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Welcome to the Bee! I love it here! Congrats on the engagement as well :)
From what I have read on here (and I know there are some experts on these topics), this is the advice I can give you:
-STD's usually go out between a year and 6 months ahead. They aren't required at all, but a nice touch, especially for oot guests. Invitations usually go out 6-10 weeks ahead of time.
-I know NOTHING about engagement parties, as they aren't very common where I am. Sorry!
-For bookings... I would say book your venue and ceremony locations first to ensure you get the date. After that photographer, DJ, caterer (if you require one), cake, florist, videographer, officient, day of coordinator (or wedding planner) can all be booked based on the date you need. Also, if you are buying your dress from a bridal shop they usually require 6 months to have a dress come in and get altered, etc.
Have fun exploring :)
Oh! And after a bit of research I bought "The Knot Book of Lists" from my local bookstore. It was $15 Canadian and well worth it! It has a ton of tips from what to ask when "interviewing" vendors all the way to what you should do at what time. Might be worth investing in.
Yep, you're definitely excited. I don't think it's too early to start planning with a few caveats.
STDs - You could certainly send them a year out, but I've been around the bee long enough to see so many "I sent a STD, do I really have to invite this person" posts to warn you to be sure you're sending them to 1) a guest list that you're absolutely certain will suit your venue/budget/desired size of wedding a year and half from now, and 2) people that you're sure you'll still be in contact with. How much would it suck to invite your entire workplace with an STD, then change jobs on bad terms, or have somebody who causes drama down the road? I'd say it's safe to send to your absolute must have VIP guests, but you probably talk to them often enough that they'll KNOW when your wedding is and that they're invited without an official notice. We sent out our STD's 7 months before our wedding because I wanted to put them in our Christmas cards, and I have to say we even ended up with some people that we may not have invited closer to the date. So, remember, no STD doesn't mean you can't invite them later, it just leaves you the flexibility to NOT invite them down the road.
Engagement party - I didn't have an engagement party, and have never been to one (not very common here) so I can't say from experience, but I'd say it would be perfectly appropriate to host a "meet the families/wedding party meet and greet" type party. If you can get a friend or someone to host for you, even better.
Other than that, the first things you need to establish off the bat are your budget and guest list - but you seem like the type that's already got that done!
One question - when you say "dress day" are you intending to shop for your dress, their dresses or both? If you're thinking both, I would definitely advise you against that. Do your dress first and have a day that's just about you.
I say you are right on track with your invites and STD send out dates. And you are quite on top of things!!! Congratulations on your engagement. It looks like you are taking care of most things right away.
For your dress day, is this just you, or hte bridesmaids? My one suggestion would be to not shop for both of you on the same day. Set aside one day for just you and take everyone back for just the bridesmaids, trust me the day for just yoru dress could be hectic enough.
But mostly, welcome here and enjoy your planning!
For STDs, I'd agree with 8-9 months since it is going to be on Memorial Day weekend and some people make a ton of plans for then.
My wedding is going to be in April 2013, and I've had a ton of problems finding florists that are open! I definitely didn't think that would be an issue this far out, but it is. So maybe start talking to some of them too?
As for the engagement party, we're not doing one so I can't answer from my own experience, but perhaps just say you want to get together with friends to celebrate your engagement? Do like a dinner in a private restaurant or something like that so it's not like you're throwing a party for yourself. A lot of people will probably say that you shouldn't ever throw one because of etiquette but I say do whatever is best for you & your FI!
Our STDs went out at the 7 month mark. If you have a lot of out of town guests you could send them a little earlier but I think 6-8 months is about the right time. As far as engagement parties I believe they are supposed to be thrown for you, not by you. My mom couldn't afford to throw us a party so we didn't have one. We were really excited for our engagement too (we've been together 9 years) and considered throwing one but thought that was weird, so instead we just went to a nice dinner with his parents and grandparents. Since it's still pretty far away, I would suggest just booking your vendors right now to secure the date. We had a 10 month engagement and booked vendors (venue, caterer, photographer, DJ, officiant, florist, in that order) so that we made sure we got the ones we liked and then figuring out the details didn't really start until the 6 month mark.
@takemyhand: Thank you SO much for the advice and encouragement! I really aprpeciate it. :)
@SapphireSun: A great point with the STD list, especially considering the 'co-workers' area. Is it possible to send an invite without an STD in that situation?
@adnama: (and also Sapphire!) We are doing a both-in-one dresses day. Two of my bridesmaids are from out of town, one farther than the other (Atlanta, Georgia) and I don't think we'll have another day to get everyone together. Really, though, I want everyone together so they can try on different styles of dresses so we can find one that looks flattering on everyone - I really don't want everyone to be in a different style. Do you think this is still too much to do in one day? I didn't even think of that.
