Where and how to begin?

Pick your season you want then base it off of what day of the week and then find your venue and make sure they have your date open as well as your other vendors!

I came up with my style as I went and it really based on my wedding dress. I ended up with vintage glam!

You have come to the right place!

Honestly my biggest go to for all the planning fun is the checklist here on Wedding Wire! It's a great checklist that has kept me on track and I cannot recommend it enough!

When it comes to the theme/style, honestly I have had wedding inspiration pics saved in Pinterest for a LOOOOONG time! Well before we were engaged haha! I have always loved the Galaxy Blue Orchids since I was a kid so I knew that would be my bouquet flower and everything else would reflect off of it! My fiance is on board with all of my ideas so far and has added a bunch himself!

I would just start with Pinterest, brows some themes or styles of even colours! Search "Red themed weddings" "purple themed weddings" what ever colour you really love and want to include and you can start connecting themes from that!

Maybe instead of being in the woods you can bring the wilderness indoors with decorations and accents! Wood planks for centrepiece platforms, wood based cake stands. Floral decorations that have more greenery to reflect trees!

But 100% start with pinterest! There's almost tooo many good ideas there haha!

Congratulations on your engagement! It will definitely be an exciting time! But for planning, you do need to start with the most important part:

Number one thing: BUDGET. BUDGET. BUDGET. You can not start any planning without a budget set... It defines everything.

Honestly, every other decision you make... Venue, Time of Year (peak/off season), Guest list size, Dinner, Brunch, Lunch or Cocktail Party, Location, DJ, Photographer/Videographer...etc etc etc... ALL depends on your budget.

Once I knew what our budget was (my mom and dad are split, they are contributing 50/50, plus my in-laws are contributing to the bar)... it allowed me to start narrowing down venues... then I looked at Peak Season vs Off Season pricing....

If you don't know your budget, you will quickly find yourself in a pickle when you fall in love with a venue that only looks good in July/August, and peak season prices eats 70% of your available funds.

Once you start to look into different ideas, just browse with your fiance... see what sticks out to you... what you like, and make a point of talking about what you don't like too! That can help as well.

My fiance and I named our top 3 MUST HAVE things for the wedding, Good Food, Good Entertainment, and being able to have everyone we wanted... So we focused our budget on the venue, minimizing on decor & "extras". We also set a ground rule to listen to each other, and not use the word "hate" when talking about someone's suggestion... now we try to talk it out and compromise, so one of us doesn't feel walked on during decision making!

Good luck!! Have fun!!! And definitely check into all the good stuff in the community for ideas, help, guidance and advice!!!

We picked out date based solely on our venue and availability of our photographer and JOP. When they all synced up in the season we wanted, that was our wedding date.

We also picked our theme basically because of where we are having it - an Italian restaurant. So, we decided to go with a gold/plum purple/cream and greenery for our style/colour scheme. We just wanted to enhance what was already there. We are pretty simplistic with our styles anyway, so it worked for us.

I picked my date because its the longest weekend of gbe year, and I loved the idea of that! We picked our location based on what we love to do (hike, camp, bbq) and our theme rooted from those things as well. My colour theme was based on my favourite colours and my accent colour is literally "succulents". Boquets, centerpieces, boutonnieres, are all succulents because I absolutely love them.

Thanks everyone! All of this is Super helpful! And congrats to everyone, too!!

Congrats on the engagement!

For me and my FH we started by picking a budget and a time of year we would like to get married in. Winter -too cold in Winterpeg, Spring - too unreliable, Summer - don't want to sweat at our wedding! So fall with the colourful backdrop was our choice (plus this helps for the farmers in our family). As for where we started seeing what places will give us what and if they make us use their catering at what price. It was a big price thing in our decision.

Congrats first of all!

Sit down together to figure what, where, when and how you wan to get things done

Season: Your choice
Wedding Day:Month/Day/Year
Location: Local or Destination
Guest Count/List
Timing: AM or PM
Style: Rustic/modern/Outdoors/Indoors
Venue: Open bar/buffet or plated service
Theme: ?
Photographer: budget amount set
Videographer: option to look into
DJ: budget amount set
Cake: tiered cakes or different option

These will be some major decisions to make and see where you decide to cut if needed.

There is so much stuff that it can be be overwhelming.
For us. We were really open to a date. Between may and october. We did a rough guest list that way we could look at venues. Once we narrowed down venues. We looked at what dates they had available. We ended up on summer because it was before football season. Our family is more able to come in the summer. And we just made sure it wasnt on a long weekend.

We only had 3 weekends at the end of 2018 that would work for us. When looking at venues we fell in love with the one we picked and they happened to still have 1 of those weekends available. So we said yes and that was the date.

it’s a historic building and has kept almost all of the old character and acheteure features from when it was built in the 1930s. We love it so we are just going to be playing off of that and keep things simple.

Congrats! I agree it is totally overwhelming! It’s kind of nice to don’t have a specific date in mind. Choose a month you guys would like and then research possible venues. That way whatever date they have available you can pick! As for theme I have always dreamt of my wedding so I knew right away the direction I wanted to go in. Lucky my fiancé is pretty easy going when it comes to that stuff! Pinterest has a lot of great ideas, start a board and just add photos and ideas you like. You will start to see what theme stands out to you.

Congratulations on getting engaged, it is very exciting and sometimes a little hectic to plan a wedding. We choose our day because it was special to us because I misscarried last year and so we are getting married on what would have been our daughters first birthday to celebrate her. If we didn’t pick that day I would have picked a time in the summer for sure because I know in winter it will be cold to take pictures outside. So I would suggest picking a season you want to get married in. Also it depends on how long you want your engagement to be to decide how soon you want your wedding.

As for venue do research to find one that will fit your guests and make sure to go over all their fees and restrictions. That’s something I wish I would have done, but we are having over 200 people for ceremony and dance and about 160 for reception so we needed big. As for theme choosing I kind of always wanted to incorporate my First Nation culture.

My dad could never throw me a potlatch wedding since I am a girl so I want to include as much of it as I can. 2 of my brothers will sing and drum as I walk down the isle. For my colours we are having red and black, in our culture red represents life and black the spirits. I’m also including some Dutch traditions as well, I plan on having a wishing tree and not sure what else. I’ve asked my fiancé many times what he wants to include either from his heritage or interests and he hasn’t given me any input. He’s Irish and French, so I’ve tried to do some research and can’t find anything. Good luck planning it’s lots of fun.

Hey! First off, congratulations on being engaged!

We picked our date because we knew we wanted a long weekend in the summer, somewhere local (to us), and something within our budget. Our venue really dictated our wedding date based on their availability. Other than that, we didn't know what kind of style we wanted until I went through my old Pinterest boards and saw a theme of what I liked.