Why So Early?

The other day Andrea asked me a good question. "Why are we starting to plan the wedding so early? It's over a year away!" The "one year out" mark is the most commonly used starting point for the majority of wedding planning. Most DIY wedding planning checklists start at 12 months out which gives the impression that there is nothing you can do before then. But getting a jump on the planning can be fun as well as beneficial to the entire planning process. Take the energy and excitement of getting engaged and use it as momentum to start brainstorming. With all the visual media and creative online resources it's really easy to start putting together a picture of what you want your big day to look like. Pinterest and TheKnot.com are two of my favorites.

 Pinterest is a great place for inspiration. There are literally thousands of pictures you can click through. Different wedding sites and magazines such as Southern Weddings Magazine and Belle have Pinterest boards that you can "follow" to regularly get new images that they post.  Creating an account and using different boards of your own for individual colors, dresses, or  is the perfect way to stay organized.
   I like to use The Knot.com as a more practical resource. You can search for venues and vendors by location and price. They have everything from photographers to caterers to DJs. And of course they have pages for wedding attire and beauty tips. Marking pages as your "favorites" is a great way to compare vendors side by side so see which ones would be a best fit for you and your budget.
When it comes to all the details involved in the planning and execution of a wedding, the last thing you was to do is leave it all to the last minute. The more you leave to the final months before the wedding the more stressed out you will be and the more hectic things have the potential to get. So my response to Andrea was "Ten months from now you will be glad we did."