- celebrate + enjoy just the two of you!
- Pop some champagne! The next few hours / days are going to be a stream of phone calls, texts, and social media comments. Take some time to savor the moment with your newly minted fiancé! You both will be feeling such a high, whether you knew it was coming or not — you’ll remember this moment and those feelings for a long time to come.
- share the news
- Chances are you will be on an emotional high, not sure if you should laugh or cry, and certainly won’t be able to stop smiling. Time to share the news with loved ones – pick up the phone and call (or Facetime) parents, siblings, other family members, and friends before posting anything to social media.
- think big picture
- I can bet when you share your engagement news, people will inevitably ask “when’s the wedding?!”. While they may be jumping the gun on setting a date, you and your fiancé should begin to think big picture – what visions do you both have? What are your current tastes, dreams, and interests? At the end of the day, your wedding should reflect both your personalities, look to Pinterest for inspiration, but don’t lose yourselves or personal style.
- set a budget
- While not the most glamorous part of wedding planning, it’s a big factor that needs to be addressed before you can start with the fun stuff – a venue, flowers, food, etc. You and your fiancé will need to figure out how much the two of you plan to contribute, as well as any parents and/or other family members.
- draft a guest list
- While thinking big picture – do you envision your wedding day to be “small”, “medium”, “big”? What do those words even mean? What does 100 people even look like? Start by drafting a list – a good starting point is to create a Google Doc with three tabs – one for each family and another for friends. This is by no mean your final list – but get an idea of what your numbers look like – you’ll need this when you begin to look at venues.
- hire a wedding planner
- When it comes to the planning process, people will range from what the heck am I doing to maybe wedding planning is my calling – whatever camp you are in a wedding planner can help in a multitude of ways. One of the most important being – we will do whatever we can to make this process as stress-free as possible. Your wedding is the biggest day of your life, it should also be the most memorable and we are here to help.
real talk with meli: Thinking back to that day, I can still remember every emotion I felt — mainly not knowing whether to laugh or cry, and not being able to stop doing either. I can attest that numerous people will ask you when the wedding is, craft a generic response – that you’re thinking next spring or the following year.
