Getting married in 2012..what should I be doing?

Keb1216 · August 2010

Hi everyone

My name is Katie. I've been engaged for 1 month & 10 days. And am hoping to get married in October 2012. What should I be doing at this time to plan my wedding? I don't know when you are supposed to book your florist or anything. Please Help.. Thank you!!

mdg0926 · August 2010

HI Katie! Your wedding is pretty far away...at this point I'd just work work on booking a venue. You'll definitely get the first picks, and will easily be able to find the venue you want that fits ya'lls budget. Other than that, Id' say just relax and enjoy the engagement! Typically you start planning everything else when you're about a year out. The Knot actually has a wedding planning time line, so set up a profile with them if you haven't already. Congratulations on your engagement!!

uneek1323 · August 2010

Hi Katie! Congratulations and welcome! If you are getting married in Raleigh/Durham, I would suggest to start looking for the venue, DJ and/or band and photographer that you want. They book pretty fast, especially for May or October weddings. I'm getting married May 2011. We started planning in February 2010. We just spent time on the internet at first narrowing down our choices. By March, I was making appointments with vendors. By June, all of our vendors were booked and we ended up with our first choice for everything. I heard a lot of "you're getting an early start" kind of comments but I didn't care. We knew what we wanted and signed contracts before it was too late. Now we're sitting here with less than 9 months to go and all we have left are the fun details.

Good luck and feel free to ask any questions.

Keb1216 · August 2010

Thank you both for the help!! I really like Duke Gardens for my reception...but due to their lottery system won't know if I have it till October 1, 2011. *Fingers crossed we get in* I have lots of ideas of what I (we) want, it's just so hard to pick

melaniersumner · October 2010

We just set a 2012 date as well- I think right now I'm just getting ideas. I'll probably start booking things once we hit a year out.

[Deleted User] · October 2010

We just set our date for 2013 so I guess I shouldn't even be here, lol.

I can guarantee that I will have my first choice venue.

laurenes · November 2010

Hello!

I got engaged in 04/2009 and we set a date for May 2011. There isn't a whole lot you need to do before the year out, but I highly suggest booking the venue (reception and ceremony), and possibly photographer, though we booked ours at the 1 year mark and got exactly who we wanted. We started our planning by us and our parents drawing up a mock guest list - this was BY NO MEANS a final list, but it gave us a realistic idea of approx how big of a venue we would need. This is NOT the time to be nitpicking the guestlist, we just wanted to make sure that we had a general idea of how big of a place we would need (it would be terrible to book a venue that only holds 100 and find out that between relatives and life long friends you have 145 people - and you always think you know less people than you really do). I knew I wanted to have the wedding in May 2011, which is popular (as is october) and we wanted the carolina inn, so I booked that by 06/2009. We had the church booked by early 2010 (we tried to get it earlier but the secretary was unhelpful). Once you get those locations down you're pretty good until the year mark. Giving yourself a long engagement is definitely a great idea. We've been able to slowly handle one vendor a month and it's been a fun process. We've got nearly everyone except for the florist (currently in process) down and we've had fun. You will get a few "humm, you're starting early" comments but for us, it's paid off well.

Another good thing - start looking at pictures on the knot, espcially local ones, and see what you like in terms of style and photographers, and look at some reviews. I wouldn't harrass your husband-to-be about if he likes the photo with the peonies or roses, but whenever I had time to kill on a sunday afternoon, etc I would look at pictures. By the time the year mark rolled around I already knew from pictures and vendor reviews who I wanted to work with. Once again, don't stress about this, just remember as you're giddy about the wedding and clicking through pictures (you know you will) and such to bookmark a few so that when the year mark rolls around you've got a decent idea of who you want.

uneek1323 · November 2010

@laurenes... What day in May? I'm May 28th. Where are you getting married? I'm getting married at Barclay Villa in Angier.

You should come join us on the May 2011 boards!

http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/wedding-club-boards_may-2011-weddings

samrae12 · December 2010

I plan on getting married in 2012 as well. Right now I am just looking at websites and magazines to find out things that I want to include in my ceremony and reception. I plan on doing a lot of DIY so I scour the internet for neat decorations and ideas and then store them in my Evernote which by the way is extremely useful for planning your own wedding if that's what you plan to do. Its like a notebook and you store pictures, messages, etc. so that you can easily look at them later. I am also going around and asking vendors for general prices so that I can better plan for how much it is going to cost. Also if you pick out something and it's out of your budget you have time to readjust. In my opinion its always better to do a little bit now since you have time so that you don't end up stressing so much later on.

Ellfay · February 2011

Haha this post title made me laugh! I'm getting married in 2012 and that's EXACTLY the thought that runs through my mind on a daily basis.

Getting married in 2012..what should I be doing?

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