What’s so special about this time of year? It’s the holidays AND engagement season. We hope you are reading this because you recently got engaged or are about to get engaged. If so, do you want to know what’s next? This blog post gives you the four steps to take after getting engaged.
Couples often marry throughout the year but engagement season falls between Thanksgiving and Valentine’s Day. This is the time when most wedding proposals happen.
For the last eight years, we’ve written articles under our Sunday School Lessons for Engaged Couples series earmarked to jumpstart your wedding planning process. This series is for you, if you are engaged or about to get engaged. We’ve enjoyed writing these articles along with having guests bloggers. This year, we have some fun things in store.
Once the initial excitement of receiving or giving a ring wears off, we understand the overwhelming feeling that starts to form. We want to help you with a few best practices to jumpstart your planning process. The first four steps to consider are listed below.
- Discuss Your Vision
- Choose a Wedding Date
- Create Your Budget
- Hire a Wedding Planner
Discuss Your Vision
- Talk with your partner about your vision, style, size and tone of your wedding. (e.g. guest count, number of wedding party members, local vs. destination, formal vs casual).
Choose Your Wedding Date
- Choose a date with special meaning to you and your partner.
- Consider seasons, holidays and significant family events.
- Keep in mind some venues and vendors may charge a premium on major holidays.
Create Your Preliminary Budget
- Determine your overall budget amount and then add a dollar amount to each category. It’s helpful to create a “must have” and a “nice to have” list.
- Determine if there are others contributing to the budget (e.g. parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, god parents, etc).
- Consider your guest count when creating your budget.
- Your wedding planner can help with your major budget creation based on your local market.
Hire Your Wedding Planner
- A planner can streamline your process, create your budget and help steer you in the right direction.
- Professional wedding planners have built and continue to build vendor and venue relationships. Because of these relationships planners are able to recommend the best creative partner for your vision and budget.
You might view hiring a wedding planner and creating your preliminary budget as tasks done in the wrong order. However, you will need to know a preliminary budget prior to reaching out to a wedding planner. Once you have booked your planner, they can further help you solidify your budget based on your market. Budget creation falls under most full service planning for many wedding planning companies. If you hire a wedding coordinator, also known as a month of coordinator, they probably do not include budget creation in their services.
Each planning company has their own set of parameters, pricing and service options. If you would like to know more about the services we offer, don’t hesitate to reach out to us.
Don’t forget to bookmark this blog post to use as a guide in your planning process. Feel free to reach out to us for more guidance.