Photo on thumbnail courtesy of Rachel Lynn Photography.
Wedding planning timelines are undoubtedly a popular topic of discussion in the wedding world. After all, in the months between your engagement and the big day itself, you’ll have more than a few tasks that you will need to complete. From building your dream team of wedding vendors and creating your guest list to finalizing the day-of schedule and everything else, it will definitely be important to have a well thought out timeline! This will provide you and your partner with a number of various benefits.
For one, wedding planning timelines are perfect for making sure you take care of everything and don’t forget any items along the way. However, they are also great for determining when certain items should be completed. Some should be prioritized shortly after the exciting engagement, while others can wait until the big day draws near. Knowing which is which is going to be very important!
For those familiar with our wedding blog, you likely know that we discuss wedding planning topics quite regularly. In this week’s blog post, we’ll be talking about “wedding planning timelines” and highlighting the items that you should prioritize! Whether that means marking it on the timeline sheet itself or simply emphasizing spending some extra time on it with your partner, you won’t want to wait on these important items! Let’s dive right in!
Priority #1 for Wedding Planning Timelines: Set a Budget
Being in the wedding industry ourselves, we always love talking about the many magical aspects of wedding days. Beautiful floral arrangements, delicious catering options, amazing wedding cakes, fun reception activities, the list goes on! However, before you start meeting with all of these local vendors and discussing the various options available, you’ll want to discuss the “financial” component first! Having a budget established serves a number of purposes. It allows you to know a ballpark range of how much you can spend on different aspects of your wedding. It helps solidify who is paying for what (so there are no surprises later on down the road). Especially since several of the purchases you’ll make in the beginning stages of the planning process are going to occupy larger portions of your budget, this will be something you’ll want to start discussing early on!
To sum it up, wedding planning timelines are going to be filled with numerous decisions, but a budget is going to need to be somewhat solidified to give you an idea how much you can spend for different things! There’s a reason why we chose to feature this item first!
Priority #2 for Wedding Planning Timelines: Find Your Venue
When it comes to vendors that you’ll want to book early on, the venue itself is one you’ll want to highlight! Especially in regards to popular dates (for example, Saturdays in the fall), wedding venues can get booked up rather fast. Even though you won’t want to rush through the venue touring and booking process, you also don’t want to procrastinate on getting started. Once you have a wedding venue selected, you’ll have the actual date locked in and this will be a step in the right direction as you start to reach out to other vendors. Not to mention, if you’re looking for vendor recommendations that also have experience working weddings at your venue, the team at the wedding venue should be an excellent resource in figuring out who you should start reaching out to!
Here at Madera Estates, we understand how important the venue touring process is and how helpful it can be to see the space in-person. This will make it much easier to envision where the ceremony and reception will take place, and ultimately decide whether it’s the one for you and your partner.
Priority #3 for Wedding Planning Timelines: Research Various Vendors
Without a doubt, one of the funnest parts of wedding planning is going to involve browsing for wedding ideas and comparing potential wedding vendors. Having hosted hundreds of weddings over the years, we can confidently say that your team of vendors will play a significant role in the overall celebration. Between the getting ready moments, ceremony and reception, your vendors will be involved throughout and as such, you’ll want to take your time selecting them.
So…having said that, our next priority item for wedding planning timelines will be carving out some time in your schedule to browse through various vendors. Florists, photographers, videographers, caterers, cake bakers, photo booths, you name it! Luckily, living in the digital age of today’s world, the internet contains a plethora of information and can be extremely helpful. Several wedding vendors are active on social media nowadays, so that can be an excellent place to start and see examples of their work from past weddings. Likewise, looking for online reviews is also going to be important to learn more about a couple’s experience working with each particular vendor. As we mentioned above, your vendor team will play a big role in your special day, so don’t feel the need to rush these decisions. Similarly, like we discussed with venues in the previous section, you also don’t want to leave this until the last minute since vendors can get booked up quite a few months in-advance.
Priority #4 for Wedding Planning Timelines: Organization. Organization. Organization.
Our final topic that we’ll discuss isn’t a specific item like those mentioned above, but is something you’ll want to keep in mind throughout the entire planning process. Unsurprisingly, wedding planning encompasses a number of different decisions in the months leading up to your special day. Furthermore, as evidenced throughout this blog post, utilizing tools like wedding planning timelines can be an excellent way to stay on top of everything and continue to be organized! Having said that, our final item of prioritization is to emphasize organization! Whether that means having a separate email address or even an email folder specifically for your wedding-related items, creating a spreadsheet with wedding expenses, or anything else, organization will make your life a whole lot easier!
Host Your Big Day at Madera Estates!
Highlighted earlier on in this blog post, booking your wedding venue should absolutely be a prioritized item on all wedding planning timelines. We’ve said it before, but having a timeline in place will be immensely helpful in ensuring that you and your partner stay on schedule and don’t forget any items along the way. Wedding planning should be such a fun and memorable experience, so stress is something that should be avoided. Luckily, wedding planning timelines are a resource that will help ensure this is the case!
Are you interested in learning more about hosting your wedding day at Madera Estates? Our venue, Madera Estates, is located in Conroe, TX, which is just north of Houston and The Woodlands. We’ve had the opportunity to work with hundreds of couples over the years and it’s always fun to hear what they have envisioned for their big day. To get started, we encourage you to check out our Investment Guide. Click HERE to request a copy! It’s filled with information about hosting a wedding at Madera Estates. As always, if you have any questions for us, don’t hesitate to give our team a call at (936) 441-9337.