Just Engaged - Advice Needed

Re: Just Engaged - Advice Needed

• goobersinlove member

  

  May 2012

  Congrats on your engagement!!
  
  First advice - take time to live on Cloud 9.  The newly engaged feeling doesn't last long, so enjoy every day of it.
  
  Secondly, you sound like you're in the same boat as me. We got engaged last summer and initially picked Oct. 2012. After setting out to interview venues, photographers, caterers and the like, we figured out how much our wedding was going to cost us and quickly realized that 2012 was not going to happen, so we pushed our date back to Oct 2013.  Now that that date is quickly approaching, we're looking at 2014 as well.
  
  So my advice to you - as well as my own advice to myself that I do my best to follow - is save money.  Save, save, save, and save.
  
  Decide what kind of wedding you want and what things are important to you vs. less important.  For us, food/alcohol and photography are important, so that's where we'll be spending the most money. We're skimping on things like flowers, my dress, and other decorations because they are less important to us so we'll save money there.
  
  Use your local boards for local recommendations of vendors. And the budget board is great for cost-savings suggestions (i.e., having a daytime wedding vs. an evening wedding to save on food/alcohol costs, etc.).
  
  DEFINITELY don't pick your attendants yet.  Any time you get temptation to officially ask someone, just hang out on the wedding party board where you will read all kinds of stories of regrets from girls who picked their WP right out of the gate. I wouldn't ask any earlier than 9 months out. You're right - relationships do change.
  
  Along the same thinking lines of not picking your attendents, be careful not to accidentally verbally imply that someone will be invited to your wedding.  You'll quickly learn that the more people you invite the more expensive your wedding gets, and therefore you might decide to lean towards having a more intimate wedding with a small guest list.  So avoid the sticky situation of someone thinking their invited and then when it's invitation time, they didn't make the cut. KWIM?

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• futuremrskelly14 member

  

  May 2012

  Thanks Goobersinlove!  That is definitely helpful!  Its hard not to get caught up in everything!  Everyone asks when the date is and looking for details!  What does KWIM mean?

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• catwine member

  

  May 2012

  ooh, congrats!!
  I agree that you should enjoy being engaged right now.  i suggest you draw up a rough budget and see if you will be able to afford what you want in time for a 2013 wedding.  If you really really want to get married next year, you may have to cut back on some things.  i know that waiting longer seems hard but honestly, time literally flies by.  i

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• j6doyon

  

  May 2012

  I just got engaged on April 21st, and had also always dreamed of a fall wedding. There's no way we can afford one this fall (2012) and I'm way too excited to wait until the fall of 2013, so we opted for May 2013 instead.
  
  We're going to take our engagement pictures in the fall so we still get some professional photos with the "fall" feel. And I'm going to keep my colors (deep purple, oranges and browns), as well as our theme (trees, outdoorsy) even though it's technically a spring wedding. If you don't want to wait, stick with a "fall" theme but have it in the spring. It's your wedding, who cares what other people think :-)

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