This one’s for all my lovely couples who have recently said YES!!!! If you have a shiny new diamond ring on your finger, I’m gonna walk you through how to start wedding planning!

Before You Start Wedding Planning …

You’re engaged. YAY!!!! First step – ENJOY IT!!!! You’ve definitely heard this already but I highly recommend taking a beat to just sit in it and soak up the joy of the anticipation of marriage and forever together. And that looks different to everybody – some people need two weeks, some people need a month, some people need a few months, others want to sit in that joy for a full year. Do what’s best for you!

The second step is to have a wedding dreaming date with your fiancé! This is INCREDIBLY important – you want to make sure you’re both on the same page with what you both want with your wedding. How do you want to FEEL on your wedding day? What kind of faces do you want to see in the audience during the ceremony? How many people do you both want? What kind of budget are you ballparking? 

And the biggest question of all: What’s most important to you on your wedding day? The answer to this question will become home base for you two during the wedding planning process. The key is identifying the core values for your day. Do you want to make sure you spend time with loved ones? Are couples portraits a huge priority for you two? Do you want to make sure the food is out of this world spectacular? Is a bumpin’ dance floor a priority for y’all? Will you incorporate your faith into different parts of the day?

Choose Your Size and Venue (the hardest parts)

Now to officially start wedding planning! Before you choose a wedding venue, you have to first make a guest list! This is one of the hardest parts of wedding planning. The size of your wedding determines the feel of the day and the type of venue you can choose. Do you want kids? Are you allowing plus ones? Will there be people at your wedding you don’t know? These are all really difficult questions to answer, and it helps to be a united front from the very beginning! Use the vision of your perfect wedding day to guide your answers to these questions.

Now it’s time to book your venue! This is a HUGE step for so many reasons. Your venue gives you a wedding date. It gives you a location and determines guest travel, accommodations and transportation. It gives you an indoor or an outdoor wedding. And it gives you a vibe that you can use to choose your dress, your theme colors, your decor, etc. This is the big move that kicks off the rest of your wedding planning. And a tip for choosing venues is to make sure you feel special when you tour the venue, like you’re not just another client. The best venues are the ones that treat their couples well!!

Booking Your Top Priority Vendors

In my personal opinion as a wedding photographer, these are the three vendors you should book first: A planner or coordinator, a photographer and a wedding dress.

It’s best to hire a planner as soon as possible!!! Even if you don’t want a wedding planner, I highly recommend hiring a wedding coordinator!! A coordinator will start to help you with the final 6-12 weeks of wedding planning. They can help with coordinating hotel blocks, transportation, seating chart, relaying dietary restrictions, organizing decor, etc. They are the ones that set up and break down all your decor, they make sure your guests move from one place to another throughout the day, etc. Planners and coordinators take the burden off of you so you can be FULLY PRESENT and enjoy the day to the fullest.

Your photographer!! Photographers book out quite a bit in advance. And because photo and video are the only tangible takeaways from your wedding, you want to make sure you lock in a photographer that you LOVE. Your photographer will help create the timeline for your day and they will be with you for the majority of the day. The key things to focus on are 1) their editing style, 2) their personality and 3) making sure you feel seen, heard, understood and cared for when you talk to them.

Next is your wedding dress!!! If you’re going the traditional bridal boutique route, it’s going to take MONTHS to get your dress for wedding day. So this should be one of the first vendors that you lock in!! I just had Amanda from Dressed In Love Bridal Boutique on my podcast, The Busy Bride. She said it’s good to assume your dress will take 12-14 months from YES to completely altered and ready to go.

Booking The Rest of your Vendor Team, One By One

After those vendors are locked in, it’s time to decide the order of importance for the rest of your wedding vendors!! How important are the flowers? Do you definitely want a wedding video? Is your hair & makeup super important? Is the cake something you want to prioritize? I recommend going down the order of importance for the rest of your vendor list for the order that you book. That way, you are able to be flexible with your budget where you see fit for the parts of the day that are most important to you and adjust in other places where necessary!

Whew! I hope that was a super helpful blog post! And I don’t think I said this yet, but if you are one of those newly engaged couples – MASSIVE congratulations!!!! You are entering SUCH a fun and joy-filled season and I am SO incredibly excited for you. Soak up every last second!!!

For more wedding planning tips, check out Choosing A Venue From A Photography Perspective and Bridal Details: What To Consider For Your Wedding Day. Happy planning!!