Where to start when planning a wedding?

Take some time and enjoy being engaged. You have as much time as you want to plan and the rest of your life to be married, but you only have this short period of time for pure newly engaged bliss.

In a few weeks, sit down with your FH and discuss finances. If this isn't something you guys have gotten comfortable with, this will be good practice for a lifetime of bills. Decide on a budget and then decide how many guests you can properly host. Come up with a rough guest list or at least an estimate as to how many guests you will have. You'll want to decide what season you want to get married in and start looking at venues. You don't have a date until you have a venue. If you truly plan to wait until 2021, as indicated in your profile, you should have your pick of any venue you can afford within your budget.

Dear Cinderella,
There are probably many ways to start so I hope my advice helps. We started with a draft of the guest list since that would determine our venue capacity (small or big, outside or inside venue depending on what you would like), dinner & cake count. Of course, if you already have a venue in mind you then that will determine how many you will be able to invite & what else you will need in case your venue doesn't include everything or if it does then awesome. All of this also helped determine our wedding budget since we also weren't born with a silver spoon and most of the wedding was paid by us (the newly Mr. & Mrs.). In the end you might go a bit over or under but it does help as a guide to not miss out on something you really wanted or go over and be in huge debt after the wedding. We also took into account where we wanted to enjoy our honeymoon & what will help us be able to get a wedding & honeymoon we wanted. Hope this helps you get started & Congratulations!
Signed,
The Newlywed

I'd say your first step is sitting down with FH and figuring out a budget and what aspects are most important to the both of you. Call around and get quotes for potential venues so you can get an idea of a realistic budget. Once you have an idea of what you are willing to spend, calculate how long you need to realistically meet that budget. That doesn't you need to be able to pay for the whole thing outright, but you can plan out how long you need realistically to pay everything off. From there I think venue is the #1 thing to book because they can book out far in advance. You may have to make compromises, either with a longer engagement or eliminating some of the extras that you are willing to give up, but all in all you can absolutely have a dream wedding that you finance yourself. Congratulations on your engagement! And best of luck with your planning!

If you are actually not getting married til 2021, sit back, breath, and start planning in 6 months or so if not longer. You have plenty of time! Although I would also suggest you don't wait that long-life can throw you lots of curve balls and a lot can happen while you are waiting for your wedding day to finally come.

While I loved my wedding and reception, you will soon find out from all the posts on here that wedding planning is less than a fairytale, sorry to burst the bubble. And the average wedding in the United States costs 30K these days.

I agree with everyone to nail down a budget and then go from there. Your guest list will really determine how much it will cost as food and alcohol are a good portion of people's budgets.

I'd also say to not lose focus of what is really important, the marriage. People get caught in centerpieces and flowers and lighting and what color bowties, but in the end you are married no matter if it was in a palace or courthouse, wearing a swimsuit or ballgown.

Honestly I would just enjoy being engaged for a while and figuring out exactly what you both want!

If you want a lavish, Cinderella style wedding then you need to shop around and look at different venues and prices of vendors to see if that's actually attainable with your budget. If you're not getting married until 2021 you have a long while to save up!

I think it's important to not have a 100% exact image of what your wedding NEEDS to be. Make a list of the things you both deem as a "need" and the things you deem as a "wants". Be prepared to compromise and to find something that may not be exactly what was in your vision, but is pretty close! To cut costs to make room for other things, you could also DIY a lot of things! You could do pumpkin centerpieces, vines on a homemade arch, etc. Possibilities are endless and the best part is since your wedding is so far away, you get to do some trial and error!

Have fun being engaged until next January and then start looking into things a little more seriously!

Good luck in your wedding planning!

Such a timeless question, and we just launched some planning guides that can really help tackle this (you're right, it's so daunting no matter how much you've dreamed of this time or how good at event planning you are!)

How to Plan a Wedding Step by Step (preview - the first steps are to set a budget, take some time to chill out and get inspired, then think about your guest list/size)

How Wedding Pros Plan Their Own Weddings (and Ideas You Should Steal) - full of personal advice from the experts

And don't forget this community is here to help, and our planning checklist will help you stay organized and as stress-free as possible