How to Start Planning your Wedding: 10 Questions to Answer First

If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you’re planning your wedding. I’m probably not the first to congratulate you, but I’ll do it anyway. Congrats! What an exciting time for you and your partner as you get ready to take the next step in your journey together.

There’s just one fun little hurdle between you and marriage – your wedding.

When we start planning our wedding, most of us are doing it for the first time. So inevitably it can be hard to figure out where the heck to even begin. You’ll likely Google something like “how to plan a wedding,” and sure, that can be an awesome place to start. But before going too far down that rabbit hole, I think it’s helpful to begin with an open and candid conversation between you and your partner. There’s some big questions that are always helpful to start with before going too far into the weeds. And the answers to some of these questions will hopefully give you some guidance and clarity once you do head down that wedding planning rabbit hole.

Here’s the ten questions that I suggest discussing with your partner before planning your wedding:

What is most important to our wedding day? What are our 1-2 biggest MUST haves?

2. How many friends and family do we ideally want to celebrate with?

3. What do we want our wedding to *feel* like? How do we want guests to feel at our event? What type of environment and experience do we want to create for ourselves and loved ones?

4. How traditional do we want our wedding to be? Is something less traditional a better fit for us?

5. What type of space or location do we picture for our ideal wedding day?

6. What considerations do we have for choosing our wedding date? Is there anything going on in our lives, or our closest loved ones’ lives, that we need to remember or plan around?

7. How much are we truly comfortable with spending on the wedding?

8. Will other family members be contributing to the wedding budget? What are their expectations for having a say in wedding decisions?

9. How will we divide up the responsibilities of wedding planning? Will we make all decisions together?

10. Based on our schedules and our vision for our wedding, could we benefit from getting some outside help with wedding planning from a planner/coordinator?

If you’re still feeling a bit stuck or overwhelmed with where to begin, feel free to reach out to see how we can help. Part of my job as a wedding planner is to help make wedding planning more manageable for couples, from start to finish. Even if it’s not me, I think working with a planner can be extremely useful in taking away a lot of the pressure you might feel to figure everything out on your own. Truth be told, there’s a lot of things to figure out when planning a wedding! But hopefully this list can help you get started.

Cover Photo: Lucia Giuseppina Photography