Congratulations!
If you’re a brand new just engaged person – congratulations!
Christmas and New Year are some of the most popular times of the whole year to get engaged.
Where do you start? It’s easy to start researching madly online looking at venues, frocks, cute decor ideas, flowers, cakes, cocktails, bands – who knew a wedding required so much organisation!
At the end of a few days you’re overwhelmed, you thought you wanted one kind of wedding, now it seems like you want another and before you know it, you have no idea where to start. Sound familiar..?
where to start
There are plenty of things to think about and some of the most important are when and where? Where will your wedding be and what’s your date. But we’ll get to that. Before you can even think about the when and where, you’ve got to think budget.
Get yourself a spreadsheet (you need to get serious about wedding planning!) and start sketching out how much you think you want to spend. Are your family going to be making a contribution? If they’re paying most or all of the costs, you’re going to have to sit down with them and talk about budgets. What do THEY have in mind?
are you sharing the cost?
Some of our just engaged couples share the cost of their wedding between them and maybe they’re getting a bit of help from family. Some couples are paying for everything themselves and some are lucky enough to have everything paid for them – go them.
You need to have some frank discussions between the two of you as a couple about the wedding costs. If you’re getting help from family, you’ll need to have frank discussions with them too. This is no time to be coy about money, being up front and honest now could save embarrassment and disappointment later so take a deep breath and start talking.
Until you’ve got a basic budget you really can’t start looking for your venue.. It’s such a shame to fall in love with a venue only to find its outside your budget. Of course you might need to do some initial research to have some idea of how much the big ticket items like venue, dress, bands etc might cost so your budget can inform your choices and vice versa.
Now is not the time for details (forget which shade of blush rose you like), as a just engaged person now is the time for setting the overall budget and then seeing what you can fit within it.
there’s more
Pop back in tomorrow for some more pointers on where to begin with your wedding planning journey.
Want to see some more pics of our real weddings here? Get yourself over to our gallery page where you can see photos, films, inspiration and photo shoots – enjoy!
If you want to read some more useful stuff, pop over to Elle of The Artful Event Company. I’ve worked with Elle a number of times and she’s got some great advice, including a handy wedding budget which you can download right from her blog post.
Any questions? We’ve got a ton of stuff over on our FAQ page. If the answer’s not on there, drop me a line at [email protected]
