Photos on the thumbnail courtesy of The Drakes.

No matter if you’re just getting started with the wedding planning process or the big day is right around the corner, I think we can all agree that wedding planning can be such a fun and memorable experience. However, as we often say, careful planning is extremely important throughout the entire process. After all, we are talking about wedding “PLANNING,” right? Nonetheless, throughout this experience, you’ll quickly learn there are certain decisions that you’ll want to prioritize earlier than others. This isn’t to say they are necessarily more important than future decisions, but rather that they are typically big choices and in most cases, tend to be a little time-sensitive!

For anyone stopping by our wedding blog for the very first time, welcome to Madera Estates! As a luxury wedding venue located in Conroe, TX, you’ll find a wide variety of wedding-related content here on our blog. Whether that be tips on creating your wedding vendor dream team, ideas and inspiration from past weddings held at Madera or anything else, we encourage you to check out previous blog posts HERE if you’re currently planning your wedding. Having said all of that, on this week’s blog post, we’re going to be taking a deeper look at 3 important tasks you won’t want to procrastinate on! In other words, if you’re utilizing a checklist or to-do list to stay on track, make sure to highlight these tasks!

Establish Your Budget

After getting engaged and celebrating with friends and family at your engagement party, you’re going to want to start browsing through possible vendor options, discuss floral arrangements, look at wedding dresses and all of that fun stuff, right? While those are all extremely important aspects of the wedding planning process, there are a few things you’ll need to do first and one of those is solely tied to finances. It’s definitely not going to be as exciting as some of those things I just mentioned, but it will be an important piece that needs to be finalized for the wedding planning to truly commence.

With this, you’ll want to have a solid estimate on a total budgetary number, know who’s paying for the various components and have a ballpark figure on how much you can spend for some of the bigger items, such as venue, photographer, caterer and so on! Trust us, once you have each of those items completed, it will make everything else that much easier. It’ll make it easy to know which vendors fit within your price range and remove any confusion on who’s responsible for what. Long story short, get your budget established first!

Major Vendor Selections

Throughout a complete wedding ceremony and reception, there can truly be quite a few different vendors involved. Hair and makeup artist, florist, caterer, photographer, videographer, DJ, cake baker, the list goes on! Before you start thinking you need to book all of these right away, you can rest assured knowing that you do have a little bit of time at your disposal for some vendor selections. However, for your wedding vendor dream team, we do recommend getting a few of the major vendor categories finalized earlier than others, as well as any vendors that you consider to be “must-haves.” The primary reason why we’re mentioning that here is due to the fact that vendors can get booked up months (sometimes over a year) in-advance. Keep in mind that the importance of this is heightened if your wedding date is during a traditionally popular wedding time too, such as Saturdays in the fall. All in all, wedding vendors are such an integral aspect of the entire wedding celebration and it’s important to get someone capable of bringing your dream wedding to life. With that being said, don’t procrastinate on booking those major vendor categories!

Keep in mind that amongst these “major vendor categories,” that also includes your venue! If you select your venue first, then you’ll have a date finalized and can work with that when meeting with other vendors. For this reason, we often recommend getting the venue booked ASAP.

Research, Research, Research

I’m going to guess “research” probably isn’t a word you expected to see on the topic of wedding planning, but it is actually something you’ll likely find yourself doing in the early stages. For example, you and your spouse-to-be may start researching wedding insurance and deciding on a potential policy to add there. Another area where “research” comes into play is in regards to vendors. While we just highlighted the importance of getting the major vendors booked early on, before doing so, you’ll want to research some of the possibilities and determine who might be the best fit. From cake bakers and DJ’s to caterers and so on, you’ll be searching for businesses with great reviews and the ability to make your dream wedding a reality. Not to mention, another method of “researching” would involve reaching out to friends and family that have recently tied the knot. If you attended their weddings, you may have even seen these vendors in action. Nonetheless, recommendations from your loved ones is another terrific way of not only narrowing down your list of possibilities, but you’ll also have the opportunity to discuss pricing, customer service, experiences and more beforehand.

Assuming you’re not in a time crunch, it never hurts to take your time to research a few options and get some quotes to compare pricing before booking a vendor for your big day!

Pro Tip: Utilize a Timeline

As we mentioned in the opening paragraphs, utilizing a checklist is a great way to stay on track while planning your special day. There’s obviously more than a few items to complete before the wedding, so this can certainly be a useful tool! Here at Madera Estates, we’ve always been focused on creating a stress-free wedding planning experience. In addition to being matched with one of our wedding coordinators, engaged couples are also given access to our Client Portal, which includes a planning timeline. This guide walks you through the months leading up to your big day with all of the important details you’ll want to finalize before the wedding day is here! Each of these tasks are then categorized into time frames (listed by number of months before the wedding) to ensure everything is completed in a timely manner!

Book Your Tour of Madera Estates!

We’ve said it before, but wedding planning can (AND should be) a fun and exciting experience! However, if you don’t have a plan in-place beforehand, it can start to transform into somewhat of an overwhelming experience, which is not what it’s intended to be. Considering couples generally have more than a few months to plan out their big day, it’s important to take your time so you can truly enjoy the complete process, as well as prioritize some of the more time-sensitive items earlier on. We’ve highlighted a few of the tasks that would fall under that time-sensitive category above, with these being the things you’ll want to take care of shortly after the planning process begins!

Since selecting a wedding venue is undoubtedly one of the bigger decisions and also something you’ll need to finalize earlier on, we would love to invite you to tour Madera Estates if you’re searching for a venue near the Houston area. To take a look at our online booking calendar, feel free to click the link HERE. Cheers to a wonderful wedding planning experience!