wedding planning update!
we’ve been engaged for 7 months now, and our wedding is 15 months away - so we’re about a third of the way there, time-line wise, but we’re pretty far ahead of schedule (or right on track, depending on how you see it)!
photography by Laurel Creative
truly, if' we’d gotten engaged in a more ~precedented~ time (a.k.a. not in the era of COVID-19), i can almost guarantee that we wouldn’t have checked as much off of our planning to-do list as we already have.
despite being a super type-A person, I was looking forward just sort of relaxing for a while and not starting to seriously plan for a bit. that idea quickly flew out the window - but it’s also helped me realize that I realllllly have to be on top of my schedule, reaching out to vendors, and staying on top of them! as we’re planning the wedding ourselves, staying super organized is key - and that definitely means getting a jump on getting those contracts, COVID clauses included, signed and secured.
we had our date, photographer, and venue all decided upon and booked within weeks of our engagement. i’ve said it before, i’ll probably say it 100 more times in this post, and i’ll say it to every couple planning a wedding right now - don’t wait. I thought we could chill a bit and just take it easy (or at least not move so quickly), but even back in the late winter/early spring when we were first starting to book - some vendors were ALREADY booked up for our November 2022 date. between postponed/rescheduled weddings and events, the vendor pool is booking up very quickly! i’ve come across vendors who are already fully booked for 2022. we were very lucky in getting our dream team right off the bat, but in continuing to look for other vendors, several were already booked for or around our date.
to put things into perspective, we visited my dream shower venue in early july. my MOH said she’d give them a call to check on pricing and availability for an August 2022 shower. I told her to wait, because it was SO early. thank GOODNESS she didn’t listen to me, because when she called them the next day, they informed her that they were booked every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from the start of April 2022 through the end of December 2022. they only had SEVEN dates left for all of 2022. this was in JULY. after putting the latest possible remaining date on hold and spending the week weighing having a super early bridal shower vs. giving up my ideal location just to make things closer to the wedding and therefore more “traditional",” we just chose to have it early!
all that to say - if you know what you want, go for it. the traditional wedding planning timeline is out the window, and perhaps is just getting a long overdue overhaul.
so 7 months in, we have:
our date
our wedding party! (you can check out my bridesmaid proposal boxes here)
venue
photographer/videographer
color scheme/theme
DJ
string quartet
florist/designer
my dress (again, was an unexpected surprise, you can read about that here)
bridal shower date + venue + dress
hair stylist is booked
save the dates printed
obviously there are still things to be done, but we’ve gotten our major musts off of the list, and we get to coast a bit for the rest of the year.
if you’re planning a wedding and don’t know where to start with finding vendors or even getting ideas - i’ve been absolutely swearing by the knot. it’s how we’ve found (and gotten in touch with/booked) some of our vendors, and I find it so easy to use.
anyway, tl;dr - time is a construct and you gotta do you.
