Planning Help !!!

Hi Cherry!
Congrats on your engagement! I don’t think it’s too early to start pre-planning your wedding. You could get some bridal magazines & start getting ideas of things you like. Tear out the pictures & start a “vision board” or begin a Pinterest board. (You can make the Pinterest board private & share it with your vendors &/or wedding planner later on.)

You don’t have to hire a wedding planner but it’s SO much easier & takes the stress load off of you. I was trying to plan my wedding alone & was totally overwhelmed. When I found my venue, a wedding planner was required so it worked out perfectly.
Some venues may allow outside catering so it doesn’t hurt to start your research now. Just take it slow & don’t force yourself to try & make a bunch of decisions now. You don’t want to get burned out. 😊
Enjoy your time as a newly engaged couple & I wish you all the best!

View Quoted Comment

Thank you so much Niki ! When did you go looking for venues after your engagement?

Congratulations! I say start planning. You have the perfect amount of time in my opinion. My venue was very important to me so I had it booked with it 5 months after being engaged, and I still had a year and a half to go. My venue books quickly. If you want to have all options open, start looking for you perfect venue now . You should have a general idea already if there will be 25 people, 100 people, or more. You do need an idea of the guest list to make sure you have booked a suitable venue for the size of your wedding. I would also start looking into photographers And book them a couple months after the venue is secured. Make sure you ask about the contracts, especially right now. My venue would allow a one time date change at NC, 50% refund of cancelled, and 100% refund if THEY can’t hold up there end (natural disaster ect, covid lol)

I will have a 2 year engagement in total, getting married in October of this year. I started planning right away! Most important thing to book is the venue, once you have that you will get more of a sense for what you need and what you envision your day to look like. I booked my venue a week after getting engaged and that allowed us to lock in our date. We have all outside vendors as our venue doesn’t include food or anything extra. Dates can book quickly so if you have a specific date in mind I say start planning now! Good luck!

With so many weddings having to be rescheduled due to the COVID-19 pandemic I strongly suggest you start planning immediately

I got engaged in July of last year and our wedding for 01/27/2022 is already in the planning stages. I don’t think it’s too early at all. Shortly after the engagement we made a rough draft guest list to get an idea of how many people we would want. This helped when looking at venues since we had an estimate. I started research immediately, but we did venue tours in November and had our venue booked by the end of the month, because we found the one. Since then we’ve also booked photographer and dj company. I don’t think a wedding planner is necessary, maybe a day of coordinator. I highly recommend starting with a guest list and then start researching venues that can accommodate that number. Catering options will depend on the venue. Also I’ve heard a lot people say a date is not set until you have a venue booked. So far in my planning, having a lot of time has helped me be able to focus on one thing at a time and not get completely stressed out. Good luck and happy planning!!!!

First of all, congratulations!!

We got engaged in Nov. 2018 and started planning immediately for a June 2021 wedding. We booked our venue in Jan. 2019, DJ and photographer shortly after (Feb. and March '19). We've since also booked a HMUA and florist. Planning early is good as long as you know your tastes won't change!

View Quoted Comment We got engaged in early December & said “no wedding talk until after the new year”. I guess we started looking around mid-January? We fell in love with this one venue but they were booked on Saturday’s until 2022! We lucked out bc one couple cancelled on Sat May 23 of this year so we took the date! We didn’t want a long engagement bc we want to start a family. I was really bummed that we had to push our wedding to August 23rd this year but we said no matter what, it’s happening & we are keeping the date!