What comes first...

AmberTeasley

I am going to be getting engaged soon (I already picked out the ring), and will start my planning soon!  I had a question, what comes first....the date or the venue?  I have a general idea of when I want to get married, but I also know which venue I want too!  So what happens if I go to the venue and they are booked on that date?  Should I change the date?  Or are you supposed to have already picked a date to tell friends and family before you start talking to venues?

pirategal03

I think it depends.  If a specific date is important to you, then find a venue that is available on that date.  If a specific venue is important to you, then pick a date that the venue has open.

For us it was the venue, we knew we wanted October and there were a couple weekends we wanted to avoid for various reasons.  So I called up the church and asked which weekends were available.  We picked from those. 

midnite007x

i wouldn't annouce a date to anyone until you have put down a deposit at a venue for that particular date....anything can happen

janice1980

I agree with PP, there really isn't a certain order you need to go in.  Figure out what is more important, date or venue and which one you are willing to be flexibly on.

For us, we knew we wanted to me married in May (the date didn't matter) so when we found the perfect venue we asked about the available dates and picked from that. 

Good luck. 

NcsuPsych

Agreeing with the rest of posts. It's really all person preference. With that said, take into account your budget (we set our budget first and from the very get-go) and then scoope out the venues you like and get a relative idea of when you'd like to get married.

Our date changed MANY MANY times (june, july, may, june, march, december, may, Feb **winner**)  so I would also agree in saying wait until you've put down a deposit to start spreading the word (When we put down our deposit on the venue I literally danced around outside singing "we're getting marrrrrried, we're getting marrrrried"  just because from then, everything starts rolling ) ).


ALSO! Welcome to the NC board. You'll find lots of useful information here and make new friends. These ladies are great and you can ask anything. Congrats on your up-coming engagment! )

Peace! -Beka-

FutureMrsFraser

In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/local-wedding-boards_north-carolina_comes-first?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Local Wedding BoardsForum:115Discussion:d1f0e5aa-822a-4a5d-ae43-7ef887fa65cfPost:2c1562a8-c901-4672-8c68-1abe622a1dba">Re: What comes first...</a>:
[QUOTE]i wouldn't annouce a date to anyone until you have put down a deposit at a venue for that particular date....anything can happen
Posted by midnite007x[/QUOTE]

Agree with Amanda here.

ashstwrt

I agree! For us, our photographer was really important, so we actually chose our date based on our photographer's availability.  We knew which month we wanted (May), but knowing that our photographer was already booked up for some Saturdays in May helped us decide on our date.  We immediately started looking at venues right after we were engaged, though, since May is so popular and we were already locked into a certain date with the photographer.  Decide what is most important to you (venue or date) and go from there! 

Beth0882

I contacted a bunch of venues to get availability (and price ranges), knowing I wanted to get married in the fall.  Once I had a list of possible dates, I checked to be sure tehre were no big events going on in my area (Ex: October has Furniture Market and A&T homecoming which book up hotels and drive rates up so we had to avoid those).  Then I visited the few venues that had the dates I wanted and picked a venue which had two dates open, and chose the date! 

kristyand

Why do you want to start your planning soon? Soon as in before you are engaged? I would encourage you just hold off on doing any planning. It can be a long time between you picking out which ring you want and having it on your finger... At the same time, of course all of us were likely looking at wedding magazines well before we had rings on our fingers. Inspiration is fun, planning can be stressful--gather inspiration, plan later.

For us we had three must haves, our photographer, our church and our reception venue so it was a nightmare trying to get them all to coordinate. Tears. The only tear I think of the whole planning process for me was around getting this set. I sent a deposit on all three on the exact same day and informed all three it was on the way the minute a date was arrived at that all three, us, and our families could work with. The whole picking the date asap thing is for people who a particular date means more (or is the only option) rather than any vendor or venue. Luckily we had a small bit more flexibility because I was determined to have three things without question.

