Congratulations, you’re engaged! The love of your life asked you to spend eternity by his side and you couldn’t be happier. The ring is on, bottles of champagne have been popped, your friends and family have been told. It’s been a blur of ecstatic celebrations and happy tears. But once all is done and the dust has settled, it hits you- how do you even begin planning wedding?Congratulations, you’re engaged! The love of your life asked you to spend eternity by his side and you couldn’t be happier. The ring is on, bottles of champagne have been popped, your friends and family have been told. It’s been a blur of ecstatic celebrations and happy tears. But once all is done and the dust has settled, it hits you- how do you even begin to plan a wedding?Write Your Guest ListThe very first thing you should do with your fiancé is sit down and write out your guest list. Even if it’s only a rough outline of who you’d both like to invite, this number will dictate all of your big decisions. It will be impossible to work out a realistic budget or settle on a venue, unless you know roughly how many people will be attending.Decide What Your Budget Will BeOnce you’ve decided on roughly how many guests you’d like to invite, it’s time to do the boring bit: the budget. Try to be realistic with what you can afford. You might want your big day to be absolutely perfect, but no one wants to start married life with a huge debt from the wedding hanging over their head. At the end of the day, you’re marrying your soulmate and all of your loved ones are coming together to celebrate with you. No matter how much or how little you spend, it will be the most amazing day.Decide on a dateOf course, you can’t do much planning or hire any vendors until you’ve set the date. This one usually coincides with what dates your chosen venue has available, but have a think about roughly what time of year you’d like to get married. Traditionally, summer is the most popular time of the year to get married. With warmer weather and longer days, it’s easy to see why, but don’t completely disregard a winter wedding! You can save a lot of money by getting married in the colder months. Autumn is a beautiful time of year, there can be something really enchanting about getting married when there’s a chill in the air.The big three: Venue, Food, PhotographyNow you’ve got those three decisions out of the way, it’s time to get on with the planning. A good rule of thumb is to start with the venue, the catering and the photography. When it comes to your budget, your venue, food and photography will most likely be your three biggest expenditures, so it’s a good idea to get these out of the way. You’d probably expect that booking a lavish venue for the day or buying dinner for 150 people is going to be expensive, but photography costs might surprise you. The average cost of a wedding photographer in the UK is £1,500. Whilst you can cut corners and save money on everything from your dress to your decorations, you don’t want to risk doing this with your photography. It takes real talent to capture those candid moments and to produce truly breath-taking images. You’ll be looking at the photos for the rest of your life, so it’s worth investing in.
