Newly Engaged? Here’s Where to Start Planning Your Wedding
You’re engaged — congratulations! Once you’ve celebrated, told the people who matter and perhaps spent rather more time than expected looking at your ring, the inevitable question tends to arrive:
Where on earth do we start?
Wedding planning can feel overwhelming at the beginning, particularly when everyone suddenly seems to have an opinion about what you should book, when you should book it and what your wedding ought to look like.
You don't need to decide everything at once.
The best place to start is by establishing the foundations of the wedding: what matters to you, roughly how many people you want to invite, what you're comfortable spending and the kind of celebration you'd like to create.
Here are the things I'd recommend thinking about first.
Enjoy being engaged before you start planning
There is no rule that says you need to begin contacting venues the morning after you get engaged. Take a little time to enjoy it. Tell your families and friends, celebrate together and allow yourselves to talk about the wedding without immediately turning those conversations into a to-do list.
Unless you have a very specific date or particularly short timescale in mind, a few days or weeks spent thinking about what you actually want can make the planning that follows considerably easier.
Talk about the kind of wedding you both want
Before you start looking at venues, talk to each other about the celebration itself. You don't need a theme, colour palette or Pinterest board. Think more broadly. Do you imagine a relaxed countryside wedding or something more formal? A marquee at home, a country estate or a beautiful venue where everything happens in one place? Would you prefer one wonderful day or a whole weekend with your guests? Do you want a large celebration or something more intimate? And perhaps most importantly: what do you want the wedding to feel like?
You may discover that you're imagining slightly different things. That's useful to know now, rather than after you've started booking suppliers. Try choosing three or four priorities each and compare them. The areas where your answers overlap are a very good starting point for the wedding.
Establish your wedding budget
You don't need to know exactly how much every element of the wedding will cost yet, but you do need an overall figure before you make any significant bookings. Talk honestly about how much you're comfortable spending and establish whether anyone else will be contributing. Then consider your priorities.
If food and wine are particularly important to you, allow room for them. If you've always imagined an incredible marquee with beautiful flowers, that will affect how you allocate the budget. If you'd rather invite fewer people and spend more per guest, that's useful to establish early too.
A wedding budget isn't about finding the cheapest way of doing everything. It's about deciding how to use the money available in a way that reflects what matters to you.
Related: How to Create Your Wedding Budget →
Start thinking about your guest list
You don't need everyone's postal address and dietary requirements yet. You do, however, need an approximate number. Your guest count will affect your venue options and your budget, so it's one of the first practical conversations to have. Start with the people you definitely want there and work outwards.
It can help to create an initial list divided into:
Definitely — the people you can't imagine celebrating without.
Would love to invite — people you'd like there if space and budget allow.
To discuss — the invitations where you need to make a decision together.
If family members are contributing financially, it's also worth discussing their expectations around the guest list early. It's much easier to have that conversation now than once invitations are being designed.
Think about when you'd like to get married
You don't necessarily need to choose an exact date immediately. Start with the year, season or a few preferred months.
Think about whether you're set on a Saturday or would consider another day of the week, and whether there are important family commitments or dates you need to avoid. Season will influence more than the photographs. It can affect venue availability, pricing, flowers, daylight hours, your plans for being outdoors and the practicalities of a marquee or private estate wedding.
If your heart is set on a particular venue or supplier, some flexibility around the exact date can also make life much easier.
Begin your venue search
Once you have an approximate budget, guest number, location and time of year, you're in a much better position to start looking at venues.
For couples getting married in Norfolk, Suffolk and across East Anglia, there is an enormous variety — from country houses and barns to private estates, gardens and completely blank-canvas sites. Don't choose a venue purely because it photographs beautifully. Think about how the wedding will actually work there.
Consider capacity, accommodation, catering arrangements, access, timings, music restrictions, what is included within the hire and how much freedom you'll have to choose your own suppliers.
If you're considering a dry-hire venue or getting married at home, remember that you're taking on considerably more of the infrastructure yourself. That freedom can result in an extraordinary wedding, but it needs to be factored into both your planning and your budget.
Related: How to Choose Your Wedding Venue →
Don't try to book every supplier at once
Once you've secured the venue and date, you can begin building your supplier team.
Some suppliers can only take one wedding per day, so those are generally worth considering earlier. Photographers, videographers, planners, certain caterers, bands, and other highly sought-after suppliers can be booked well in advance.
Other decisions can wait.
You do not need to choose your napkins when you haven't yet booked a photographer.
Work through the wedding in a sensible order and give yourself enough time to make good decisions rather than booking things simply because you feel you ought to.
Related: What Order Should You Book Things for Your Wedding? →
Choose suppliers who are right for your wedding
Recommendations are invaluable, but a supplier who was perfect for your friend's wedding isn't automatically right for yours. Look at the quality and consistency of their work, read reviews and find out how they approach weddings. Then speak to them.
You'll be spending a considerable amount of time communicating with some of your suppliers, particularly your planner, photographer and venue team. Expertise matters, but so does feeling confident that you can trust them.
For a marquee, private home or dry-hire wedding, experience of that particular type of celebration is especially valuable. These weddings involve considerably more infrastructure and supplier coordination than a traditional venue.
Related: How to Research Your Wedding Suppliers →
Resist the temptation to design the wedding too early
It's very easy to start with colours, flowers and tablescapes because they're the fun, visible parts of wedding planning. But your venue, season, guest numbers and budget should inform many of those decisions.
Save things you love. Notice patterns in the images, places and experiences you're drawn to. But don't feel that you need to establish a rigid wedding aesthetic before you've worked out the fundamentals. The strongest wedding designs tend to respond to the setting rather than being imposed on it.
Get organised from the beginning
Wedding planning generates a surprising amount of information. Quotes, contracts, invoices, guest details, menus, accommodation information, supplier emails and payment deadlines can quickly become difficult to manage if they're scattered across different places. Set up a system early.
That could be a dedicated email address, shared online folder and a spreadsheet containing your budget, supplier details and important dates. It doesn't need to be complicated. It just needs to be somewhere both of you can easily find things.
Remember that you don't have to do everything yourselves
Some couples genuinely enjoy managing every element of their wedding. Others simply don't have the time or inclination, particularly when planning a large marquee wedding, a celebration at a private property or an entire wedding weekend.
There's no prize for making the process unnecessarily difficult. A wedding planner can help from the very beginning with budgeting, venues, supplier recommendations, logistics and design, or come on board later to help manage the final stages and wedding day itself.
The right level of support depends entirely on the wedding you're planning and how involved you want to be.
So, what should you do first?
If the amount of information still feels overwhelming, strip it right back.
For now, concentrate on five things:
Talk about the wedding you both want.
Establish an approximate budget.
Draft your guest list.
Decide roughly when and where you'd like to marry.
Start researching venues — and a planner, if you're considering using one.
Everything else can follow.
You don't need to plan your entire wedding in the first month of being engaged. You simply need to make the first few decisions well.
Planning a wedding in Norfolk, Suffolk or East Anglia?
I've been planning weddings across East Anglia since 2012, with particular experience in marquee weddings, private estates, dry-hire venues and celebrations at home.
My Full Wedding Planning service is designed for couples who would like expert support from the earliest stages — from establishing the budget and finding the right venue to sourcing suppliers, managing logistics and bringing every element together.
For couples who want to plan independently but need some expert direction, I also offer Wedding Planning Inspiration Sessions to help you work through your questions and establish clear next steps.