A Wedding Collection: When Should You Start Planning Your Wedding

Thursday, May 21, 2015

When Should You Start Planning Your Wedding

When Should You Start Planning Your Wedding

People generally start planning their wedding about one year ahead of the actual event, although some people have been known to start booking venues two years in advance if the date is a popular one. While planning a wedding can be a lot of tedious work, it is manageable if you take the right steps, start a year or more ahead of the actual event and stick to a timetable for getting things done.

This means that you have all of the vendors in place, the venue has been booked and you have a good idea about the theme or style of reception you would like. While you may have dreamed of a fantasy wedding with coaches that are horse-drawn, red carpets, bouquets of flowers and a large mansion to house hundreds of guests, you must tailor that to fit your budget. Most people start laying out a plan based on a budget, making adjustments and compromises to fit their monetary position. While it is nice to dream, it may not be fiscally possible to afford all those dreams. This is not to say that you can't have your perfect wedding on a budget, but you need to plan out everything prior to moving forward.

It takes a lot of work to get a wedding together. Vendors need to be contacted including what church you will want to book, the priest, preacher or rabbi, the reception venue, deejay, photographer and caterer should also be booked as soon as possible so that they're available. You will want to go down your checklist booking the services in a priority of what services can only handle one event at a time per day. In other words, the reception facility should be booked first to ensure that you have it on a particular day.

Starting a year or more out from the event will make things go very smoothly. It will give you enough time to plan, delegate and communicate with everyone involved. Getting a wedding planner book where you keep all of your notes, checklists, post-it notes, brilliant ideas, pictures of floral displays, cake toppers and more will help build towards the event in an orderly fashion. You should only work with the wedding planner book and not mix it in with your day planner, life duties. Be sure and keep accurate tracking of what you spend, what's left to do and who is responsible for what. If you follow these tips, by the time your wedding day rolls around, it will prove to be a stress free, wonderful event that you will remember for a lifetime.