It’s the wedding planning season and time to prepare for your wedding celebration. For those of us without a wedding planner, I have decided to create a quick month by month check list of all the major things that need to be planned. Everything from venues to wedding invitations:

1 Year Before Your Wedding Ceremony

If you haven’t done this already, picking a day, place and time is probably the first thing you should do. Make sure to reserve the wedding venue for both the ceremony and celebration, because these places tend to be reserved well in advance and dictate a lot of the future planning details.

5-9 Months

It’s now the time to start looking for the other elements of your wedding celebration. Caterers, photographers, DJ’s (or decide on an Ipod w/ a stellar play list ), florists and wedding gowns should all be picked by this time.

3-5 months

Now is the time to start thinking about wedding invitations. Whether your wedding invitations are going to be letterpress, offset or digital, picking the design and printing style that you want is important. Think of matching the venue, season or wedding theme with your invitation set. Also, if you haven’t picked your wedding rings yet, now is the time to do it.

2-4 months

Get the final headcount for your guest list and mail out your invitations. The optimal advance notice to give your guests is 12 weeks, so aim for as close to that as possible.

2-4 weeks

Check to see who has not returned their RSVP and contact them to get a better idea of exactly how many guests will be coming. See if your wedding rings are ready yet and order your wedding programs, menus, table markers and placecards now.

0-2 weeks

Get the final guest count and pass this information along to the caterers. Make sure everyone in the wedding ceremony has their proper clothes and finalize your vows (make sure he does too…).

The Day Before

Do Not Panic! Tomorrow will be the most wonderful day.

Written by Nick

Invitations by Ajalon
View our letterpress wedding invitation gallery.