Which comes first, the date or the plans?

CowgirlK39

I haven't been on here in forever so bear with me if this isn't the right board.

My friend is engaged, has been for over a year, and can't seem to set a date. Her FI is jobless right now and is trying to get into the career he wants to be in. This means he may end up taking a position out of state, or perhaps not. They haven't set a date because of this as well as their obvious budget issues and lack of funds.

However my friend goes and looks at reception sites, photographers and dresses quite often. She was lamenting to me that a reception hall she looked at didn't have nearly enough dance floor space for the 130 people she plans to invite. I tried to explain to her that her rationale was very cart-before-horse but she disagreed.

I recall being told on here that a date wasn't "yours" till you had something booked for it. Does it work the same the other way around? Can you pick everything out if you have no date? Should I try to help her or is it a lost cause? She is so stressed about some things but the most important one, the date, seems to be missing.

AddieCake

They need to set a budget first and draw up a potential guest list.Then consider a date and look at venues that meet their needs. But it doesn't sound like they are in a position to be planning a wedding.

manateehugger

Yeah, without a budget or venue available on the date the want, she's pretty much only got pretty pictures and ideas.

It sounds like she needs to scale down her expectations given the current situation, or postpone.

AprilH81

It is okay to have a preferred date/month as you start planning but it isn't your wedding date until you have a signed contract with a venue and officiant.  Most vendors won't sign a contract with you for a certain date until after you have the venue locked in.

melbenso

We set a budget and determined VIPs (bridal party and immediate family for us) first. Once we did that, we determined a range of dates when we wanted to get married (about a 3 month span) and asked our VIPs which of those dates worked for them and ranked those in order of our preference. We took the list of dates that worked for everyone when we looked at venues in our budget range. Turns out out our favorite venue was available on the date we preferred and - viola! - date and venue chosen.

I do suggest that you decide which is more important to you, venue or date. Because it is possible that your luck won't be as good as ours and your dream venue might not be available on the perfect date, causing you to have to choose between the two.

Edit: fixed paragraphs, because the Knot seems to hate them lately.