Booking vendors

Our wedding date is July 4 2020 - Here is our breakdown so far!

Venue - March 2019

Photographer - July 2019

Dress - July 2019

Catering - (same place as vendor) - September 2019 - This would probably have to be booked earlier for some, but because our catering is at the venue, we could book later.

DJ - November 2019

Make up & Hair - November 2019

We are still searching for officiants and attending decor and flower meetings in the new year.

Our venue was booked 1 1/2 years in advance and other major vendors followed to get booked with the Officiant being the last person.

View quoted message

Yeah i find if people are looking for a specific venue for whatever reason they book YEARS in advance and then that way they can pay it slowly as well.

We ranked the most important stuff and started looking right away. We had a photographer before we had a date or venue. I had a dress the day before we booked the venue, and I found a seamstress before the florist. All the big stuff came together quite quickly!

View quoted message Wow thats crazy. When i booked my venue someone else had already booked june 2021 aswell. I was shocked

View quoted message Wow! I guess thats a good time to get married. In peak time with that timeline i think youd have a hard time booking vendors

View quoted message We booked our venue like 3 weeks after we got engaged. Ive been looking into photographers this week. I feel like thats pretty important. I had no idea how far in advance wed have to book that

We got engaged before xmas last year and then we started booking vendors jan this year. book early as halls and stuff book fast a lot of girls book 2-3 years in advance now. i called my hall in january 2019 for summer 2020 and they had one saturday left

We started booking very shortly after being engaged, which was around 22 months before the actual wedding date. If we found a vendor we liked, we just went for it. We were able to lock down some 2019 pricing for 2020 wedding date as well so that was nice!

View quoted message

For me, there's no such thing as booking too early lol

We booked everything about 3-4 months ahead of the wedding, since we got engaged in September and our wedding was already in February. I was worried we wouldn't be able to get anyone but surprisingly every single vendor we asked was available! I guess no one else wants to get married in February, and we're also getting married Sunday of a long weekend which is probably less popular than a Saturday.

We booked our florist really early... about four or five months into our engagement. We didn't book our officiant until early 2019, though. You have a lot of time given your wedding is in 2021, but because you have a summer wedding, I feel like it wouldn't hurt to book your main vendors (venue and photographer) soon since their spots fill quickly.

View quoted message Thanks for the advice. That’s kind of what we were doing. With our wedding being so far away we didn’t really know what to do that far ahead and didn't feel the need or pressure to book things that early

View quoted message

Definitely try and avoid falling into the trap of: we have _ amount of time, we don't have to book that vendor yet. It's tempting but it was way less stressful closer to the date knowing we had our vendors booked!

View quoted message Thanks! This was pretty helpful as our engagement period is around the same length.

Here's a breakdown of when we booked our vendors. We got engaged October 26, 2017 and got married October 19, 2019:

Venue (included catering/bar service and tables/chairs/linens etc) - 20 months before

Photographer - 18 months before

Hair/Makeup - 14 months before

Officiant - 1 year before

DJ - 1 year before

Florist - 9 months before

Cake - 8 months before

IMO, the earlier you can book vendors, the better! Especially if there's a vendor you really want to work with and/or is really popular and book up fast.

I started booking in Jan 2019 for my July 2020 wedding. Venues, photographer, caterers, and music is booked early to ensure you get your date with who you want. I still have the flowers to book, but I will be doing that in next 2 mths.

Venue - 1 year and 9 months out

Photographer - 1 year and a half

Florist - more than a year

Caterer - same as florist

Hair/Makeup - a year maybe?

Day of coordinator - 8 months

Bar - a year? I don't remember.

Dessert - again, I don't remember. As soon as we knew who we wanted, we inquired.

I feel like we were pretty ahead and booked all our people pretty early on, which was nice because other than venue, we really had our pick of vendors as they pretty much all had our day available. Venue we HAD to book when we did because they only had a few dates left when we inquired.

We asked a friend to marry us, so we didn't book an officiant.

Venue was 13 months out, but we chose somewhere that's never hosted a wedding, so it wasn't an issue really.
Photographer, dress, accessories, cake, hair/makeup artist, officiant- 12 months. Planner, decorator, tent, caterer, stationery- 10 months.
Transportation currently working on that and we're now 9 months out from the wedding.We're also dj-ing our own wedding which I'm currently working on the playlist, otherwise I would've made sure we had one booked at least a month ago.

View quoted message We booked our photographer before the shoot because our package included an engagement session and photos.


You can ask to see the photographers previous work if you haven’t shot with them previously.

Did you guys do an engagement photoshoot before booking a photographer or did you just look at their portfolio? We want to do an engagement photoshoot but not until the spring time and i feel like that might be too late to book our photographer since our wedding will be in a year from then. Any advice?

View quoted message We booked our venue which included ceremony, reception, and food just after we got engaged which is nearly 2 years before our wedding. Since our wedding is so far out I didnt know what to book next or how far in advance i should book things. Thanks everyone for your input. It definitely gives me a better idea.

Venue was one year before. We actually booked that before we got engaged and got the last Saturday of the summer!
Photography-9 months
Hair and makeup-2 months (but should’ve been done sooner!)Dress-9 months for mine, 7-8 for bridesmaids. Officiant: 9 months Flowers and music were done by friends.
The more time the better. We were able to book the photographers we wanted, but many we had looked at were booked for our wedding date.

Venue - 1 year 8 months

DJ - 10 months before wedding but 3ish months before our wedding social

Bar Service - 1 year

Food Catering - 1 year 8 months

Photography - 1 year 3 months

Videography - 8 months

Transportation - 6 months

Linens & Tableware - 2 months

Officiant - 4 months

I booked as much as I could as soon as I could! I booked my officiant a year out, photographer almost 2 years out, caterer a year and a half out, etc

We booked our venue 20 months before the wedding.


Our photographer and DJ were booked about 19 months in advance.
We booked our florist 10 months in advance.
Our cake we booked 8 months in advance.
Our limo we booked 3 months in advance.

I started booking vendors a year and a half before (venue, photographer, DJ). I booked my florist/decor team about 11 months before.


I think venue and photography are probably the two most important things to me so I did them first.