What is the minimum amount of time it would take to plan a wedding?

Question

just wondering....how long were you engaged? did you plan the whole time? or did you take some time off during your planning? and again...What is the minimum amount of time it would take to plan a wedding?

Answer 1

I took 8 months to plan my wedding, because we got engaged at the end of Sept and had the wedding in May. But that was also because I am an accountant and had tax season to go through. There was another girl in my office who planned her wedding in 2 months, but she has been engaged for about 4 years...

The answer: it takes as long as you want it to. If you want a fancy hall, great food, that gorgeous designer dress that will take 4 months to make and deliver, then you need to take that all into consideration. If you are going to go to a bridal dress outlet, bring home your dress that day and have your bridesmaids get something from a store like Macys, adn have the wedding at a friends house with a BBQ after, then I think you could do it in 2months.
Etiquette says you should send out invitations 2 months before so keep that in mind.

Also, i found that the longer it goes on, the more frustrating it is because you have all the little details in your head and you drive yourself crazy trying to remember it all so it will go off perfectly. Best to just get it over with and get on with your marriage I say. The sooner the better!

Answer 2

It mostly really depends on how big of a wedding you want. Smaller weddings can be fully planned out in 6 months. However, the most reasonable amount of time it should take to plan any wedding medium-sized and up should be at least a year. Many new and inexperienced brides think weddings are simple affairs that only take a few decorations and some dresses and tuxes. This, however, is certainly not the case. I'm not married myself, but I have been helping plan weddings practically all my life as my great aunt was a wedding caterer/decorator/coordinator and she used to get many of the ladies in our family, including me, to help get everything together. I've been to more weddings of people I don't know than people I do! As for whether planning takes place throughout the engagement, again it depends on the size of the wedding. I know many brides get stressed out over such large and important events (we pulled three gray hairs out of my friend's head when she was planning her wedding at 21!) and who wouldn't?! The best thing to do is remember to take breaks every now and then. A week here, a day there. Either way, things WILL work out. Also, a good thing to remember is that something WILL go wrong. It could be as small as some one spilling dip all over the place in the kitchen, or as big as the little ring bearer losing the rings. But something WILL go wrong. Once you come to grips with that truth, everything is peachy keen!
Good luck!

Answer 3

My husband and I were engaged for 13 months before we got married (April 2006 to May 2007). We (along with my mom) pretty much started planning in the beginning a little bit but it turned out to hurt more than it helped because I changed my mind about the colors around September and we pretty much had to start all over again. Of course we had a lot of stuff we didnt' use that I sold to a girl I work with who happened to be using those colors in September. Had she not though, we would have been out a lot of money for stuff that we couldn't use and didn't need. I don't think there's a minimum time it should take because i've seen people around here plan and have beautiful weddings in the last one or two months of their engagement (need we say, procrastinators). I think when it comes to the amount of time it varies with each couple, so mainly just go with the amount of time you're comfortable with. Just as long as the bride & groom are comfortable with all the details the time shouldn't matter. The only thing is make sure you book the actual place and any caterers/photographers in advance. That's one thing I did do last year that saved me a lot of headaches because those people get booked up pretty fast.

Answer 4

The minimum amount would be how long it would take you to get to Las Vegas or some other spot that has no waiting period when you get your marriage license and finding a quickie wedding chapel. That can be easily done in less than a day.

My engagement was about eighteen months and yes, I did work on the wedding the whole time...but then again, I was making the lace for my gown and it took a long time to make eleven yards by hand. I was doing a lot of other things for the wedding by myself and by hand, too, so I needed the time.

Most people seem to take somewhere between six months and a year to plan a wedding, but as you can see, it can take a great deal longer or nearly no time at all depending on what you want the day to be like, how much money you have lying around to work with, whether you choose to hire professionals to do things or make goodies for yourself, whether you've chosen a particularly popular venue that books up a year in advance or someplace you have access to anytime you like...lots of factors.

In my case, it was the gown that took so long. Even with eighteen months to work, the gown got delivered to me at the rehearsal dinner. If I hadn't wanted a custom gown with handmade lace, I could easily have put the whole wedding together in a matter of a couple months without a lot of panic. But my plans - other than the gown, obviously - were quite simple. If the rest of the wedding had been elaborate, or if I'd had some other time-consuming project involved (like my friends who grew their own flowers), then it still would have taken a while.

Know what you want. That's the key. If you know what you want, you can set the timeframe around a reasonable amount of time to accomplish what you would like for your wedding day. There are always ways to make something take a longer or shorter time as your needs dictate.

Oh, and every bride should do her best to schedule things with at least a couple small windows where she can just breathe and not worry about the wedding. Once the lace had gone to the dressmaker, all I had left to do were little fiddly bits, and that was really great. It meant I could do things that had nothing to do with the wedding at all. I think the combination of having done everything myself and leaving myself plenty of time to do it all is probably the reason I was so relaxed on my wedding day.

Answer 5

you can plan a simple wedding in less than a week. It just depends on how complicated you want to make it, and how long of lead time you need to give the guests.

From what I've seen from many wedding is an inverse relationship between the amount of time between engagement and wedding and the amount of time it takes before one of the married ones files for divorce.

I figure its because too often when a wedding starts getting realy complex that it increases the tension between the couple and reduces the likelihood that the bride will call it off when she normally would. The weddings sometimes drive the couple to go through with it.

Answer 6

The month after we got engaged, I found out I was pregnant with our second child. So we put the wedding off til I had her. The after I had her we started planning but then figured we couldn't come up with the money by this weekend. ( this was back in January). So we were gonna put it off til July 2008. About 2 months ago, we decided we just didn't want to wait and we started planning for this weekend. It's only been 2 months yet everything is going to be ready and gorgeous by Saturday. So I would say as long as you are committed to working on it very hard, you don't need more than a month or two to plan.

Answer 7

We will be engaged for 8 months when we get married in November. We had everything finalized in 3 months. If you're organized and good with money, 3 months is all it takes.

Since we're so far ahead we took a month and a half break from planning, but now we're working on invitations and finding flower girl dresses. We don't have a lot to do until the actual day, and we have plenty of time, so it's been an easy process.

Answer 8

You could probably plan a nice wedding in 3 months BUT it might not be everything you always wanted. For instance, many wedding venues are reserved a year in advance so you might not be able to get that particular venue. If you're willing to be limited in your choices, then 3 months is fine.

I was engaged for 1 year. I planned on and off. I will say having a year was great because I didn't feel pressured. It was nice doing the planning in a slow, leisurely way.

Answer 9

I started planning my wedding shortly after I got engaged and we were engaged for 11 months before the wedding. I don't suggest any short then 7 months to plan a wedding just because there are so many venues and vendors to get on the same day.

Answer 10

It really depends on what kind of event you want.

If you just want to elope somewhere, or have a simple ceremony with your nearest and dearest present, you could probably plan that within a month, tops.

If you want something a little bigger than that, but not over-the-top, maybe 6 months.

If you want something really big and fancy, probably a year or more.

Don't forget that religion can also be a factor, if you want to be married by a clergyperson. Some religions want you to be engaged for at least 8-12 months so they can counsel you and help you prepare. Others have no problem marrying you a month or two after you ask them to do so.

From my experience, the "average" seems to be around a year. I know of people who have been engaged for less than a year, and some for two or even three years. Do whatever works for you.