Unorthodox Groom

First things first: sit down and pick a couple of dates that work with ya'lls schedules. Then, start touring venues & seeing what they have to offer. I'd say by the end of this year, you need to book: venue, catering, photographer. After that, you can work on decorations, invitations, color schemes, etc.

Word of advice: make sure whatever you guys do, that it reflects you guys and your relationship.

Good luck!

Congrats on your engagement and upcoming wedding! My fiancé and I have been engaged 2 years and the big day is in October... I’m a big planner-project management fan, and we got started early. I recommend thinking about the theme or kind of wedding you want.. ours changed several times then we changed our date then landed on October and I’ll tell you... it all revolved around our dresses. I don’t know what she picked and she doesn’t know what I picked but we both realized we wanted something more formal then the rustic outdoorsy wedding we first planned. Lol. Start with the vision and marinate on that... then tour venues that support it and some other randoms too because you never know. Pinterest, mood boards, Kan Ban Board PM it (or whatever planning tool works for you) and have so much fun!! I’m happy for you both!! Congrats!

PS Wedding Wire is SO helpful! You can search and find just about any answer to any questions!

Congrats!
The good thing about having a longer engagement is that you have adequate amount of time to research deals and ways to make things cheaper!

Congratulations! Definitely start with a BUDGET FIRST!! Then go to guest list, venues, and dates. Congratulations!!

Nice looking couple!
We started with budget 1st and date
General guest count
Venue search -- took the most time so far at 3+ months
Our next step is save the dates and catering. We have a bit over a year to go.

Like everyone said, make a budget and stock to it! I reccomend looking on here at vendors in your area and getting a ball park idea on what it'd cost for your "dream" wedding and then deciding if you can afford it or are comfortable with the price. Then get a good idea about what colors or themes you'd like, I'd say don't pick a color or theme until you know your venue incase it doesn't match up. Pick a few dates or a month in general you want to get married, a general location (in state, destination, a little away).
Then find a venue, the good news is you have plenty of time for that! Go on a few tours ask about capacity, if tables and chairs are included, if you need insurance to rent to the venue, what's included in your rental, how long you can stay, if there's a bridal suite, what types of decorations are allowed, if they're all inclusive, or have a mandatory vendor list, what are you allowed to bring in.
In my experience most vendors won't book more than 18-12 months out, so I honestly just sat around and got good ideas to approach the vendors with.
You should have an idea of your budget for each vendor (don't forget you do have to tip them) a few foods you'd like, and how many hours you'll need a DJ and Photographer.
Good luck.

Oh I forgot to put rough guest list (it's morning here)!
You're not committed to it so add a few more than needed incase you need to cut people off it. Think about large vs small wedding too.

Well now that you’re engaged you can get engagement photos done. Those don’t really have a timeline. You can do them as early or late as you want although most people do them earlier.
Other than that, I agree with the above posts. Our engagement will be a year and a half before we are married and I’m a planner so we got started early so we can get the date and vendors we want. We had a budget in mind, but once we started looking at venues and catering we had to up our budget so check out costs in your area first and then you can create a budget and even guest list as the amount of people you invite directly correlates to cost. But honestly it’s never to early to start looking and getting ideas. And guest lists aren’t gonna change that much within the next two years so those are good starting points. You can probably start booking vendors a little over a year out.
Congrats on your engagement!

My engagement will be almost 2.5 years. I booked our venue almost immediately, then caterer, then photographer, then videographer were all booked at around the 2 year mark. Oct will be 1 year out from the wedding and I have all those things plus my dress (which it's a little early for but I found the one I loved) and all my centerpiece decor. Book the big things as soon as you feel comfortable because things fill up fast, especially for fall/spring dates or popular dates (like mine is 10/10/20 which is SUPER popular). Hotel blocks can be booked up to 1 year in advance, so I'd check to see if the area you're in has any sort of festival or anything around the time of your date, if so, you want to block off hotel rooms (if you need them) at exactly a year.

Once you have the venue, you can start figuring out what kind of decor/color scheme/theme whatever you want. This will help when you book a florist, cake/dessert, linens, etc. I started stocking up on decor last Thanksgiving because I found a lot of stuff on sale from black friday and cyber monday. I also just signed my linen rental contract a few weeks ago.

Some people (and vendors) might think you're crazy for doing things so far ahead of time or say they only book closer to 1 year out. Then you get about 18-14 months out and you'll start to see things getting booked up quickly. I personally want to have all my vendors booked by December of this year so I'll have about 10 months to just buy decor, have bridal shower, bachelorette party, and work out small details (like our first dance, song choices for wedding party processional/recessional, etc).

I can't offer advice that hasn't been given (and our engagement was only 6 months, so no experience with long engagements lol) - BUT I'll say I'm sorry you had her ring cut off - there's a technique with thread to get rings off that works really well and doesn't destroy the ring

Congratulations on your engagement

View Quoted Comment We tried numerous tricks that didn't work. The cut was very expertly done by the jeweler we went to and can now easily be resized which is nice!

Thanks everyone for all your help already!

We are having a 2 year engagement as well. Got engaged last January and getting married in March! It was very hard to find 2 year timelines because, like you said, it's so hard to iron everything out so far in advance. Here's what we did in our first year:

January 2018 - March 2018 - Enjoyed being engaged!

April 2018 - Started touring venues. Later in April we actually ended up booking our ceremony and reception venue. Also in April, after we solidified our venues, we booked our DJ

July 2018 - Booked our photographer/videographer

August 2018 - Took engagement photos (early for sure, but I had just gotten a promotion and knew I'd be swamped with work for the next year. Funny enough, this February we found out that my work was being aquired by another company so I'm glad I got them done earlier than later. No way we'd be able to do them now with all the overtime both myself and FH are working!)

September 2018 - Ordered save the dates (also very early, but we had our date and the picture I used was so amazing that I knew we wouldn't regret it) and invitations (I got a huge discount if I ordered my invites too so I figured I'd just do it since I would only be out about $20 if I changed my mind)

January 2019 - Bought my wedding dress

I'm sure I'm forgetting a lot of the stuff we did. But that's a rough idea of a timeline that worked for us! I've actually taken a hiatus since getting my dress so I've had pretty much 7 months of no wedding planning haha. Save the Dates go out next month so that'll give me something to do! Then it'll just be getting all the decor I need and making payments on all of our vendors!