@seahorsey: I didn't even think about the florists yet! Oy! I think that maybe I'll talk to the lady at our venue about her experience with them, I wouldn't even know where to start around here.
@SamanthaLovesJames: I will absolutely look into it! :) Thank you!
@redhead46: Thank you for the ideas! For me, I'm most excited about the details, I think - so I'd like to take your advice and book the venue/vendors ASAP so I can focus on the little things that might be 'more fun'.
All - as far as the 'Engagement Party', is it possible to maybe call it something else and throw one toward spring/summer? I don't know why I'm so fixated on this idea; again I think it is the excitement of it all. Maybe if we just call it a get-to-know-each other event or just a get-together for all involved. We live in an apartment complex, so we have a pool and a rec center available - we can have it super informal and everything. Thoughts?
Thank you all so much for your advice/responses! I really appreciate it and look forward to interacting with all of you. :)
Congrats on your engagement!!
Since our wedding is this year in May (the 19th) I thought I would answer specifically about save the dates! We sent ours out the first of October. BUT as you mentioned your wedding is Memorial Day weekend, I would add at least 1 month to that timeframe. I would send them out before Labor Day, if I were you!
As for the engagement party - Our families already know eachother fairly well, so we are forgoing a more formal engagement party for a more formal bridal shower. FI says as long as it isn't a co-ed shower, he's fine with it!
I would say booking vendors in order of importance is (in my opinion): Venue, Photographer, Caterer, Dress, DJ, Flowers/Florist, Paper Goods, and Cake. (I'm a photographer though so that's pretty important to me!)
Something you didn't ask about or mention was a budget. To me, since we are paying for the wedding ourselves, was extremely important. Make sure you have a realistic budget and stick to it!
All that being said, I wish you good luck and eternal happiness!
@Buffalobride4712: Congrats on your upcoming wedding! 2012 has a whole other special meaning for you! How exciting. :) I thought I did mention the budget thing, my apologies: we're paying more 90% of the wedding ourselves. We're very good at being bargain shoppers, so to speak, because we've been on our own for so long; I'm not worried about going over a budget, mostly because that's just not possible. But thank you so much for that additional advice! My cousin, who is also a bridesmaid, also said that the engagement party is unnecessary and everyone can meet and mingle at the wedding shower - I think that's what we'll end up doing, unless someone offers to throw us a party.
Thank you again for all of the thoughtful comments! :)
@StephK527: We are not paying for our wedding ourselves, but we wanted a small wedding and thought we could work our budget into paying for the honeymoon and wedding. Let me tell you now--- I had NO IDEA HOW EXPENSIVE VENUES ARE! I thought we could do an entire wedding for under $15,000 in my dream location and so far the venue itself (including a gratiuity) is about $3000 and the catering/rentals/open bar/chair covers/etc is close to $8000 including a gratiuity.
It. sucks.
Before you set a STRICT budget, make sure you think of the little things a lot of people overlook, make sure you include gratuities in your budget, and decide what you are NOT flexible on (we were not flexible on photography but found an amazing deal with a great photographer) and we were not too flexible on the style of the venue we wanted (which was way more than we wanted to spend, but it took away the need to decorate anything but centrepieces).
@takemyhand: Oh. My. Gosh. I know!!! I live in Pittsburgh, which has a really low cost of living - my cousin in Atlanta refers to it as having "1982 prices". I was told the average price of a wedding is $30,000 and I was like 'oh, well that won't be a problem for me!' PFFFT - even the most reasonable places wanted $8,000 just for the facility, not including the food, set up, table and chair rental, etc. Furthermore, I grew up attending functions with home-made food (I'm Italian and come from a giant Italian family/community) and just assumed we would be able to have home-made food and save some money; not the case at all! Every single place I looked requires either their in-house catering or choosing from a list of approved caterers. I was shocked. However, I was able to find a place (that we are visiting on the 14th) that does almost everything (food, set-up, bar, clean-up, ceremony on-site, etc.) and their total price includes sales tax, gratuities, etc. and it is a very reasonable price of less than $12k total. I don't want to get my hopes up, but I've known a few friends-of-friends who have had their weddings at this venue and they loved it, so fingers crossed. :)
Seriously, though, I do understand where you're coming from and it is ridiculous. Makes you want to seriously consider eloping. . .
welcome!! :)
we got engaged after 7.5 years of dating.. very exciting! we really wanted to throw an engagement party for ourselves (no one else was offering!!) and would have done a casual thing, but we live 3 hours away from all our friends and family so we didnt... I really wish we could have.. so i think you should totally go for it! :)
good luck planning! sounds like you are totally on top of things!!
Congrats!!! I'm a May 2013 bride as well so I have a little experience with the timeline...
