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On average how much time does one need to plan a wedding? What are your thoughts/experiences?
I think you could do it in 9 months (and get most of your top choices for venue, vendors etc) if you were really focused and could devote time to it. Less than that, you may find lots of things already booked by other brides and you may be taking what you can get.
If you are lazier/slower/less focused like me, I think it takes at least a year (but that includes taking months off here and there when you get sick of thinking about it).
I'll have an 18 month engagement but I barely did anything the first 6 months of that. I booked my venue about a year out, ordered dress about 10 months out, officiant booked about 9 months out, photog booked about 8 months out, and I haven't been running into problems with many people already being taken, so it seems to be a good timing.
My friend did it in 3 months!! She was preggers, but It turned out great! And it was a big 200 person one too!!
As long as you want it to. Most people take a year to 18 mos, some people take a week. :) I'd like to have a shorter engagement, and I'd be happy with six months.
i think it just depends on your situation and what you want. I have a looonnnnnggg engagement (2.5yr) and for us thats plenty of time to save $ to pay everything in cash and plan with no rush. For someone else a good 2 weeks may be plenty of time.
I think it's up to the couple. We're taking 2 years so that we can have a big wedding, pay in cash and not worry about bills afterward. If we had all the money in the world, I know I would have a much longer engagement.
depends on so many things. if your not too worried about budget you can do it in about a month. My friend did it in 3 weeks. Good luck :)
I think it depends on what kind of wedding you want to have and wha tkind of money you got to spend.
We spent 20K and I planned for 13 months. I"d say a good 3 of those I didn't do anything but look at stuff, though.
My SIL got engaged and married within 3 months and spent 35K--she said it was harder to get the vendors on short notice and had to pay premium prices and buy an off the rack dress.
I guess it also depends on how much help you have (my parents live 5 hours away and my FI was deployed so...yeah no help for me!), how flexible you are (open to ideas or set in your ideas like I was?) and how quickly you wanna get married!
Personally I enjoyed being engaged for 13 months. I kinda basked in the "oh i'm ENGAGED!" cuz when you're married, frankly, it's old news!
I really think it depends on what you want.
For us, we needed the long engagement (20 months) to give me plenty of time to find things I wanted and save the money ($20K).
I had a freind that planned her wedding for over 200 in only about three weeks. It's do-able.
*shrug* my friend planned it in one, honestly. She wasn't pregnant, just wanted to get married to him and didn't want to make a big thing of it. Both of their parents came down, my boyfriend is a minister so he was the officient, and they had a couple of other friends there. It was GORGEOUS, too.
We're going it in 6, about 165 people invited... probably going to spend about 30k.
We're doing it in a little over ten, with an insane grad school crunch that means i don't deal with it much for a few of those months, and we're planning halfway across the country. honestly, I think the long-distance thing makes me more efficient - when I'm home, I just decide! I think you could easily do ours in 6, and we're having around 250!
We're having a 9-month engagement and I even didn't get to planning right away since he proposed on vacation and I was just lazy when we got back...But then all the big decisions were made within a couple months. I feel like we're right on tack, no rush, no stress. Maybe a little bit more time to look at dresses would've been nice since I ended up going to 21 salons in 3 months in a panicked frenzy...But that was just my indecisiveness.
I think it really depends on what you want. Around here, a lot of venues book up FAST, so I'd say a 1 to 1 1/2 year engagement at least is necessary. But for a more laid-back venue or less populated area, I'm sure you could plan a wedding in 6-8 months.
We did it 8 months. But didn't do anything for 2 of them. No reason that you can't have a wonderful wedding in 6 months or less. If I had to do it over again I'd do it in 4, max.
if we had been paying for it ourselves, it probably would have taken just as long as it did (6 months) but it would have been a lot smaller. I would have gone crazy with a longer engagement and I wasn't particularly picky about my venue as long as it had booze and good food. if you have something you REALLY want - it can be a longer process to make sure you get the dates and places you need
@Meliss- 21 salons?! Good grief! I thought 6 for me was a lot... hahaha. wooow.
I got engaged Sept. 09, and we're getting married May 2010. I still don't have a lot of the big stuff, like a venue, but I'm not too worried about it. Maybe it's regional? and budget. We have like a 3k budget, so it's only about 100 guests and finding a place like that means knowing someone. And we have a lot of people helping. So I would say it can be done in 3-6 months.
Same here, i spent the first three months just looking at stuff and not making definite plans. I didn't get my dress until a couple weeks ago.
Even though weve been engaged for 4 months, we really didnt start fully planning everything until just a few weeks ago and were getting married in August. And pretty much everything is done except for cake, food and flowers/decorations. We sometimes say that we really didnt need this much time and we just want the day to get here! But I can understand why it can take longer...especially if planning a DW
it you had to, you could plan it in one or less. it really doesn't take that long to make those decisions. What adds time is the availability of vendors, ordering dresses, and making DIY projects.
I am planning over the course of 21 months. This was perfect for me because I get to tackle one thing at a time with no rush or stress. We booked our big vendors early and there was just no rush. As much as I want to be married, I would not change the planning timeline for anything.
