How long to wait until planning?

htrivett90

Hello, I’m new to the knot and I just got engaged Nov 21^st. Me and my Fiancé are still in college and we have both agreed to wait until we graduated until getting married. We are looking for a July/August 2014 wedding. When should we start planning, because of college and stuff?

Thanks!

AddieCake

First of all, congratulations!

As for when to start, it depends on how big your wedding is going to be. I spent probably a year "looking" at wedding stuff after we got engaged b/c I was just not ready to dive into the planning. It seemed so overwhelming!  Then we finally set a date, and I began actively planning for close to a year. 

One of the most important things to NOT do yet is choose your wedding party. Relationships and friendships change over time, and a mistake a lot of brides make is to immediately ask people to be in their wedding party and then regret their choices later. 

cwaggoner07

If you're going to have such a long engagement, I would just look around and get ideas until you are about a year out. Popular and budget-friendly vendors can book up a year in advance (sometimes more!), so around the year mark you want to be ready to go.
Also don't get attached to colors or styles yet, as your vision will change, and that's ok! We had a 7 month engagement, and our wedding didn't look much like my original vision at all, since it evolved and changed, even in that short amount of time.
And ditto on the wedding party.
Congrats again!

achiduck

Unless you know exactly what venue you want to have your wedding at, you have lots of time. We had a 16 month engagement and booked our venue just shy of 15 months out because we had to. At that time there were only 2 available dates for October 2012. We also booked our florist that early since she has a policy of only doing 2 weddings per weekend and our photographer. Everything else waited until about a year out or less depending on the vendor.

Think about your guest list and budget first. Those will play a huge factor in every other decision you make.

cwaggoner07

In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/wedding-boards_just-engaged-proposals_how-long-to-wait-until-planning?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Wedding%20BoardsForum:683Discussion:e18a527e-ae19-43cc-8ce6-f383ed1c4435Post:2aa9e682-8d2d-4665-b1f3-4187822384a1">Re: How long to wait until planning?</a>:
[QUOTE]Unless you know exactly what venue you want to have your wedding at, you have lots of time. We had a 16 month engagement and booked our venue just shy of 15 months out because we had to. At that time there were only 2 available dates for October 2012. We also booked our florist that early since she has a policy of only doing 2 weddings per weekend and our photographer. Everything else waited until about a year out or less depending on the vendor.<strong> Think about your guest list and budget first. Those will play a huge factor in every other decision you make.</strong>
Posted by achiduck[/QUOTE]

Definitely.

htrivett90

Thank you all so much! We talked last night and agreed with you girls. We are just going to have fun being engaged and have fun looking at all teh cute weddign stuff. We are talking about starting planning for the bigger stuff towards summer.

Thank you all so much for the advice

rebeccajhopp

anyone have tips and tricks on how to plan when you are still in school? I;m in my last semester of grad school! Did anyone delgate tasks to others/friends etc to make the load easier?