(Closed) How Long Does It Take To Plan A Wedding?

• prettyflowers
• 11 years ago

• Wedding: August 2010

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.

• Chartreuse
• 11 years ago

• Wedding: March 2010

My friend did it in 3 months!! She was preggers, but It turned out great! And it was a big 200 person one too!!

• Minutiae
• 11 years ago

• Wedding: April 2011

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.

• krissybee
• 11 years ago

• Wedding: October 2011

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. 

• Mrs. Elephant
• 11 years ago

• Wedding: April 2011 - The Tribute Golf Club

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.

• bestbuddies
• 11 years ago

• Wedding: June 2010

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 🙂

• ejs4y8
• 11 years ago

• Wedding: June 2009

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 Fiance 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!

• IA_Snowflake
• 11 years ago

• Wedding: August 2009

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.

• KMSull
• 11 years ago

• Wedding: August 2010

*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.

• ebs1123
• 11 years ago

• Wedding: July 2010

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!

• meliss
• 11 years ago

• Wedding: May 2010

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.

• lilyfaith
• 11 years ago

• Wedding: June 2012

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. 

• Miss Sapphire
• 11 years ago

• Wedding: November 2009

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.

• Dragonsus
• 11 years ago

• Wedding: Private home

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