I'll have been engaged for 18 months by the time of the wedding, and the only thing I did until 9 months out was book the venue (did that with 15 months to go, then did NOTHING for six months). I think the ideal amount of time, assuming you don't get married in May or June when venues get all booked up fast, is 7-9 months. If I'd have realized we could do it so fast, we'd be married already!
@Sept2610 - Yeah, 21 salons, I know...
I thought it was around a dozen until a bee asked for local recommendations and I sat down and made a list. If I could do it all over again, I'd just find a good seamstress and have the dress made. I had an image in my head when I started and I just couldn't find it anywhere, it drove me NUTZ. Stuff I didn't know anything about was much easier, like the florist. "Um, flowers? Yeah they all look pretty, so whatever you do is fine" :)
I am a new associate at a private law firm, so I work from 8 am until 6 pm on good days (you don't want to know about bad days) and I work at least 4 hours most weekends. None of my family is on this side of the county, two of three BMs are back East, and the MOH here is in the same work situation.
So, I hired a planner. Best. Idea. Ever.
And we will have been planning for the wedding in about 7 months total. All you need is legwork and decisiveness. Really, just deciseveness.
It definitely depends on the wedding, but I'd say 9-12 months is good. It's long enough that you won't be super stressed, but short enough that there isn't a ton of time where you have NOTHING to do (like with my 18 month engagement, lol)
I would say at least 6 months if you don't want to go too crazy. We're planning everything with 8 months time. And so far I could see why people suggest a year, there a lot of things that took more time than we thought it would, especially since we're on a tight budget.
We started planning about 9 months out and booked the venue and caterer at that point. I also knew who our florist would be since she is a friend of ours. Purchased my dress at 6 months. And with 5 months left, we just booked our musicians, officiant and restaurant for the rehearsal dinner.
I think it's totally a personal decision. You can plan a wedding in six months, but I would not want to do it. FI and I are having an 18 month engagement. I have liked having so much time to plan, but at times it has seemed like too much time!
My friend is planning her wedding in six months because her FI is in the military, so it can be done!
I think 12 months is a good amount of time.
our engagement is exactly two years from the day he proposed...we're very very busy with our jobs though.
I think you can plan a wedding in a few weeks if you really want to! All you need for a wedding is you, your future spouse, an officiant and something to make it celebratory, and that can mean different things to different people - a cake, champagne, flowers, a wedding gown, all of the above. You can get all of those things I just listed on fairly short notice, though it might be hectic.
But if you want the dream venue, the awesome caterer, the popular DJ, the amazing photographer, the custom-fitted dress, the well thought out guest list - you'll need about 9 months. Any less than that, locations and vendors get booked up, and if you go under 4 months or so, I can't imagine it would be very easy to carefully plan out your guest list, get invitations, address them and get RSVPs in time.
We started planning our wedding about 13 months in advance because I really wanted to make sure we got the best vendors. If we had waited a couple more months, our incredible photographer would have been all booked, because most people start planning weddings a year in advance. So that really has to be taken into consideration. Ultimately, its about what's important to you. If a traditional wedding with all the bells and whistles is what you want, I would say to get started no later than 9 months out.
Forever if you're me... lol.
It depends on how much detail you want... how indecisive you are... avalible $... avalible time...
If you have your heart set on specific popular photographers or venues, then you should definately book those in as far in advance as possible. Its unlikely you'll get the location of your dreams (and that of many other girls) in 3 months advance.
I'm hoping it only takes 6-9 months, because that's all the time I have!
For me? Well I enjoyed/am enjoying having the 13 months...
But I think you could do it in WAY less too. Totally depends.
I am getting married in September and got engaged in December. I started planning immediately, and it is a good thing! The biggest thing for me was when the venue that I wanted was availble.
I heard of brides planning their weddings in weeks! It can be done very quickly (and probably at a large discount too if you are flexible about dates and vendors)
Well we're doing it in a year. But I know that I could get it done in 6-9 months with no problem. But I've been engaged for 3yrs so I've had time to at least think about this. I'm REALLY hoping to shoot in way less 5k- but that doesn't include honeymoon or rings. My brother's wife planned theirs in 6months. My mom done theirs in 6wks (no it wasn't a shot gun wedding. They didn't have kids for another 7yrs.). Depends if you're going all out or if you are keeping it simple. We're going all out- just cheaply.
my BFF planned hers in under three months. she also had an amazing coordinator/designer, but she was also planning from another state.
so yes, it can be done in three months. how much time do I want? a year!
I haven't got a date set in stone yet.
However, a friend of mine just got married and they planned their wedding in about 2 weeks. From what I saw and heard, it was quite wonderful.
@spinningstars: haha, I posted that exact thing ten months ago. Don't worry, it was!
@Jewel00: :) Interesting post- alot more variety in the answers than expected; I commend anyone for planning a wedding in less than 5 months! :D thats just generally amazing
Personally I think I would need a year; Im using this http://img2.timeinc.net/weddings/static/pdf/planning_checklist.pdf to help me plan my wedding (it actually might be sooner than expected (2013). SO keeps dropping hints and driving me generally crazy waiting buttt thats all part of the fun isnt it?
Im a bit of a planner nerd though, but if you are much better at being spontaneous or a better organizer than I, then I totally think you could do it in less time than a year for sure!
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