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I know that the majority of us on this board aren't even engaged yet but I wanted to get a since of how long you think it will take for you to plan your wedding...From day of engagement to day of "I do".
I've started to have a minor freak out about not having enough time to plan a wedding by next October. I know that BF hasn't proposed yet but I am a huge planner and I can't help but to look toward the future.
I want to get married in the fall and being that I live in the south I know I'm chancing it with the weather but I was hoping for 10.16.10...its on the 16th which is our "anniversary" day and I just like the look of the date...plus it's right in between mine and BF birthdays. Well my thoughts go the financial route. I wanted to give my family and I a year to save and spend on the big day. As we all know, October 2009 has come and gone. I don't want to get married in 2011 because my baby cousin is getting married then. I know I could get hitched the same year as her but I don't want her to think I'm stealing her time...albeit her wedding is planned for July and mine would be in October. And 2012 is too far away to me! I hate to pester BF anymore about proposing so I'm coming to you ladies....
How long did it take you to plan your wedding or how long do you have until your wedding or how long do you plan to have between your engagement and wedding day???
Please don't judge me as a psycho!!! 
I think this sinus cold is getting to me! Haha!!!
I'll have had over two years by the time I get married. But I didn't start seriously planning until Jan 2008 (so 1.5 years out) I would be most worried about your venue/church already being booked. I booked my venue in January and our original date was taken. So we went with the 12th.
I could have probably planned the whole thing in a year, had it not been for having to secure the venue so early.
we have exactly a year between engagement and wedding. he proposed feb. 28th and we're getting married feb. 28th. but i feel like i have a lot of time to do things, we could definitely have done it in a shorter time. the only reason i'm glad we are taking so long is because i was able to book the vendors early so i had my choice.
We got engaged in November 2008, but didn't start any serious planning until January 2009, so I got it all done in 9 months. One advantage was that I wasn't set on a specific date, so it was easier to find venues with open dates around the time we were considering.
Good luck!
I'm married, but I wanted to chime in anyway :)
I thought I needed about 10-12 months to plan, but we had a 14-month engagement. Toward the end, during the last few months before the wedding, I realized we could have had a 6-9 month engagement and been done with it without all the time to sit around and stress out about everything.
If you're organized and know what you want, go for the shorter engagement! SO worth it.
Engaged March 24th, married September 6th so about five and a half months :)
We got engaged in March 5, 2009 and are getting married Sepetember 5, 2010---so exactly 18 months!
We decided to have a longer engagement so that we would have plenty of time to plan and enjoy being engaged. If you want to hear honesty, don't worry about timelines. I say enjoy your relationship now, enjoy your engagement etc... Figure out what timeline works best once you are engaged and you feel a whole lot less stressed!
Also, I don't think you will be stealing from your cousin if you get married 2 months after her in 2011. Your cousin gets one day, not a whole wedding year! Me and two of my close friends are all getting married next summer and we will be in each others weddings.
Honestly, it doesn't take that long to plan a wedding. Most people say a year, just so they have time to save the money. I am getting married July 17, 2010 and I am basically done. I have vendors to pay now. So really, it depends on if you know what you want and how long you want to pay things off. I say 6 months is good.
Thank you all so much for taking time to answer my question! I really started to panic. And the venue deal is the biggest thing I'm worried about because it's a prime venue in our area...almost every weekend from April till October the tent is up and decorations are at the road! That's the only thing that makes me nervous. I'm just hoping and praying that it's open when we want it if not....10.23.10 will work too...my dad will just have to share his birthday with our anniversary! Haha!
Personally, I am having a 9month engagement - it's just what suited us best. However, I'm an event planner/DOC - and I've had clients with a 3 month engagement to 2 yr engagement period and everything in between.
Here's my honest opinion on the OP - take life as it comes. It's admirable that you're so organized and want to get a jump on planning, but keep in mind that you could be setting yourself up for a lot more stress than not. Life happens & you need to account for that. Who knows what the next year/month/week/day will bring? As Jaylii9 said, just try to enjoy your relationship for what it is now, and once you get engaged, try to remember to stop and enjoy that too. Being engaged is amazing, and it's sad that so many women do not stop to take the time to enjoy that part of this process. Things have a way of falling into place - your engagement will come when the moment is right, and your engagement length will work itself out.
Re: your cousin's wedding - I seriously wouldn't worry about it. I mean, I'd stay away from the weeks surrounding her wedding, but other than that, you're fine.
Another tip - I wouldn't advise getting one's heart set on a particular date prior to getting engaged - unless you're willing to potentially make a great deal of compromises just in order to have that specific date. You may end up needing to compromise on venue/entertainment/pricing/etc. You've got to figure out what's most important to you as a couple - perhaps it is the date. Perhaps it's the venue, a ceremony site, a season, a band, a photographer, whatever it is, you should figure it out as a couple when the time comes.
