Grad school and wedding planning

I completed a second masters and planned 100% of our wedding by myself. As long as you have enough time you can balance both.

I did a huge part of the planning while finishing up my grad program. I was lucky and had a great assistantship where I had plenty of time on my hands to research stuff online when my homework was done. It's doable but you should look at your schedule closely and talk with FH. Like other PP have said, it seems silly to put career goals on hold for a one day event.

I am, have been, and will be. I haven't had any issues, and don't foresee any. It really depends on how much pressure you're going to put on yourself.

We got engaged during the last 2 months of grad school. I was beyond stressed because we were trying to pick a venue and set a date. Once I graduated it's been easy peezy. I work full-time, but nothing compared to working full-time, grad school, and wedding planning. FH is in grad school now and will graduate next summer. He handles stress so much better than me. Plus I've done most of the planning, as most brides do

Wow, very inspirational stories ladies/gents, makes me feel positive about going ahead and starting it, if it gets too tuff I could always take a semester off.

I'm in a physician assistant program and our plan was always to wait to get married until after I graduate (this December). I'm glad we did. Planning during clinicals hasn't been too bad. I'm out of state but I have an all inclusive venue which has made things so much easier since I just have to make choices from a limited list of vendors. I think it would've been really difficult to plan during my first year when i was in the classroom everyday vs now in clinicals for sure. My sister is in her MSN FNP program right now and working full time and I know she's really busy but I think if it was all inclusive it probably wouldn't be too bad. It also helps that you're having a long engagement and can spread things out!

I'm in grad school and we got engaged at the end of my first year in April. I took the summer to get the important things done like booking the venue, making the guest list, and buying my dress. We're getting married next summer. Fall semester started early August for us so I took a break from planning and am now doing small things on the weekends. You can use school breaks like winter break to go into high gear. I wouldn't recommend taking a semester off though. The further you are into your program when you get married the more time you can spend with FH and not on school work.

I'm on my 4th month of school, recently engaged and decided not to get married until I was done.

I'm not in grad school so grain of salt here but

I think it is doable. Especially if you plan as much as you can before you start up in January. If you get venue and big vendors out of the way then you can do one wedding task at time in-between school. You have some time with your wedding date too so you won’t be in a crunch period right away. Good luck and happy planning!

Admitting I haven't read the other comments.

I'm in my second year of grad school, I started a year after we got engaged and I was working 60-80 hour weeks. Fucking sucked. I did wedding planning only on weekends and that was even more difficult because, hello, all the vendors work weekends. So I had to do a lot of phone calls from the car during my commute. It wasn't until I quit my job I was able to actually see my FH for more than 30minutes a day, let alone plan a wedding.

It really depends on what you can handle. If your job demands aren't shitty like mine were, and you are able to give your full attention to your studies while planning on the side, then go for it! I suggest starting small though, take just a class or two to get the feel for it. Good luck!

ETA last week of this grad school semester screws with my grammar...

Current med student here! FH was awesome enough to wait to propose until after I took my first board exam so that I wouldn't be distracted from studying. Our date is about 6 weeks before I'll graduate. I would recommend talking to an advisor at your program to see when would be easier times to get married for your specific program. A longer engagement also helps. I've been trying to book about one vendor per month from now until the new year. Being able to spread the work out helps. A few women in my class did have engagements less than 1 year. They made it work, but some definitely did better than others with time management, and they suffered the academic consequences. FH and I are excited to get married, but we understand that time consuming small wedding details and Pinterest projects aren't worth risking my academic success. Our wedding may not be as unique and personalized as others, but we won't be any less married. Prioritize!!

If I start in January, I would graduate a week before we get married

My fiancé proposed after my second year of law school. We had talked a lot about our wedding before this and I told him I wouldn't be getting married until after law school, after the bar exam, and after I had a job lined up. The result? A very long engagement. We decided to plan our wedding for September 2017 - 28 months after our engagement. This way, I could focus on school and the bar exam and still have one year to plan the wedding. I can't imagine planning the wedding during law school but now that I am done with law school I am happy with the decision.

OP since you start in January I think you could plan the majority of your wedding now. If you'll graduate before you get married, it will be a bit stressful since it's a week apart. However, it'll be awesome not having to worry about studying and homework your first few months of being married. I'm in a PhD program and we're off in the summer so that's why I chose my date so we could have some time together without school. It will suck once I start school again and won't be able to cuddle up under him all day haha!

Yep, only you know the answer. I'm in my second to last semester of grad school - trying to finish classes and my thesis, while wedding planning. I take it in bits and pieces. I have days where I plan but you need to manage your time efficiently, because I also work full time and on call as well.

Ha - try being a professor and planning a wedding! No taking a semester off or skipping classes allowed.

It's just basic time management and setting priorities, not rocket science. Return emails and phone calls during evenings. Set a certain amount of work to get done before you fall into the WW/Pinterest black hole. Insist vendor meetings be after hours or on weekends (seriously, people with 9-5 jobs can't make meetings in the middle of the afternoon either, the vendors are used to it). Look ahead on your planning timeline for upcoming projects/deadlines, just like you would look ahead in a syllabus.

Also, one thing that helped me a TON with time management is that I really tried to stay away from DIY stuff. I had minimal decorations (my venue did NOT need a ton) and I hired a florist. It made my life so much easier. Plus, we got married in between semesters so I had a little bit of time right before to prep and get the last minute details together.

I was about to start a thread about this today but then I didn't because...I've been distracted with grad school work! haha. I'm working full time and getting my master's in integrated marketing and it's the hardest thing I've ever done (mainly because I work in sales and marketing, so my job requires a lot of travel and I lack free time as it is). I leave for work before FH is up, and then at night we rarely spend time together because I do homework until midnight, usually. Every night. Because it's an accelerated, online program.

But I didn't want to wait to move ahead in my career, so FH and I had a talk about it and how we would manage household responsibilities, etc, given my additional 25-hour a week commitment. He picks up more slack if he can. We also have a cleaning service come every two weeks because there just isn't enough time in each of our schedules to do everything. That has helped us a lot, actually.

There are just a lot of trade-offs to make. I don't see my friends or family that often, and FH and I don't go out a lot because I'm always working or homeworking. But I just remind myself that it's temporary, and when I'm done I'll be grateful I did it.

Good luck - you can do it!

Lol at EmilyG FH is a professor

I actually have 4 classes left for my MSN in Nursing Education. It's a LOT of work to plan a wedding, go to school, & work. Only you can know if you'll be able to handle it. You will have very few moments when you actually feel like you have free time. I also took off the session (8 weeks) in which the wedding was scheduled. I knew it was not possible for me to do all three leading into the wedding.

eta: As pp said, I didn't DIY anything except folding napkins into bow ties & taking Etsy purchases to the printer. I also had Minted do my invitations & preprint all addresses, so I didn't have to. The time savings was immense for me.

Working 3 12 hr shifts sometimes helped, sometime didn't.

I was originally supposed to be done with school six weeks before the wedding, but when I changed my major from Informatics some of the classes I had already taken don't apply to this degree. The trade off is that this degree will have my married name on it. BTW, DH is in school, as well. Finishes in Dec & we had his kids here for the summer. It can be done, but requires a lot of patience, coordination, and loss of sleep.