met and how my husband proposed. We also had a sand ceremony because that was something I wanted included.

View Quoted Comment

Our venue does catering and will do our dessert and/or cake. We haven't picked out any food items yet but it's pretty much all included with our price and literally everyone who is familiar with our vendor won't stop raving about the food. I don't even like cake that much but her cakes are beautiful and supposed to be super tasty, so I think we'll actually end up with at least a small cutting cake for us. We're pretty excited about that part!

We are hoping to finalize food in the next few months (one of my FH's best friends from HS works for a wine distributor and is going to gift us all our wine, so we want to make sure we finalize our menu with enough time for him to pick pairings and get the wine in).

View Quoted Comment

Yea, that's what I'm worried about. I definitely want to do any of the things we can do earlier because I know in a couple months it will feel full tilt. But I'm excited and know it will all come together!

View Quoted Comment

That's really cool. I talked to my FH last night and we are going to try to get in touch with our lawyer/JP friend and get his take on the whole thing. We aren't super close to him and he's not invited to our wedding as a guest, but I'd also be fine with hiring him and then we'd have some middle ground - someone who knows us a bit but is also a "pro". Getting some advice from him would probably help at the very least. I do feel like some other vendors feel a bit like friends at this point, so if we hired the right officiant I suppose it could feel the same.

View Quoted Comment

The only thing I will say about talking to him about the wedding is that he might then expect to be invited even if you decide not to hire him. Also, hiring friends can become messy very quickly. I hope you are able to work all of this out.

View Quoted Comment

That's good to think about. We aren't really close to him at all, so I don't think he'd expect an invite - we don't even have his contact info and would have to get it from a mutual friend. To be fair, I'm not sure having him officiate would feel any more personal than just hiring a really competent pro with a good questionnaire, and we'd want to pay him because he's not a friend enough to just do it for us as a favor, so it's not like we'd save that much money vs hiring someone else. Definitely something to keep in mind!

View Quoted Comment

They do have wedding scripts online so if you wanted to hire a friend that is able to become an officiant and perform the ceremony that is an option, but I would just be concerned about the extra work that would create. You ultimately have to do what is best for you