Welcome to our video series of the top 20 questions brides ask when planning their wedding. One of the questions I regularly get is “How long before my wedding day should I start planning my wedding?”
Follow along with the full text of the video:
SLIDE: A recent poll stated that 24% brides start planning their wedding 18 months or more before their wedding, 23% start 12 to 18 months before their wedding, 13% start 9 to 12 months, 16% start 6 to 9 months, 14% start 3 to 6 months, while 9% start planning 3 months or less before their wedding. How long you need to plan your wedding depends upon how big and how formal a wedding you are having. If you are planning a formal wedding for 300 guests, it will take longer than planning an informal wedding for 50 guests.
If your chosen ceremony and reception sites are popular locations, you might have to book them over a year in advance to get your wedding date. If you dream of a grand formal wedding, booking ceremony and reception sites to match your vision might be hard to find on short notice.
The next thing to consider when deciding how soon you should start your wedding planning is how much time you have available to work on it each week. Did you know that it takes an average of 250 hours to plan your wedding? If you have a lot of time commitments each week—like a full time job, community activities, sports activities, etc., you will have to make time to research and plan your wedding details. There are many choices available to brides, and part of the joy of planning your wedding is looking at all the options available to you. If you have a clear vision of what you want for your wedding, your wedding planning process will be faster, so that is also a consideration.
SLIDE: If you are feeling the time pressures, there are solutions available to you. Along with the usual wedding planning books, wedding planning checklists, and wedding planning consultants for hire, there are now internet solutions that are new to the modern bride. The two main ones that come to mind are wedding planning software solutions, and ‘on-line bridal coaching’ where all your options are found in one place and you are coached through the wedding planning process by your personal bridal coach.
No matter how much time you have to plan your wedding, brides tell us that they always wish they had more time so they could have done things differently. Don’t be one of THOSE brides. Take the time, and if you don’t have the time or if the planning gene isn’t in your DNA, consider hiring someone to coach you through it, or to do it for you. Of course, there are costs, but depending upon the services you choose, the cost will be one of the least expensive things on your wedding planning list. And it is worth it to get to your wedding knowing everything is exactly like you wanted it.
Good luck, and congratulations on your upcoming wedding.
