What to do After You Get Engaged?

Congratulations, you’re engaged! Now what? Where do you start? Planning a wedding can be overwhelming so below are some ideas to get you started!

1. Figure out your budget

Money, the least fun part of wedding planning but one of the most important. Deciding on your budget early on will help understand where and what you can afford moving forward in the planning process.

2. Desired Date

Do you have a firm date you want to get married? A time of year? Is it flexible? This will help narrow down which venues to visit.

3. Research Venues

Do you want an indoor or outdoor wedding? A church ceremony? A ballroom? Redwoods or ocean? Nailing down the kind of venue you want will help narrow down which venues to visit and help you know what you do and don’t want included in the venue. Do you want to hire outside vendors on your own or have an all inclusive venue (like Kennolyn!) that includes the majority of vendors. For instance, we include the catering, bar, staff, coordinator, rentals, venue, and DJ. This helps cut down on the planning and the amount of vendors you have to deal with!

4. Guest Count

Big or small? Having an idea of how many people you want to invite will also help with the budget and venue. Does your dream venue hold the number of guests you are planning? How does the cost line up? Does the venue have a minimum requirement of guests depending on the time of year?

5. Tour Venues

The best thing you can do is see as many venues as you can in person. Get a feel of the space, the people who work there and get all the information you can. Bring a list of questions for the venue, any concerns. Do you have non negotiables you can check with the venue? Are there décor restrictions? Any hidden fees? Check out our blog post (linked here https://www.kennolyn.com/blog/how-to-find-your-perfect-venue) for some more helpful ideas on narrowing down your perfect venue!

6. Begin Booking Vendors

Once your venue is booked its time to start booking vendors. If your venue requires you use from their list of vendors make sure you have that once you book. First vendors to look in to (depending on what your venue does and does not provide) would be caterers, photographers, videographers, DJ and shuttles. These vendors book the fastest and some can only book one wedding a day. There is no real timeline for booking vendors. The sooner you book them, the sooner you can check that off your list. The details and planning can come later, but knowing you have deposit down and have them secured can reduce a lot of planning stress!

7. Wedding Website and Email

Create a wedding website for all information pertaining to the wedding, other events happening that weekend (welcome parties, rehearsal dinners, goodbye brunches etc). The website should also have information about activities, accommodations and travel information as well as a fun page of your love story with photos! Also helpful is to create a wedding email. This is used strictly for wedding related business and helps keep all emails for the wedding in one easy place. This will also keep your personal email free of wedding clutter. Once the wedding is over, you can close the email and never see another spam wedding offer again!

8. Send Save the Dates

Save the dates should go out 6-8 months prior to the wedding, especially if it is a destination wedding or you have a larger number of guests traveling from out of the area. This will give them plenty of time to plan and save! Invitations can then go out 6 to 8 weeks before the wedding. Most venues (or caterers) require final guest counts between 2-4 weeks before the wedding.