Timeline of a long engagement

It depends on where you are for as how far in advance vendors book up. For instance, we only have three Saturdays open from Mid March 2019-November 2019 at the venue where i work. (We have three ballrooms) Popular photographers and DJ’s will book up quickly. Start looking around at places you like......need a venue and a date to start booking vendors. We have about 10 bookings already for 2020. It’s never too early to start looking. Congratulations on your engagement!!

I guess the follow up question will be then, if things are crazy (one of the vendors I'm looking at is booked every single day of the month in January and February 2020 and a couple weekends in August when I'm looking) is will I have to bite it and hire a full wedding planner given that I will finish around mid-February then still have to take my boards and look for a job? I really want to be able to save money and do this more on my own but still want to have a good choice in vendors, but I also want to be able to focus on my career. I feel antsy, but my fiance and I have been together 8 years in November, and we kept putting off getting married until both of us were financially more stable and better into our career fields.

We had a 3 and a half year engagement because I wanted to finish school and get a job. We did not start planning anything at all until a year and a half into the engagement when I started my full time job and he got a better job. Prior to that point we would have had NO idea on a budget. So at 2 years before the wedding we sat down and wrote a guest list, decided how much we can save per month for the wedding and started looking at venues. When we found a venue we liked we decided on the date based off of when we could afford the amount of people we wanted at the venue we wanted. Then we booked for that date. Our timeline looked like this

18 months: Venue (includes ceremony, reception, catering, staff, day of coordinator)

17 months: photographer and DJ

Then we pretty much handled everything else at under a year away. The venue, photographer and DJ were the only things necessary to do early

Hi Deborah! Welcome to the WeddingWire community! That's so awesome, congrats on almost being done with PA school!! It can definitley be stressful booking those big vendors like venue and caterer because a lot of people are now having longer engagements and booking further out! You said you'll be done in February of next year from school? I think a little over a year should be enough time to get the vendors you want booked! I found a great article that has the timeline of when all the vendors should be booked, I'll link it below for you!

Wedding Vendor Timeline

I would start with a wedding email to keep track of everything. Then move onto budget, guest count & dates. Then tour venues & get that done. Then from there, contact a few vendors you like from their reviews and ask for pricing but I'd only do one type of vendor at a time or you'll get overwhelmed.

Thanks all! I’m going to leave more of the planning to my fiancé. We are more limited in terms of dates as it is a Jewish wedding, and there are many holidays to avoid. We may just send out feelers at the moment, see who’s booked up and get the cost breakdown. And since there are extra ceremony objects in the budget, we may have a sit down with someone who knows how to incorporate those items.