First 3 Steps After You Say, "Yes!"

Yay! The question was popped and you said, "YES!". You call all your family members and friends, you take that amazing photo of the most beautiful ring that could ever land on your finger, and start telling the world through Instagram and Facebook.

So many emotions and so much excitement in that engagement day. CELEBRATE - ENJOY the moment! Take it all in! You go to bed and wake up the next morning - Now What? The overwhelming feeling of planning an event hits you. The thought of where do you begin may start to cause some anxiety - BUT DON'T LET IT! Here are the first 3 steps to take to get the ball rolling to start planning one of the most memorable and significant days of your life.

1. Budget

It's time to have the first real money talk in your relationship. Before you can start booking vendors, you need to know how much you can spend. Talk with your families and find out if they are going to contribute to your wedding fund. Once you have a number to work with, speak with your fiance and talk about what your priorities are for your big day. The more communication between the two of you, the better the planning process will be.

2. The Guest List

Who do you want invite? Do you want it to be small and intimate with very close family and friends or do you want to invite the whole family? (for me that was like 200 people!!) I always suggest to my couples to both sit down and really think about it. Take some time and keep a list in Excel so you can easily edit and use for addressing the envelopes - but we will get to that later in another post!

3. Bird's Eye View

Now, close your eyes. When you think about your wedding day, does it still look like what you have been dreaming about since you were 10 years old? Or has the Disney Princess Wedding dream disappeared? Do you envision a destination wedding in the Caribbean or maybe the mountains in Colorado? Or are you picturing marrying your soul mate under and old weeping willow tree that you used to climb when you were a kid? Or maybe you can't see a location but the color blue is your favorite and you want it to be incorporated. What ever the bird's eye view of your wedding is, is where you can start doing the real planning. Start looking at Pinterest and searching for key words that are in your Big Picture vision. Save everything you love. I do warn my couples to not get too attached to the specific ideas yet but just use this as a jumping off point to help get your ideas out of your brain to share with vendors.

Now take a deep breath - you are going to rock the planning process! Enjoy every minute - even the hard ones, because these are the memories you will remember forever.