Wedding

Hi Diane. Firstly congratulations! If I was you I would buy a wedding planner book. I have got one and it's amazing. It tells you how to plan your wedding month by month. It’s so helpful. ?

We are also February 2022! We booked our venue first, then the caterers (as they are separate). We’ve also bought the wine (from France, pre-Brexit). I am sending out save the dates next week. Still to organise are the DJ, photographer, flowers, hair and makeup and guest transport. I’m making my own dress and bridesmaid outfits but I do have my shoes! We’ll also be block booking hotel rooms, but that won’t be until the invites go out - perhaps May.

The wish to meet your life partner as soon as possible is enough to distract you from your daily work. I think the planning for the best future is quite helpful during this time. People often get short on time during the wedding, which may result in lack of preparations. I'd suggest to plan everything before so that you'll not face any issue when you'll be short on time.

Firstly, congratulations on your engagement! It's such an exciting and overwhelming time!

I would recommend looking at venues as a starting point. Think about the type of wedding you want to have. Do you want it to be small and intimate, or large and extravagant with all your friends and family? This will help you narrow down the kind of venue you want. This is a really good starting point.

One thing to bear in mind is that a LOT of venues have minimum numbers, so I'd say just keep a close eye on that - since most venues aren't willing to budge on these minimum numbers in most cases, unless of course you're willing to pay the difference to make up for the fact that you don't have enough guests in attendance!

After you've got your venue, you can branch out and start looking for things like caterers (Some venues have in house caterers, which makes life so much easier!), flowers (think about the type of venue, and what flowers will compliment the venue), your dress - it's never too early to start browsing online and getting ideas!

Best of luck

View quoted message Thank you so much for your kind words and advice I really appreciate it! Yes you’re so right I have now been looking at venues and I think I’m going to book one soon after that is done and I think the catering I should be good to go in regards to planning around those two very important things. I think it is still very overwhelming and a lot of responsibility is on my shoulders but my fiance has been amazing and very helpful!

View quoted message Hi Claire


Thank you very much! Congratulations to you too and yes I’ve finally got one of those my best friend got me one and it’s been a godsend. Venue in Caterham definitely have to be first and then I can work around everything else ?

Hey! I am planning for March 2022! Definitely research some venues and when you can, go and see them. Although we chose exactly what we thought we would go for, it was really helpful to look at the other options to just make sure! We are going for a barn but looked at several other venues and we are so glad we did. Made the barn that bit more special if that makes sense.

Don't forget to tally up with the church/registrar before you book the venue to make sure they had availability. We booked in October 2020 and they already had the 2pm slot booked up for Feb 22 when we went to book the ceremony!

Happy planning One thing at a time!

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It might be worth getting a planner, so you can keep track of things. Or, you can just make one in Excel to keep track of things and costs. Good to hear that your fiance is being helpful - it's just as much his day as it is yours! Best of luck with your planning Fingers crossed the world has returned to some level of normality by then! I think you're definitely smart to be looking at 2022, given that weddings still aren't allowed to take place, and a lot of brides (myself included) have had to postpone their big days. I would say if you see a venue that you both like, don't wait to reach out and ask for their availability - as some may already be quite booked up due to a lot of postponements. Best of luck lovely! xx

Congrats!!
I am also a Feb 2022 bride!
I’ve been roughly following the timeline in my planning book but so far only made a little bit of progress - mostly we are waiting for responses after sending initial enquiries.
I would suggest getting started on maybe a Pinterest board or something so you have an online place for all your inspiration so when you do get to later stages you have some ideas to go in with.

Congratulations!
I agree with others on getting a wedding planner, they are so useful especially for jotting down ideas and notes. We then came up with a budget and I created a finance tracker, broken down per item (venue, catering, dress, flowers, photographer etc) it’s really easy to do in excel and is a great visual to keep the finances in check.

Hiii Diane