Hello lovely humans! Today we are going to talk about what you’re supposed to do after you got engaged. Everybody is going to freak out obviously, if you are not standing out on the balcony you screaming – I’m engaged, I’m engaged you’re doing it wrong.
Once you get over your big moment, you have a wedding to plan, and that’s either extremely exciting or extremely scary. Whatever you do don’t panic, just fallow our list and you should on the way to a successful wedding.
Here is a list of seven things that you should do as soon as you get engaged.
Engagement Tip #1
Tell your loved ones, freaked out with your best friend, call your mom sobbing hysterically, send text to everyone in your phone-book and then go to social media. Take it up a notch. If that’s your personality and take the best engagement ring selfie you’ve ever taken in your life. Skip the filter no one needs a filter on that pretty ring. Just freak out and really bask in the beginning of the next chapter of your life.
Oh yeah you might not want to forget about your fiance. They’re kind of important 🙂
Engagement Tip #2
The second thing you’re going to do will be to set a wedding budget. Don’t start your wedding planning unless you know how much money you have to spend. I’ve seen it happen many times. You’re going to fall in love with a venue that you can’t afford or you’re going to be looking at wedding photographers that are way out of your price range.
Sit down and have a practical honest heart-to-heart conversation with your fiance, with your parents, with his parents and with whom ever maybe you know contributing to your wedding day. Come up with a real number that you have to work with. Wedding daydreaming is dangerous without a budget. Try as hard as you can to start with a real budget and the rest will fall into place.
Engagement Tip #3
Hire a coordinator or full time wedding planner. By hiring a wedding planner you remove most of stress that’s related to budgeting and planning a successful wedding.
A typical wedding takes about 250 hours to plan so if you’re of the mindset that time is money then a wedding coordinator is going to save you a lot of money.
Wedding planers are great at saving you the pain of researching things what they already know. They know what general costs and expenses should be. They’re going to save you the agony of pouring over contracts. They can help to hone it your vision and help direct you on your budget.
Engagement Tip #4
Pick your wedding party and start working on the guest list. This can be one of the most daunting tasks when planning a wedding. It is a good idea to consulting this step with your parents and your fiance’s parent. Once you have the guest counts you can start looking into finding a suitable wedding venue.
Engagement Tip #5
Pick a wedding season. This one’s pretty obvious winter, spring, summer or fall. Most of us want a summer wedding. It’s the time when everyone is in light dresses, can wear something strapless and you can feel the ocean breeze. Or are you one of the people that a wedding in the dead of winter? You want snow all around you for your dream winter wedding photos.
I don’t know why I’m over explaining this but you get it. Focusing on the season instead of a date gives you more flexibility. So if you want to get married in fall, come up with a date for September and then maybe two dates for October. This gives you some options when you’re hunting around for you perfect wedding venue.
Engagement Tip #6
Define your wedding style. Obviously this could be strongly influenced by the season that you pick so if you want to have a spring wedding that can affect your color palette. It could also affect if you are planning an indoor or outdoor wedding.
Having a clear style for your wedding affects many thinks like the textures that you decide to use, the dress that you decide to wear, the centerpieces you decide to create and so on. All of those things are affected by the wedding style and the seasons so those two kind of go hand in hand.
Engagement Tip #7
Our last tip today, which again is interchangeable with the last three or last two tips, would be the venue hunting. Finding a wedding venue is something that you should do sooner rather than later. It actually should be your priority number one.
A lot of popular places, especially in big cities like Toronto, get booked up 12 to 18 months in advance. Don’t let that be too discouraging but it is important to kind of jump on it right away. It will save you a lot of headache and it might save your some money as well.
So here you go guys. Our first steps from the engagement to your wedding planning phase. The beginning of your engagement can be really stressful so use these guidelines to start working on your wedding. If you find yourself overwhelmed think about hiring a pro like a wedding planner or ask for help from your friends, which went through this stressful yet rewarding experience.
Jamie Wolfer