Let us know when you are engaged!

midnite007x

In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/local-wedding-boards_north-carolina_comes-first?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Local Wedding BoardsForum:115Discussion:d1f0e5aa-822a-4a5d-ae43-7ef887fa65cfPost:967df385-581e-4704-bd03-8686f2f67271">Re: What comes first...</a>:
[QUOTE]Why do you want to start your planning soon? Soon as in before you are engaged? I would encourage you just hold off on doing any planning. <strong>It can be a long time between you picking out which ring you want and having it on your finger...</strong> At the same time, of course all of us were likely looking at wedding magazines well before we had rings on our fingers. Inspiration is fun, planning can be stressful--gather inspiration, plan later. For us we had three must haves, our photographer, our church and our reception venue so it was a nightmare trying to get them all to coordinate. Tears. The only tear I think of the whole planning process for me was around getting this set. I sent a deposit on all three on the exact same day and informed all three it was on the way the minute a date was arrived at that all three, us, and our families could work with. The whole picking the date asap thing is for people who a particular date means more (or is the only option) rather than any vendor or venue. Luckily we had a small bit more flexibility because I was determined to have three things without question. Let us know when you are engaged!
Posted by kristyandruss[/QUOTE]

NO KIDDING!! kristy, it was over a year and i thought he had gotten so frustrated at me when we were looking that he just gave up...then i couldn't figure out why he never had any money.....poor thing was using every dime he had to make payments

midnite007x

another piece of advice: you may want to consider changing your name to a screen name, not something that is your real name, especially including first and last.....this is a public website so anyone can make up a name and log in....you never know what they will try.

there can be some real odd balls on here sometimes!

GirlieGirl27320

I agree with all pp....and like Beka, our date changed many times.  We arranged our date around photographer and venue's schedules because that was the two most important things to us.  GL!

pirategal03

In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/local-wedding-boards_north-carolina_comes-first?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Local%20Wedding%20BoardsForum:115Discussion:d1f0e5aa-822a-4a5d-ae43-7ef887fa65cfPost:d948b0d8-4bb6-4159-8869-d743ab3d3448">Re: What comes first...</a>:
[QUOTE]another piece of advice: you may want to consider changing your name to a screen name, not something that is your real name, especially including first and last.....this is a public website so anyone can make up a name and log in....you never know what they will try. there can be some real odd balls on here sometimes!
Posted by midnite007x[/QUOTE]


I was just coming back to say this.

ChickenOnSunday

We chose the dates that didn't work...b/c of home football games. We worked around those dates and came up with three or four that would still be okay for this fall. Those three dates got narrowed down due to the availability of our venue.

shigaites

In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/local-wedding-boards_north-carolina_comes-first?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Local%20Wedding%20BoardsForum:115Discussion:d1f0e5aa-822a-4a5d-ae43-7ef887fa65cfPost:2c1562a8-c901-4672-8c68-1abe622a1dba">Re: What comes first...</a>:
[QUOTE]i wouldn't annouce a date to anyone until you have put down a deposit at a venue for that particular date....anything can happen
Posted by midnite007x[/QUOTE]

<div>Yes yes yes, so true.  This happened to us.  Originally we were thinking August 2010.  Thank goodness we didn't tell anyone that because it then changed to March 2011 and then May 2011!  You never know what's going to happen so just wait until you have that deposit paid.</div>

katherineUTC

We knew we wanted to get married in October, and not on race weekend or Halloween, so that left 3 Saturdays. I picked the top venues that I liked, and went to visit them. I actually only wound up going to one, because it poured and poured on the day I was supposed to go visit the others. Anyway, when I visited the venue that wound up being ours, I looooved it and knew right away I wanted to have the wedding there. They had two Saturdays available, one was Halloween and the other was 10/24, so we went with 10/24! Oh and PS, I booked the venue, the photographer, and the DJ before I had a ring on my finger. We had both agreed on having a fall 2009 wedding, and I knew that things booked up reallllly quickly for October weddings, so I knew I had to get a move-on, with or without the ring. Plus my DH could care less about the date, the venue, he just goes with the flow. I booked the venue in late Sept, we got engaged October 9, 2008. At that point, he didnt know I had booked all of the things I did    If you are both in agreement of when you want to get married and you dont have a lot of time to plan, I say go ahead and start booking things, esp if your bf is as laid back as mine and just wants to show up to the wedding and not be that involved in planning. lol

camus8

"Inspiration is fun, planning can be stressful--gather inspiration, plan later."

totally agree with this sentiment.  My hubby and I got engaged in March and we waited a month and a half before we started actually planning it.  I must say it was the best decision for us because once planning began, so did the stress and the "all about wedding" discussions that took over most of our time.  So we really appreciated the fact that we waited a bit before we started planning because then we were able to just enjoy the fact that someone I loved deeply wanted to marry me and someone he loved deeply said yes!