Finally - every couple & every wedding is different. Timelines are not one size fits all. What I'm able to pull off in 9 months might be much more someone with no event planning experience, or much less than an independently wealthy person with nothing else on their agenda. :)
I'm in Bama as well! Before my fiance proposed, I worried that we would not have enough time to plan for a fall 2010 wedding, so I know where you're coming from. We got engaged in November 2009, and we are loosely planning on getting married in September 2010. Unfortunately, there were too many date conflicts in October. I won't be able to start any serious planning until after the Holidays because of school and work. This gives us about 9 months of planning before the wedding.
We considered waiting until 2011, because I was freaking out about needing a year or more to plan. My sensible mom convinced me we can get everything done in 9 months. My fiance and I decided 2011 seemed like an eternity, so we decided to just go for it.
So, no I don't think you're psycho for worrying about it :) If it works out to where it is what you and your future fiance want for YOUR wedding, then I think you should have plenty of time.
we got engaged 8/24/09 and are getting married 9/18/10... so we will have had a 13 month engagement... i've got a lil over 9 months left, and all of the majors are taken care of... my only hope is to be done by May, so that i won't be stressed with law school classes starting!
We started planning 3 weeks before the official proposal (actually booking venue etc.) and he proposed a week and a year before our wedding date so that would =13 months!
You can plan a wedding in less time but it will be harder if you want an exact date and are picky with vendors!
He proposed on July 25, 2009 and we decided on a long engagement with a wedding date of May 2011 but we fell in love with our venue, they had May 22, 2010 open and FI just got a job offer that doubled our income so we decided to shorten our engagement to about nine months. I was nervous at first but it's going smoothly so I am so happy we changed our plans. Can't wait!!!
Planning a wedding can take as much or as little time as you want it to. Mine was a pretty elaborate wedding, planned from a different country, and I honestly could've planned it all out in a month.
Yes, you can spend two months finding JUST the right linens, or you can just order rounds from an online vendor, and be done with that in three clicks of a mouse. Yes, you can have appointments with four different florists, and interview them all with lots of questions, OR you can pick the local vendor you use for birthday arrangements, and trust them to do a good job and execute your vision.
Try not to panic/stress too much about what's to come. Just spend this pre-engagement time going on dates with your boyfriend, and enjoying falling in love even more.
If you really want to start your planning in advance, you can browse the websites of local vendors such as photogs and videogs and bands/DJs (etc.), narrow it down to your top five, then as soon as you're engaged, email all of them asking for availability and pricing for your dates. Then, you can make that decision very fast, once all the quotes are in. But there's really no rush-- everything will work itself out in the end! :)
i agree with most of the pp. it's all about flexibility on dates or connections if you want a shorter engagement period. i'd prefer a shorter engagement so that i wouldn't be bogged down with the details.. trust me they already drive me crazy, i want to make a decision, check it off of my list and move on to the next one.
3? Maybe 4 months? It's not ideal, but I've had a feeling it would pan out this way. We've been working off of a hypothetical deployment in August, and after the President's speech last night, it sounds like we were right. So engaged in the near future and married at some point in the Spring. I'm not going to plan anything until I get the ring, no matter what. So wish me luck!
Thank you all again for all of your advice! It really means alot to me that you are so encouraging!
@LovestheBear: I wish you all the luck in the world! I have an enormous amount of respect for the military and the families that surround them. My brother is currently deployed to Iraq and he is due to come home in the next couple of weeks but due to me being in school at night and having finals for the next 2 weeks I won't be able to go out and see him. I'm upset but everything will work out! I just hope he's here when I do get engaged and married!
I will have had 5 months and 2 days. But you could call it 6 months since we booked church and venue a few weeks before we were actually engaged.
@pec1216 - Thanks! That's so exciting about your brother!! I hope you get to see him soon! The most important thing is that he's coming home, safe and sound. Good luck on finals, and keep us posted on the planning! (I'm sure you will)
i got engaged on Christmas and married May 2....so 4 months! it was hectic but as a wise auntie told me, "however long your engagement is, thats how long it will take to plan your wedding." we had a bit of a rush to beat my husband's (then) upcoming deployment, and other family members' deployments (husband in the navy, dad and 4 siblings in the army, SIL in navy....we were looking at an endless deployment cycle and it was really important to have everyone with us for our day). it was wonderful and i wouldnt change a thing...and honestly, planning a big wedding in 4 months was actually not as bad as i thought it would be. i could have maybe gone for 6 months but i actually dont think i would want to be engaged longer than that ;-)
We got engaged May 29, 2008 and our wedding was June 20, 2009. So I had about 15 months to plan which for me was more than enough. I really felt like once we picked the date and the venue, everything feel into place. I wouldve loved to been married in less than a year but we wanted a summer wedding and I wouldnt have done it in 3 months :)
I think by December most everything was in order and there were just little things to do here and there. The hardest part was wanting to do everything too early (programs, place cards, menu cards etc) that I couldnt do til we had the guest count.
