So you’re officially a BRIDE?!

Welcome to the club, my friend, and freaking congratulations. You just made one of the biggest and most important decisions of your LIFE.

Now that you’re in the wedding planning club, there may be 1721947 things on your mind, and you definitely may be getting a lot more targeted ads on Facebook ;) So! In the beautiful chaos that is being a bride, let’s narrow it down to what to focus on FIRST.

1. CELEBRATE

Okay, not gonna lie – my fiancé and I totally set our wedding date the DAY we got engaged. (we were slightly excited) BUT take some time to just live in the moment before you dive fully into planning. Maybe this means having a mini party, taking a vacation, or just holding off on telling the world for a few days. Ya know what – maybe it means diving straight in if your heart wants that. You do YOU.

2. Tell Your Inner Circle!

This is big – your grandma doesn’t want to be scrolling through Facebook and be totally caught off guard to see her first grandchild is engaged. We recommend making a lil list of your inner circle before posting anything online. Not sure how to make your list aside from immediate family? Do a quick check-in – would you be hurt if you saw life-changing news of that person online and you didn’t already know?

3. Protect that BLING

Is your ring slightly too big? Go get that sucker resized, and make sure it is insured as soon as possible. Insurance who?? If you’re not sure what steps to take, this can typically be added to your home insurance policy for a reasonable price.

4. Plan an Engagement Partayyy

You’ve told the world, so there’s no turning back now! Your people are probably dying to celebrate the two of you, so plan a get together – big or small to make the most of this season.

Now I won’t lie – I had no clue engagement parties were even a THING until I got invited to one a couple years ago, but why the heck not?! I’d say it’s reason to celebrate. So if it’s your thing – party on.

It’s also a great time to introduce the two families before the wedding, if they haven’t met.

5. Start Dreamin’

If you haven’t had a wedding vision since third grade (or if you have!), now is the time to make those Pinterest boards and follow those wedding accounts on Instagram. Once you start pinning and following, the algorithms will automatically start adding wedding inspiration to your feeds, which honestly is pretty fun if you ask me. (granted, I’m clearly a tad wedding obsessed)

Better yet – follow us on Instagram and Pinterest for inspiration!

6. Decide Your Dream Wedding and WHY You Want It

Okay you guys - this is HUGE and we don’t talk about it enough! Sit down with your fiancé (no parents, please) and openly chat about the day you two want to share together. Try with all your might to take away other peoples’ expectations and think about the day YOU want.

Is it a mountain elopement with just you and your parents and best best friends where you play games and plan weekend excursions? Is it the full-blown, balls to the walls wedding with 400 guests and dancing your freaking heart out? Is it a more intimate, yet boujee celebration with your inner circle where you know every single face and can have more intentional conversations? Talk about WHY you want what you want so you can have a solid foundation before talking with family members.

7. Estimate the guest count

You’ve narrowed down the wedding of your dreams – now who is there to celebrate? Before you start budgeting or planning anything, ya gotta estimate a guest count. This will ensure you have the venue capacity, and honestly can drastically affect your budget.

Download our FREE guest lister helper HERE

8. Money money monaayyyy

Okay, real talk – it can be awkward talking about money, but it’s gotta be done my friend. Is anyone helping you pay for this fabulous day? We suggest creating a budget on Google Drive and outlining price estimates of every vendor you plan to hire before you start hiring a ton.

**We do this for you in our full wedding planning process – we’ve learned the price ranges of vendors a time or two!

Outlining a complete budget allows you to be real with yourselves about the total cost, and where money will be going. You may realize you need to cut out a few things to allow for more wiggle room in your top priority vendors. It also helps you know what a reasonable budget will be before talking to any contributors.

If parents or other lovely people are helping you foot the bill, be sure to look over everything with them, and discuss what their expectations are, how much they’re comfortable paying etc. Get everything out on the table so you can comfortably move forward with booking vendors.

Pro-tip : give yourselves a budget range (say $23,000 to $25,000 versus a hard $24,000. This allows for some wiggle room. Trust us – vendors do raise their rates often, and life comes up. Feel free to reach out to us with any vendor rate estimates you may be curious on.

Pro-tip #2 : set your top priorities and top “we can go withouts” to decide what you can spend more and less money on.

9. Book your venue, photographer and wedding planner

These are the top 3 vendors that book up FAST, so we recommend booking them as soon as you know your date, budget, guest count and vision. The reason being is they can physically only be at or have one wedding per day, so if these vendors are important to you – lock em in.

Stay tuned for an upcoming blog - “5 vendors to book right away” for more details on this. Keep an eye on our Instagram.

10. Smile for the camera!

Schedule those engagement photos! Now this can be done later in the process too, but it’s a great way to celebrate this season of life and get excited. Bonus – if you do pics early enough, you can throw some on your save the dates!

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Let us help take your stress away and create the wedding of your dreams. We’re almost booked up for 2021 (eek!) and booking into 2022 so hit us upppp HERE

Ready for the next steps?! Pre-Order our Complete Wedding Planning Binder to guide you through everything and plan that WEDDING.