STDs: I'll be sending mine a year before (and ONLY to family and close-friends as to avoid the awkward 'I sent this person a STD but now I don't want to invite them to the wedding' issues. I have family and friends out of town (including an Uncle who lives in Germany) so I'd like to give everybody enough time to plan ahead - especially since May is a big vacation month with Memorial Day and everything.
Engagement Party: Nobody threw us one, but we got engaged in Vegas so we sort of had a week-long engagement party, haha. I don't think it's out of line to throw one yourselves, I had friends who just invited us all to the bar the weekend after they got engaged and it was a great time.
As for dresses - I bought mine last week and I probably could've waited a bit longer to try on different dresses but I found a great dress on sale so I went with it. You can definitely wait a bit to get your Bridesmaid dresses, I'm not even going to start bringing my girls out to try them on for a couple more months, so if you don't find anything ASAP, don't stress - you have plenty of time. :)
Besides my dress I only have my venue locked down, a rough-draft of our guest list, and I've asked all of my Bridesmaids to be in the wedding. I've been browsing for photographers and general color and theme ideas but I don't think I'm going to start making phone calls until the craziness of the holidays settles down.
Good luck, and have fun!
@StephK527: Good luck with the venue!!! I was suprised by these "food rules" too! So many places require catering done by a specific company or in house caterers, and you cannot bring in your own food for a late night sweet table, etc etc. The caterer I am using requires that you ONLY use their food (including cake) but they have a decent priced and amazing cake person who can create something simple that will match our wedding, so I'm not concerned. Crazy venues...
Welcome to the Hive. Here is a link to a free wedding planner that alot of of bees have used.
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Hi everyone!
My name is Stephanie and I'm new to Wedding Bee - I actually found it on Google (thank GOD for Google) and have previously been resorting to TheKnot.com, which honestly overwhelms me sometimes, even though I'm a super OCD-level planner.
My fiance and I got engaged on December 22, 2011 after almost eight years of being together. We're both ridiculously excited and are planning on having our wedding May 25, 2013. We decided on May because that's the month we first got together, back in 2004 (our story and other details can be found on our website, KrasinskiLaurenza.OurWedding.com).
Anyway - when we first decided on that date, I thought it was perfect. A year and a half of planning and enjoying being engaged sounded phenomenal. Then, because I'm a super planner, I started sending out a few e-mails here and there for photographers, venues, etc. just to get an idea. The more I sent out, though, the more I got responses like: "It's never too early to start planning! By planning a May 2013 date, you're ahead of the game - but not as much as you may think! We already have two Saturdays in May 2013 booked!" Seriously, this happened to me three different times! I'm sure it has a lot to do with May being a popular wedding month and all, but talk about a mini-panic attack.
We're both super new and inexperienced with this. We'll be the first in our families to have what we're calling a "traditional" wedding (our parents/siblings/cousins have all had other variations: Las Vegas, Justice of the Peace, etc.), and we're paying for almost the entire thing ourselves. So I'm frantically Googling everything and trying to figure everything out, but there are a few things I'm lost on and I really hope you girls will be able and willing to help! :)
- When to send Save the Dates. I think because I'm so excited I want to find someone who says "pft! Send them whenever you want!" ;) It seems as though the norm is to send about 6-8 months away. . . but the date we picked (not on purpose - we started dating May 27 and wanted it as close to that date as possible) is Memorial Day weekend, so I feel like maybe we should give even more advanced notice? Obviously I can't send them right now or anything, but I was thinking maybe October-Novemberish? And then we could send out our actual invites January/February - which gives people plenty of time to officially RSVP. Any thoughts here are more than welcome.
- Engagement Parties. Most of the things I read say that it's hosted by the bride's parents/family. The thing is, my parents and most of my family aren't even in the picture. Is it obnoxious to throw it ourselves? We wouldn't do anything too fancy or want gifts - just a party, with the immediate family and our friends that are in the wedding, maybe a few that aren't IN the wedding but are close to us. As I already mentioned, we're really excited and want to celebrate. I had the thought of maybe waiting until spring/summertime and having something outdoorsy, but I wasn't sure if it was 'okay' to wait so long to have a celebration. Again, any thoughts/comments on this topic are MORE than welcome.
- We're meeting with our potential photographers (Limelight-Images.com - for any of you in/around the Pittsburgh area!) on the 10th, and our hopeful venue (www.TheFez.com) on the 14th. I've been in contact with our hopeful DJ via e-mail, whom we know from his local bar gigs. My bridal party and I are having our Dress Day on February 11th. Is there anything else I/we should make sure to do ASAP?
I really do appreciate any/all of your advice, comments, thoughts, etc. I don't know what to expect and am really relying on Google and websites like this one to guide me in the right direction.
Thanks in advance - I look forward to talking to all of my fellow Bees! :)
- Steph