I've always wanted a long engagement, so I would like about 2 years to plan. Although if my bf takes another 2 years to propose I might want to shorten the engagement period! ;-)
lily I agree! I would like a longer engagement - about 1.5-2 years, but that's assuming that we are getting engaged within the next month or so! Any longer, I will just set my date and shorten the engagement! My only worry is that it would be my first, (maybe second,) year of teaching, so it will be crazy planning a wedding and curriculum!
I had almost exactly a year engagment...but planning itself really doesn't take that long. You could easily do that part in a matter of a couple weeks. You just need more time because you have to book things ahead of time and also need time for things you order to come in. And of course it's nicer to not be rushed.
How much time you really need depends mostly on how picky you are about vendors/dates and how much money you have to throw at things to get them done faster and/or by someone else.
I know what you mean, my boyfriend is a teacher. Last year he was hired as a teacher for one subject and was in that classroom for about 3 months than they switched him to another subject! Luckily he ended up loving the 2nd subject and found out he was very good at teaching it as well :-D
i'm anticipating a short engagment period, probably something along the lines of 6-7 months maybe, depending on my guy [he's always wanted a short engagement, i never really cared]. because of that, i already started saving money for the wedding [though, to be honest i started that about 3 years ago...once we started the marriage discussions seriously] and have a rough sketch of what i think we'd both like. all that is left is to get engaged and then get my guy's approval/ideas to incorparate into the skeleton i have now. pretty much most of the time will be reserved for diy projects
Our engagement is just over 12 months, and that was perfect for us. We never felt stressed or rushed, but we also never felt like we had to pause planning because the wedding was too far away.
I want a short engagement, four to six months. I don't want to mess around, and since I've been doing so much wedding research over these past months, I'll be well prepared when e-day arrives!
Then again, I'm not worried about booking venues/services. Mine are pretty much guaranteed.
I had 16 months to plan and I did a few things early on, but I did not get into serious wedding planning until 6 months before.
I'll have about 11 months to plan, which was longer than I'd like. Seems like 6 months would have been long enough, but that would have put us in the middle of winter, with 100 people traveling in the midwest, where it could blizzard at anytime. However, I will say that I was shocked at how far in advance things get booked up, so if something really matters to you and you are getting married during the busy season, a longer engagement might work better unless you are really lucky!
I honestly think that if you are the type that's not afraid to make decisions, any amount of time is do-able. If you have a date picked, then do the wedding you can do in that time period. We chose a date based on the venue's availability and planned around that. We had a 4 month + lull in planning after we got all the biggies done. We "planned" for a year, but most of that was just me reading blogs. Decisions and projects were actually quite quick, since we had a good vision of what we liked and are good at compromising. Speaking of which, i should really go finish projects. G'nite ladies!
hi again all! we're planning on having our wedding in august of 2010, so we'll only have a 9 month engagement. the only thing that i'm stressing about at the moment is that we haven't picked a date yet and all of the saturdays are booked everywhere, so either friday night or sunday night it will be. the majority of my family will be traveling anyway, so they're going to have to spend the night either way and i'm sure most of them will make a mini vacation out of it, since it's the summer.
i'm pretty sure that i can get everything done in time and since we're not having a saturday wedding we're not going to have to fight with everyone to find vendors, which is awesome! i could honestly care less about anything else (except for the stationary and photos, haha) so i'm not really a bridezilla and don't plan to be one, even though our engagement will be so short.
I think I'd rather get the planning over and done with so, if finances were not an issue, I'd opt for a shorter engagement. I don't think I want longer than a 12 month engagement, however that depends on the date we pick and finances.
Ill have five months to plan. But that is ideal for me because I am the type to procrastinate and change my mind 800 million times if I do things early so ill be planning very quickly and then leaving it alone.
We were engaged in Feb. 2009 and married in Sept. 2009. I had I did a lot the first couple of months then a 6 to 8 week window that I didn't do much (expcept hang out on Weddingbee and other wedding sites looking for inspiration). Then I diy'd our invites in July and from then on I was always working on something. I never really felt stressed or under the gun to plan our wedding in 7 months BUT we had a small wedding (about 80 guests), a small budget (under $5000), and I was unemployed that entire time.
We started planning in September, so if we stick with the 9/10/11 date, we'll be planning for two years. FMIL likes 11/11/11, but it's on a Friday. Good thing... it's a holiday weekend, so a Destination wedding (Lake Tahoe) would be perfect and we might have some snow. So, we'll see. In either case, we'll be planning for two years plus some change.
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