I'm so lost

First of all, congratulations on your engagement! Planning a wedding can be so fun! But it can also be overwhelming; especially if you try to tackle everything at once. For me, it was helpful to make a list of everything I needed to do, and then just tackle one item at a time. A good place to start would be to choose the season you wish to be married in, and determine the type of wedding you wish to have (ie, big, small, formal, casual, etc.). Next, set your budget and create your guest list. these two things will determine a lot moving forward. (For example, how big your venue needs to be and what you can spend per person for catering). Next, you would need to choose a venue that can comfortably hold the number of people on your guest list, and pick an official wedding date based on its availability (or, if you have a specific date already in mind, you would ensure venues had that date available before touring them). Once your venue and date are locked in with a deposit and a signed contract, you can start securing all your other vendors; such as photographer, videographer, Officiant, florist, DJ, cake baker, hair and make up artist, caterer, entertainment, etc. we just started with most important and worked our way through the list. For example, we secured the Officiant first, since we couldn’t get married without them. Next we secured food and bar, because that was the most important for guest experience. You will want to try to book everything about a year out, as many vendors book out a year in advance. The same with your dress – it’s usually recommended you get it at about the one year mark. That’s because most dresses from boutiques take 6 to 9 months to arrive once you order them; and you will want to leave at least a month for alterations, plus some extra “wiggle room” just in case delivery takes longer than anticipated. The things I left towards the end were choosing decor (because constantly looking at Instagram, Pinterest, etc. will make you change your mind a million times lol), shoes & accessories (because they are usually readily available, and most people want to try them on with their dress), gifts for the wedding party, and the small details (things like a card box, guestbook, menus, name cards, thank you cards, etc.). I highly suggest making a list in order of importance and just working through it, one item at a time. I put deadlines next to each item, to make sure I was keeping myself on track. I also created a budget spreadsheet, which was super helpful! It’s easy to keep writing checks for deposits, and lose track of how much you’ve spent! And speaking of funds, we also created a savings account strictly for the wedding, and would put a certain amount of each check into that account. It was super helpful to keep wedding money separate!

Deep breaths. You’ve got this!! Enjoy the process of being a bride, because it can be a lot of fun. The very first thing to do IMO is to get a general idea of size of your guest list and the time of year you want to get married. Don’t get too specific at this point, but talk through your must-invites to know if you’re planning to have 50 people or 300. How far out are you wanting to do it, and what season? Spring 2024 or fall 2025 have very different planning timeframes!


Once you have those general ideas, the next thing to do are start flipping through websites, magazines, etc to figure out generally how you want your wedding to look. Casual beach wedding or big Hollywood glam? Indoor or outdoor? You don’t need specifics yet, just start figuring out your overall style.
Now you’re armed to look for a venue! That will get the ball rolling on everything else, having a set date and location to work from. So just focus on those things first, and everything will flow from there.

I would start first with budget, because that will determine all of the other decisions. Congrats and good luck with your planning!

Start with you budget and go from there. This app has a great budgeting tool to help