It’s the time of year when a lot of couples start planning their wedding in earnest. Whether it be those of you fresh and eager from a Christmas or New Year engagement starting your plans or those of you simply inspired by the New Year to get your plans moving, New Year is one of the busiest times of the year for wedding planning. So to get you started today we thought we’d try to give you a little run-down of where to start and how to get on that first rung of the wedding planning stepladder! (And yes admittedly the stepladder reference may be more down to the building work currently taking place at BvG HQ rather than it’s actual suitability as an analogy…)
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Image by York Place Studios
1. The Date
Before you even start looking at potential venues or suppliers you need to come up with a list of possible dates. The date is the first thing any supplier is going to ask you about as most wedding suppliers tend to be very small businesses who often only cater for one wedding per day. Ideally you need more than one potential date (even if you have an early preference) as your ideal date may already be booked up with any suppliers you eventually choose, particularly if you’re planning on a weekend date in the summer, or even in the next 12 months. Make sure you casually check these dates with the key members of the wedding party like your families as this will have a major impact on your decision. Simple things like knowing whether it’s going to be a Summer or Winter wedding will also help you with all of your other choices along the way. It might be worth considering whether a weekday or out-of-season wedding would be possible if you’re looking to reduce your costs as there are often savings to be made with these.
2. A Rough budget
You’re not going to know your exact costs at this stage but it’s incredibly important to start thinking about what your maximum budget realistically is and make sure that you stick to it. When planning a wedding it’s extraordinary how quickly things can add up and equally easy to get swept away with your dream wedding and forget about where the money’s actually coming from. Set yourself a limit and do some preliminary research to find out where your biggest costs are likely to be so you can start looking at the right kind of suppliers for your budget.
3. A VERY ROUGH Guest-list
You don’t need exact numbers at this point but having a rough idea of how many guests you’d like to invite will have a big impact on your overall budget and on the choices of venue available to you, as well as helping with the overall menu choices later on.
4. The Venue
After the date the venue is going to have the next biggest impact on your decision making process. Availability of the venue is also likely to be one of the biggest impacts on the final decision about the date itself as it’s not always easy to find your dream location. The type of venue you choose may also limit or expand your guest list capabilities as well as help you to identify your theme, source any local suppliers and even help you to choose your dress depending on whether you’re going for a chic or more rustic look!
5. Decide Upon Your Style / Theme
Your wedding is all about you and your partner, and it’s important to identify early on what kind of wedding you want to have as this may affect the suppliers you choose, may alter your thinking about the venue you want to use or the way that you want to use it and may even change the style of photographer or videographer you want to go for.
6. Suppliers
That’s probably plenty to get you started, but just to get you thinking ahead the next step is probably to start looking for your suppliers, even before getting your formal invites out. The dress, Photographers, videographers, bands and caterers are probably the fastest to book up so for these in particular make sure you plan well ahead of time… photographers in particular may be booked up more than a year in advance, and dress fittings and alterations all need to be scheduled in with plenty of time to spare.
So there we have it, the first steps along your wedding planning road. You’ll find there are plenty more twists and turns along the way but once you’ve taken care of the points above you should find the journey progresses much more naturally.
Happy planning folks!
