Where to start planning your Virginia Wedding

The moment has happened! Your favorite person proposed and now it’s time to plan THE biggest event in your life. The Wedding. Figuring out where to start planning your Virginia Wedding can be incredibly frustrating. There’s endless family opinions, ‘friendly’ advice, blogs (funny, this is one), and holy smokes don’t even go on IG and search ‘wedding photographer’ you’ll get sea sick. Don’t worry I got you, welcome to the Engagement Advice series. This advice series will guide you through my tips and tricks as a wedding photographer with over 150 weddings and 200+ couples photographed.

First step in wedding planning

This may be the hardest ‘talk’ of wedding planning. Budget. Trust me getting this ‘little’ task done first will save so much frustration later! Establishing a wedding budget is the very first To Do item you need to check off your list.

You cannot start booking vendors until you have a ballpark or hard budget in mind. Each vendor will ask you what your budget is. Having this conversation complete at the beginning will help the rest of planning go smooth. It will also create less tension being on the same page with your partner, parents, or anyone else who’s helping with cost.

My suggestion, create an excel spread sheet. List each vendor you need and the budget for each. Next I would put them in order of which you need to book them. Venue should be the first on the list.

If more than one party is contributing to your wedding budget, show them the spreadsheet. As you book vendors/use the budget you can list the vendor and the final price. If you come to a hard decision your spreadsheet will make it easy to see where you may be able to save elsewhere in the wedding.

Thinking of having a short engagement? Here’s 5 tips for a short engagement!