If you have just got engaged, there is no harm in taking some time to simply enjoy it. Show off your ring, make the announcement on Facebook, enjoy all the congratulations, and, if you want to, throw your engagement party and get those engagement photos taken. Of course, while getting engaged is exciting, it does also mean you have the huge job of planning your wedding ahead, and there is really never a time that is too early to start once you’ve got that ring on your finger! Now is a good time to start reading bridal websites and magazine like weddings-magazine.com and gathering ideas, but you can also make some firm decisions now too!
Here are some of the first decisions you and your partner will need to make:
Location
You may not want to decide on the exact venue yet, but if you are from different places, you may have been making different assumptions about where your big day would be held. While you may have assumed it would be at your family’s home town, as per tradition, he may be thinking it will be in the town you live in. You need to talk about the pros and cons of each potential location. You can either have the wedding where you live, which chances are is where your joint friends and co-workers are, where one of your families live, or even in another place entirely such as on a tropical island. Discussing this is a good way to make sure your visions of the wedding are on the same page from the start.
Scale
Weddings come in all sorts of varieties, and while you don’t need to decide on the details like the color scheme and so on yet, the scale of things is an important first decision. Will it be a small affair with just family and close friends, or do you want a huge party with everybody from both of your workplaces and all your distant second cousins there? This is important to decide even before setting the budget, because while even large events can be done on a budget, you need to know that this is what you are dealing with organizing as opposed to a small, casual wedding.
Budget
The budget may be the least romantic thing about planning a wedding, but it is also possibly the most important, and can be a source of friction between couples if not decided early on. If you are getting help paying for it from your families, this will also need to be discussed with them. You don’t need to get it down to an exact figure yet, but an order of magnitude will help drive other decisions (will you be spending $2,000 or $20,000?).
Making the basic decisions that will shape what sort of wedding you will have is a great way to start seeing what needs to be done and creating your wedding to do list, so once the glow of being newly engaged has been sufficiently enjoyed, it is time to start making choices!
