Prioritizing Your Wedding

After your engagement, how do you prioritize what needs to be done first? The first five things that should be done include:

1. Announcing your engagement. Many couples choose to announce to their parents 1^st. Afterwards, they can announce at a dinner party, via invitations, or through a newspaper.

2. Dreaming or brainstorming your wedding with your fiancé. What have each of you always wanted?

3. Budget. Now that you have what each has dreamed of, check that to your budget. Talk with both sets of parents first to see how they will be contributing. Then decide on a realistic budget. While the average wedding costs $30,000. This statistic is based on several $100,000 weddings. About 50% of the weddings in the United States cost $15,000. You can visit Bankrate.com to help figure out how much you need to save monthly based on how long you are choosing to wait to get married. The example I tried was $15,000 over 5 years. The calculator told me I needed to save 248.42/month in order to save $15,000 for my wedding.

 http://www.bankrate.com/calculators/savings/savings-goal-calculator-tool.aspx

4. While you may not have the specific date, brainstorm and choose a month or season. The reasoning is to help set the theme of your wedding. It is also good to get in touch with flower shops where you will be getting married and find what the flowers of the season. If a specific flower is more important to you than the season, choose to get married when the flower is in season!

5. Create your guest list. You and your fiancé brainstorm who you would like to invite. Also have both sets of parents brainstorm. This will create three lists combined to be your initial list. A typical list has 4 categories:

                A. Family and closest friends that MUST be at wedding

                B. Extended Family (aunts, uncles, etc) and Extended friends (high school class mates)

                C. Co-workers, Neighbors

                D. Easy to eliminate people like parent’s friends who have not been in touch for more than 6     months.

* And last but not least, make sure you plan into your wedding budget what you feel are the 3 most important aspects first, then let the other things fall into place! So if perfect pictures are most important budget pictures first. Be honest, sincere, and firm. Everything will be OKAY!