S. O. S.

The planning checklist on Wedding Wire helped me soooo much!


Take some time before you start shopping and decide on your budget, vibe, etc. but be open to change, because in my experience nothing goes as planned! We started with one idea and now we’re in a totally different place.

Start with a budget and a rough draft of your guest list. Then you can find a venue that fits both of those things with availability in the month/season that you want. Once you have a date booked, you can start working on other major vendors.

Typically, I think most people choose a date first. Then you’ll want to make out a tentative guest list so you know how large your venue needs to be, then choose a venue. Venues can book up a year (sometimes 2 years) in advance, so I would start looking right away. The venue typically sets the mood for the wedding (ie, theme, color scheme, decor, etc.), so once you have locked down your venue, the rest should start falling into place. Congratulations on your engagement! Happy planning!!

Hi Sabrina,
Congratulations, so exciting, first two things you should do, find your venue and your photographer, they can be booked 2 or 3 years out in some cases, so don't think you have a lot of time to choose because you don't, after that you can do things more leisurely, I'm not getting married for 13 months still, and I'm basically done, I picked my dress 9 months ago, it's a Stella York style number 6979 from the 2019 collection if you care to Google it, and dresses some times take 6 or 7 months to come back after your fitting if it needs many alterations, I recommend the Stella York line and the Casablanca line, good luck girl, have fun!

You need to figure out an approximation of your guest count first and then look for venues that will fit with your guest count, from there you can plan everything else!

The wedding has to take place somewhere, so id say the first step is finding a venue because with that, catering/seating might even be covered. If not, then you know what the next step after would be. My point is, some places have packages that take care of a lot, so it doesnt make sense to look for an officiant if thats going to be part of your package, which at some places, it is.

The first things to consider are your budget and a rough guest count in order to decide on your venue. That way you will be sure you pick a venue that will be able to accommodate all of your guests!


The first things we booked were the ceremony and reception venues. From there, we chose our photographer and DJ before they booked up.Our venue does in house catering so we didn't have to worry about finding a caterer. I feel like those are the main things to do first.