where to start

The first step os to choose a date and then look and book a venue and church if needed. Search up wedding planning on google and see for lists narrowing to one best for you to work with. It will be a guideline and not everything will be needed to do.

Another way is on here and you can cross off each task and shows how many has been completed.

I think you're already on the right track in joining Wedding Wire!!! This site has helped me so much and is a lot of fun!!

Congratulations too!!!

The task list wedding wire gives you had been my go to and has so helped me stay organized and on track!

Most important step! Enjoy your engagement as much as you'll enjoy planning your big day!

Welcome, Gabrielle! Congratulations on your engagement! We're happy you're here! To start you'll need to set a budget and decide on your approximate guest list size - these answers determine almost every other plan you'll make so it is good to get them done first. This community is also here to help you with your questions, and our Planning Basics articles can help inspire you

This is a guideline for me. Some I did some earlier. Remember, it's just a guideline

12- 18 months: Work out your budget, start the guest list, reserve your venue and date, book your ceremony (some will let you book 2 years ahead).

9-12 months: pick your wedding party, hire the photographer and videographer. Also hire DJ, book entertainment (if you want), reserve hotel rooms (if you need to) and start dress shopping (VERY IMPORTANT: bring the shoes you're going to wear for your first fitting)

7-12 months: send out save the date cards

6-7 months: shop for bridesmaid's dresses, book florist, book hair and make-up artist, book limo or whatever transportation you are looking at. Also order the wedding invites and start working on your wedding day of timeline.

5 months: book the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner, order cake (if you need to), start choosing your music.

3 months: send out wedding invites, purchase rings, finalize the flowers and finalize the orders for ceremony and reception. Also send out your event schedule to the vendors.

No one initially know anything about wedding planning. That's why we're here Feel free to post if you need advice or help

#1 thing to do: set a budget (or talk to parents about budget, if they are paying)... It could effect your season, venue, guest list size, etc.... Winter or off-season is often less expensive, certain venues are out-to-lunch expensive (room rentals plus catering, plus bar...)...

Once your budget is set, you can look at times of year/venues that will accommodate that... then you can start leading into other vendors (DJ, photographer, etc), and possibly reserve the ones you really want.

You've got quite a bit of time before you'd need to worry about committing to anything, so you could also just spend some time researching a bit of everything, and start narrowing down your style.

I think the very first thing would be for you and your FH to pick a date - if you're flexible that can come later depending on your venue's availability. But you might come up with a date that you absolutely love and then it would influence what venue(s) you find.

Then I'd say get your tentative guestlist/guestcount. With this information you can determine budget and which venues will hold your party and such. Then it's the venue, I think. From then on, as everyone else has said you can follow the checklist from WeddingWire.

We did a rough draft of our guest list (to get an estimate for venue size), did a rough draft of our budget (we were way off on that) and then we got our venues booked as soon as we could.

If you have a specific date in mind, the sooner you book, the better. We had a specific date we wanted so we booked our venues 16 months in advance and we still didn’t get our first pick for our ceremony location. Too soon is not a thing in the wedding world.

The first thing we did was make a rough guest list/determine how big we wanted our wedding to be. Once we figured that out, we figured out our budget, and started looking at venues early on. The rest of it will come (decor you can figure out after you pic the venue, etc.) So, I'd worry about size of wedding and venue(s) first.

For now I would only look into venue's and plan an engagement party - for some venues, they can book well over a year in advance if they are highly sought after. As for doing the engagement party - I didn't do mine right away and now I have been engaged for almost 5 months... it just seems weird to plan one out now because it's "old news" in my mind.

Otherwise - I completely agree with these ladies - the Wedding Wire List is great; you just have to keep in mind that every province/city is different in how far in advance everything can book up.

Oh! AND CONGRATULATIONS FUTURE BRIDE!!!!!

For me it was making a rough guest list (we even put people that are maybe invites). I did this first as I didnt want to fall in love with a hall and it not fit everyone that we really want there.
After that started looking at venues and getting their pricing.
Also got rough pricing for photography, decorators. Did this to create a rough budget too.

I agree with Jennifer, the wedding wire checklist was a huge help to me! Definitely, venue and ceremony space are the big ones that need to be decided along with the date. My fiance and I started by making a list first and seeing how many people we could budget for before looking into venues. We made sure the ceremony (the church) also had the date free so we could go ahead with booking the venue at the same time.

I agree with Tanya that you and FH need to figure out guest list, then budget, then venues that match the criteria of what your expectations are based on budget. There’s so many good tools like wedding binders from Indigo that are so, so helpful. I have The Knot’s Ultimate Wedding Planner binder and it’s honestly been so helpful for keeping me organized and on track.

Figure out who you and your spouse want to invite. That number will help put the budget in perspective and make cut backs or additions where necessary. From there start looking for venues. Keep in mind some are significantly cheaper using cash bar vs open bar and you can see it in the price. Once you've decided on a venue make sure you coordinate with your officiant and the location of the ceremony. Then dj and photography and the wedding wire checklist. It's what were doing. Hope it helps!

I’ve used the checklist on wedding wire for my planning and it’s been helpful! Venue, caterer, photographer/videographer, DJ and officiant are all priorities for sure and what seem to be what most couples book first but you should definitely decide on a budget and guest list first I’d say. Happy planning!