The first thing to do is talk to your soon to be hubby to get a good idea of both of your expectations and desires for your wedding. Most men don’t really care and will leave all the details up to you (if you’re lucky lol) but it’s important to know what type of wedding you guys ultimately want. A small wedding, large wedding, destination wedding, church wedding, etc.

Venue:
Once you have that figured out, you can start looking for your venue. I say look for your venue before you look for a coordinator because most locations will refer you to someone who has their own coordinators for you to work with.

Date:
Once you have the location, you start looking at date options. I would suggest doing a year out because time flies but at minimum, 6 months. If you’re doing a more intimate wedding less time is obviously needed to plan but I always say more time is better than not enough time.

Choosing Guests:There is a very strategic way to go about this and here it is. Both you and your fiance need to create 3 different lists: 1 of priorities or must-haves, 1 of would be nice to have their people, and 1 of additional options or waitlist.

Find Your Coordinator:This should be someone you trust to pull off your vision. Interview multiple people to find someone who meshed well with your personality and understands your vision for your big day.

Inspiration:I suggest creating different Pinterest boards and sharing them with your coordinator. The ceremony, cocktail hour, reception, cake, florals, table settings, etc.

Invitations:With invitations, if you MUST do the traditional route, this is when it makes sense, not for the save the dates. But if you’re like me and want to save money where it makes sense to, you can definitely email the actual invitations as well.

Wedding Website:The funniest part to me was setting up our wedding website but I’m a total dork :) I created a custom site with WIX so I am unfamiliar with any wedding site hosts but I do know I’ve heard good things about “the knot”. The most important thing you need to have a beautiful website is quality photos that are consistent in color and theme. For us, we used our photos from our engagement shoot.

Wedding Dress:Even if you are getting a custom dress made like I did, I highly recommend doing dress fittings. Partially because it’s fun to do and your family and friends would want to experience it with you but also because you never actually know what you want until you see it on you.

Bridal Party:I have been apart of many weddings and the trending issue with bridesmaids was drama and stress. The bigger the bridal party, the more opportunity for drama and stress.

Registry:Zola
Blueprint