Wedding Forum - How long does it take to plan?...

Hello ladies! I'm new to all this having only gotten engaged this month. Needless to say I'm pretty clueless on all of this buy very excited to start getting ideas together. We plan to just enjoy being engaged for a little while before ploughing into this wedding planning world. However what I wanted to know was how long you would recommend giving yourselves to actually plan the big day? Also as I am new to all of this when do companies expect final payments etc. I expect this will have a big effect on when we start planning... Thank you!

Firstly and congratulations!

To get 5ou started please have a read of the forum rules, check out the brides checklist and add your date to the wedding calendar, all at the top of the forum - if you have not already. 

The brides checklist is great for giving you an idea on what to plan and in what order. Final payments for suppliers range between 2 and 6 weeks before the big day usually.

Enjoy the site!

I'd try to give yourself at least 1 year to plan the wedding as dresses and things often need booking that far in advance but if you have a particular date in mind then I would look to booking venues sooner rather than later especially if you want a peak season weddjng as dates sell out years in advance at some places

My sister and BIL though were engaged for a year before they started planning, they then did everything in 6 months.

It can be done with help. I helped her a lot, I took my MOH duties seriously lol.

My sister and I are super close so 100% trust each other to get things right. She did so much to help with our wedding she was fab. She and my best mate organised my entire hen and did a better job than I ever could, I actually felt guilty that I didn't do something as good for my sister, well I think they did better than I did but I had no help as my sister's other BM lives abroad so had to organise her hen all alone.

Nope you get to choose what you want when you want but that doesn't always make for easy planning with all the options!!

Have you got a preference on dates or even year of marriage?

Amy - the only 'rule' is you need to do the legal bit lol - the rest is anything you want it to be. Have fun planning!

I have given myself 10 months! We are having a fairly laid back affair though and the little details really don't worry me. I just want to marry my soul mate.

Welcome Amy \o/

I'd recommend giving yourself at least a year for planning, to give yourself some time, but I have known a couple of brides who have pulled everything off in 4-6 months! Although they did have to compromise a bit.

When we got engaged the first thing we properly did was set (choose) the date. We could have gone for 2016, giving us approx. 18 months to plan, but my older sister is getting married late August 2016 and I didn't want to shoehorn in before her so settled for July 2017. That gave us about 2 years to plan.

We then decided on the type of wedding we wanted eg. Church, Registry Office or complete venue package etc. and decided on a church wedding and separate reception venue. A hasty first-draft of the gust list to figure out numbers, then we started looking for venues and booked the church.

I would recommend setting the date 'properly' by booking your ceremony and/or venue sooner rather than later, not only does this give you a solid date to work towards, you might also get to book at this year's prices and save a bit of money :)

Good luck and let us know how you get on!

If you can push it to the first week in October it'll be cheaper than September.

I didn't really start planning until end of August and I am getting married in June, so have given myself about 10 months altogether.

Congratulations and welcome.. it took me 24hours to find my venue photographer piper everything but I had been up the full 24hrs x

Things always will fall into place and fit together x

Thank you. I think we're looking at Summer 2017 for something quite outdoorsy xx

Hi Amy, you can plan for as long or short as you like, as long as you have the budget to cover what you want. We will have been engaged for 3 years by the time we are married, but only started organising properly in August this year, giving us 11 months to do everything. This is plenty of time as we are getting married abroad.

I know of one couple that got a cancellation and were married in about 6 months of getting engaged, some on here are having 3/4 year engagements, so there's no hard and fast rule really.