Newly engaged and wondering when to start

Congratulations!!


It is incredibly overwhelming and hard to know where to start. Literally the first thing you need to do is figure out how much money you’ve put aside/how much you want to spend on your wedding. Make sure it’s money that you have or going to have in the next few months and not a random figure you hope you’ll save up to the wedding.
I then made a tick list of everything that I would need for a wedding ie venue, flowers, rings (you can find tons of these on Google). I put the amount I wanted to spend on them to make sure it added up to the budget. Hitched also has this tick list feature if you have an account.
After that, start on venues! I actually looked on hitched to find quite a few and I started to realise what I wanted/didn’t want, ie barn or castle. If it matters to you to get married in your area you can always narrow it down. I sent out emails to enquire as to how much their packages were and visited a couple.
Then you go through the list and tick them off (prioritising what will take the longest - ie dress (need to order in advance)

Congratulations!!
So we took a couple of months just to enjoy being engaged first. It was October for us, so we wanted to be excited for Christmas and kind of mull over the wedding we wanted first. Like you I had Pinterest ideas but I really wanted it to be our wedding, so getting my OH to start thinking about what he wanted and his “must have” list, and giving him options was really important to make it feel like our day, not just my day.
Then we went super boring, but I believe that this is super crucial. We spreadsheeted everything (my other half is an accountant & I’m a project manager - it’s just how our brains work)! We worked out our savings budget (bear in mind everything is paid 8-12 weeks beforehand btw) & we made a spreadsheet of everything we thought we’d want/need - Google is your friend at this point. We worked out where our savings & spending met (with a 20% buffer as projects always go over) & that told us when we could get married. I really wanted a summer wedding, so from there we worked out the timeframe for it all, with the numbers we had.
Once we had a budget and a timeframe we started to look for venues. We dismissed those outside of the price range, and knew our must haves. Accommodation on site, bridal prep on site, preferably barn style but not dark and so forth. We booked to see 5 venues from our shortlist, and found the 1 very quickly from those 5. After that, all the fun begins, but I used that spreadsheet up till the day before the wedding & it saved my sanity more than a few times - it gave me reassurance that things were coming in on budget, and we could afford the wedding. When you see some of those bills, it’s mildly stress inducing. You have to remember only the legal bit is actually important, but the spreadsheet (& trying to have a normal life in between) saved my sanity on everything else!