Newly engaged.... when did you decide on the date?

JennaHR · March 2010

My name is Jenna, and my fiancee proposed last night. We've been dating for almost three years, and went together to pick out the ring last week. I thought he would make me sweat it out until my birthday/our anniversary next week, but yesterday he asked my father for his blessing, and as I was reading to my girls before bed time he showed up with a puppy....complete with a ring around the collar!! He went to his knees, and so did I. (instinct maybe? or nerves?) My girls and I are stoked! They are 4 and 6, and they love him to pieces. I'm so glad that he is joining our family!
My question now is when do we set a date? We plan to have a long engagement (2 years minimum). How far in advance should we start making arrangements?

ElleTR13 · March 2010

Congrats!

I've only been engaged a week, so I'm not an expert. I had an ideal time in mind--spring--and now I've narrowed it down to 2 possible dates next April. Given the length of your engagement, I think you can go ahead and set it, but maybe wait 6 months or so to book venues. I only say this because in this economy, venues/restaurants close and who knows what else could go wrong...

AdeleDazeem · March 2010

Congrats!!

I'm having a long engagement (26 months). We were engaged in March 2009 and I literally could not comprehend picking a date or planning a wedding for a few months. We just enjoyed being engaged.

June or July of 2009, we started looking at places and picked our venue and a date. We discussed with all our families two possible dates and ended up picking the one that worked for everyone. We were at the mercy of cruise ship schedules and college exams (for his younger sister). We paid our deposit and have been relaxing ever since.

I was told to start working on the nitty gritty details about a year in advance.

Obviously start with budget and guest list. Get those details worked out now. After that, you can look at venues, if you'd like. Book it if you are sure you won't change your mind! But after that, don't buy anything. Gather ideas, research plans, but I wouldn't put any money down until a year out since ideas change, budgets change, etc...

Good luck!

ashholt72 · March 2010

I knew the date as soon as we started looking at rings. We picked June 18 of next year because I've always wanted a summer wedding and the 18th is actually the date we started dating. He likes the idea of only having to remeber one anniversary lol.

ecsmiles · March 2010

I'd recommend just enjoying your engagement for now.......UNLESS you have something specific in mind. FI and I wanted to get married in a vineyard in the September. Since its a really popular time, I think we did some site visits a month after being engaged and put a deposit down/set the date a few weeks after that. So all in all, we got engaged in July and had our date set by August.

Congratulations!!

notthesame · March 2010

I just got engaged this weekend, however I'm one of the last in my group of friends to do so. Based on my sisters and friends experiences I would echo the advise posted here -just enjoy the engagement phase for a little while...
But you should develop some general ideas about seasonality of your wedding, # of guests, any major events that may affect the date you can choose, and budget. Budget is directly related to venue, guests and season- spring & summer are peak wedding season and some vendors increase prices somewhat substantially. And guest number is critical- high volumes of guests = high catering bill most of the time. Some of that goes back to the style you wish to have as well.
My last thought for you is to not get overwhelmed. It seems like so much, but you have planty of time. Places generally book about a year in advance, but if you have some gneral ideas to go on as you approach that time-phase you'll find it's not as overwhelming and you'll be more prepared. Congrats and enjoy!

prncsz · March 2010

My FI and I just got engaged on 2/14/2010. By the end of that week we had narrowed down out date to August 2011. Mainly because I have braces on and they don't come off until June 2011, then July is a holiday month, so August it is. Still no day set we are waiting to see if he gets a new job next month before setting our day. We do have a general idea of what we want and plan to meet with a wedding coordinator next month. Right now just getting down the budget and how we see our wedding day being and then relaxing until August of this year to start diving into the work!

NatandIsaac · March 2010

Congratulations! He gave you puppy--that is the greatest proposal ever IMO. We sat around on our butts for the first month that we were engaged, then we booked a venue for a date 14 months out, and some of the dates that we liked better were already taken by then :0 I guess it's never too early to start planning.

RonicaDemonica · March 2010

I've only been engaged for a little over a week, but I actually chose a date last summer and just asked him if he was ok with it!

luckyme502 · March 2010

We picked the date, no ring, but we had a date and a venue booked. I think we did it backwards, but it worked for us. I always tell people we were engaged on January 8th which is the day we booked the venue. That seemed pretty official to me.

saxy414 · March 2010

We got engaged at the end of January of this year, and I knew I wanted a summer wedding as a teacher--but this summer was too soon. We went to look at a venue we both liked a couple weeks later, fell in love with it, and booked it a couple days after that because our first choice for a date had already been booked for summer 2011 (about 13 months out).

If you're going to have at least two years, wait a few months and enjoy being engaged. Figure out a season or month you'd like to have the wedding, and maybe a year to year and a half out start looking at venues (after you have a general idea of guest count and budget). It's super nice to have plenty of time to plan and save, but don't burn yourself out on planning too soon. :-)

JennaHR · March 2010

Thanks for all the responses! Bad news, the landlord squashed the puppy plan, so now we are trying to find her a loving home hopefully with someone who will let us visit. We decided on a date already. June 15, 2012. It's my grandparent's anniversary, and since she passed four years ago, I want to have her there in spirit. I figure there's no better way. When I was a little girl I told her she was my "soul mate" now I've found someone who I know she would love, and who fits the part of soul mate perfectly

SCre · March 2010

Congrats!!

I'm also newly engaged. My fiance and I chose our date by thinking about how many relatives we had out of state, when we'd both graduate school, etc. We basically made sure to avoid any other major "life events" and agreed that we didn't want to plan it so soon that we were stressed out.

Even though we chose 2013, we're planning on getting our guest list together sooner rather than later, just to have an idea of what we're planning. We both have fairly large families, so we figured this would be a good place to start.

Vintagelove4 · November 2012

Congrats! Usually each couple is different. Some take a few minutes and others take five years to set a date, but it's the first step in wedding planning. Good luck!

Newly engaged.... when did you decide on the date?

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