What is the first step in planning a wedding?!

Take a few days, or weeks, to enjoy your engagement. You'll only get this moment once in your life.

We started planning about 6 weeks later by booking our venue and date. After that we took it one task at a time: rentals, hotel, cake, florist, attire, etc...

Guest list, budget. Those need to be at least roughed out before you look for a venue. Once you have a venue you have a date, then catering, photography, dj or band.

View Quoted Comment I totally agree, we actually didn't start wedding planning for about 8 months, take as long as you want.

View Quoted Comment Good advice! Definitely getting overwhelmed trying to start planning so soon after the proposal.

Usually you want to start determining your budget and deciding on a rough number of guests you want to invite. If your parents are helping pay (or paying completely) for the wedding, find out how much they're willing to contribute. These will help you when deciding on a venue because you'll need to know what you can afford and if the venue will fit the amount of people you plan to have. After that, start researching & touring venues! Your date isn't set in stone until you have a venue. Good luck!!

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Don't stress, you want this to be enjoyable.

My FSIL literally booked their venue, cake, and photographer the day after their engagement. There was no planning or thought process, she and her mom and just dove right into planning without my brother. Now, cut to a year later, she's regretting some of her decisions and can't back out because of deposits.

View Quoted Comment Thanks! Was thinking a fall wedding so I definitely want to wait til fall to start touring venues so I can see what it might look like for the big day.

The first thing is to enjoy the moment. Make sure you and your FS are on the same page regarding what type of wedding you want and how involved you will both be. The goal is to create a beautiful day that you and your guests will remember, don't let the common stressors take away from that. Then set your budget, everything that follows will be determined by what you have to work with. I found that so much fell into place once we booked the venue. We had a caterer, a cake, and my wedding dress picked out pretty soon after. I also found the checklist on here to be helpful but had to delete a few things that just didn't apply to us. Which brings me to probably the best advice I've received here, plan YOUR wedding! There are so many ideas and so many details that work for others but may not be right for you. Your wedding is about the two of you and what you like, not all of us and our tastes.

Congrats. Budget, guest list, venue are the big three to do first

My first piece advice would be to enjoy your engagement! Cause once you start planning it will become a whirlwind. Once you are ready to start planning talk over with your fiance about what you both envision your big day to look like and set a budget.

View Quoted Comment That's our plan, we roughly picked a fall date next year and will go look at our venue around the same time to see if it works. So while we have a "date" it can be moved if needed.

Congratulations on your engagement! Probably echoing what PPs have already said, but think about budget and guest count before booking anything. What's also fun is choosing a theme and color palette for your wedding!

Thanks everyone for the advice. Very helpful!