So you’re newly engaged and thinking about planning your wedding! Firstly, a huge congratulations! You’re probably feeling a variety of emotions – excited, happy, nervous, overwhelmed. Well hopefully our guide to completing your first 5 steps to planning your wedding will help you out.
1 – Set a Budget
It’s a good idea to set a rough budget first and estimate what you think the whole wedding will cost. This includes everything from venue hire to outfits, decor, food, etc. Ask friends and family for advice on how they budgeted their wedding and what they paid for their suppliers. You may find that decor for example costs more than you first thought so you can either increase your budget or try reduce the cost of something else.
2 – Search for Venues
This is a really fun part of planning where you shortlist some lovely venues for your big day and go to view them. It’s a good idea to find out when the venue is having a wedding open day as usually other suppliers go there and it’s good to have a chat with them too. A lot of venues have peak and off peak prices with summer months being peak so if you don’t want a summer wedding you might be able to get a discounted rate.
Once you decide on the venue you like you can let them know of some dates you are looking to get married. Be flexible with your dates as popular venues get booked up pretty quickly especially if there’s less than a year left.
If you’re having a religious ceremony you’ll have to find a venue for this too.
3 – Set your Date
Once you’ve decided on your venues and know their availability, it’s time to choose a date! Once your deposit has been placed you’re date is secured and you can begin planning the finer details of your big day. It’s a nice idea to send out save the date’s so all of your guests know to keep the date free. Here’s some save the dates we love.
4 – Choosing Suppliers
Now that you’ve set you’re date, you need to start booking other suppliers. This includes caterers, DJ, Decor, Flowers, Entertainment, Toastmaster, Wedding Car, etc. You probably would want to start with choosing your caterers. This can involve going to a few food tastings with various caterers until you find the right one. Next you should choose your decor company as they can get booked up pretty quickly too. Look around at a few suppliers and discuss your theme ideas and budget. Once these have been decided, you can begin finding whatever other suppliers you want such as DJ, entertainment, toastmaster, etc.
5 – Guestlist
Write a list of people you will be inviting and group them into families so you know how many invitations need to be made and sent out. You have to remember that your chosen venue has a maximum capacity and to make sure you don’t go over this number.
Hopefully these first 5 steps will help you get started on your wedding planning and we’ll be writing more about wedding planning tips soon so keep an eye out for those!
