First Things First: What needs to be done?

A week after I had first gotten engaged my mom asked me to come over so we could start planning.
I was SO excited! I had been waiting to plan my wedding for my entire life it seemed.
I grabbed my computer and drove over, excited to share my Pinterest boards and all the things I had saved on my computer. However, as soon as I got there and pulled out my computer my mom handed me a timeline of a list of things that needed to be done and when, and that's when panic mode set in.
         
          Officiant? How do I pick one of those?
          Vendors? How do I hire random strangers and trust they won't ruin my wedding?
          How do I pick a wedding photographer that I trust?
          Venue? I know I need one but I don't actually know of any places?
          And what about a budget? I don't have any money I'm an intern and I go to school full time!

Believe me - it get's overwhelming! Especially with a timeline in front of you. Even though it was a rough sketch at the time since we hadn't set a date, it was crazy to look at. How many things you should get done each month, how crazy your to-do list gets in the month during the wedding.
I seriously considered eloping - and I still do.

However, it really doesn't have to be that stressful! I've found that it can be a lot of fun and it's my favorite way to spend my spare time.
So, I'm going to share with you MY list of things that I think are important to think about in their order of importance. As a disclaimer, I'd like to say that this is basically my own mix of tons of different timelines I've found online.

1. Decide what kind of wedding you want.
• Indoor? Outdoor? Church?
• I decided that I wanted an all indoor wedding, my personality can not handle the stress of the uncertainty of nature. I also wanted to keep the wedding religion-neutral since our families are different religions, I didn't want to deal with any upset family members! So I chose to search for a venue that could hold the ceremony AND reception indoors.
2. Choose an approximate number of guests you think you'll invite.
• It does not need to be exact or accurate by any means, this is a rough estimate to search for venues - a lot of venues can only hold up to 100 guests, whereas outdoor areas and other venues can hold 250+
3. Choose approximate dates
• I need to emphasize APPROXIMATE dates PLURAL. You need to choose a venue and come up with a budget before you can choose your date for certain.
• We came up with a date of May 30th and I actually started to tell family members and friends that asked this date. Then, I fell in love with a venue that did not have that date available! Along with that, it was out of my budget at that time of the year. To be able to stay within budget I had to move it to July 18th. Quite a bit of a jump and I started to confuse family members. DO NOT advertise your date until you have signed a contract with a venue or church.
4. Start venue shopping
• Research online, and make appointments to tour venues. I would suggest ranking your favorite venues that you want to tour and make your appointments in that order. Whether you do in forward or reverse order is up to you, but it helps to not go look at a really nice upscale venue and then look at one you would consider a last choice. It's too much of a jump and it will completely rule out the "lower choice" venue before you can even consider it.
5. Decide on a budget.
• You probably have already had a budget in mind when you looked at venues, but now it's time to really find out how much you and your family will be able to contribute.
6. Come up with an actual number of guests
• Start your guest list and start collecting addresses. You'll need a probably need a MINIMUM number of guests when you sign contracts with your venue and caterer.
7. Decide on your venue and date
• Once you've done this, it feels like your wedding planning has really officially started. YAY!
8. Choose your wedding parties.
• Discuss ideas with your fiancé and decide if you want matching numbers, or, if that's just not going to work, start coming up with ideas for unique ways to make it work! There's no reason either of you need to have more or less people in your wedding party than you want. It's supposed to be your closest friends that you want by you on your wedding day.
• We actually ended up with 6 each, which made it really easy. My maid of honor is my sister and his best man is his brother so I think that will be really sweet and fun!
9. Go wedding dress shopping
• I don't care how far away your wedding is, go wedding dress shopping! You know you want to and I think it will relieve a lot of stress once you find it.
• I bought a dress off the rack that is quite snug - I can't gain ANY weight. On one hand, yes, it does create a little more stress, but on the other hand it gives me motivation to NOT stress eat! I have never had more stress cravings in my life and I always just think about my beautiful dress. I think this is real solid motivation to stick to a wedding diet and exercise routine. I don't know about everyone else but just an abstract idea of looking thin and beautiful on my wedding day would not be able to stand up to ice cream cravings!
10. Choose a photographer
• This. Is. Really. Difficult. At least it was for me. The thought of choosing a photographer and trusting that they would give me beautiful pictures that I could love forever gave me stomach aches. Remember how I said I seriously considered eloping? The main thing that kept me away from that is wanting pictures from this special day that I could show my kids someday and love forever. So my photographer was so important to me. Don't be afraid to meet with as many photographers as you want! I'm also a big believer of splurging as much as possible on the photographer - your pictures are the only thing that you get to keep! (Other than your new hubby!)
11. Choose a wedding officiant
• This could be a really easy no-brainer or something quite difficult. There are actually a lot of choices.
• Originally I started researching my vendor's list of suggested officiants, but I just couldn't believe that most would charge $200 minimum! And to go the religion-neutral route I couldn't ask a bishop - not that either of us really knew one well enough. That got me thinking that I really wanted someone close to us to do it. Funny enough, a friend of ours jokingly suggested that she get ordained and do the ceremony for us - and we loved the idea. My fiancé has been working with her for the past three years and she actually used to be my color guard coach in high school. I'm really excited that a stranger won't be the one up there with us on our big day.
12. Choose a caterer
• I guess I should say, choose how your reception is going to go. You could have a come-and-go reception and serve fun snacks to go with your theme or the season, you could have a buffet dinner, or you could have a full served meal. It depends on your budget and really just what you want.
13. Does your catering include your cake? If not, find a bakery
• Really decide on what you want! Is a big fancy cake what you've always wanted? Go for that! Not your style? There's tons of alternatives.
• I really couldn't stand the idea of spending a ton of money on a CAKE. It just get's eaten anyway. Plus, I don't like fancy cake. Give me fun-fetti and I'm happy! So we decided on cupcakes! That way we can choose different flavors, and we were able to ask my fiancé's uncle to make them for us. He used to be a pastry chef and we're so lucky that he is willing to make and decorate them for us. However, even if you're trying to save money on the cake and don't have anyone close that is a professional baker, cupcakes are much easier to decorate, you can ask more than one person to help with it, and whoever is making them has time to practice and find a way to decorate them that's easy and still looks great!
14. Choose a florist
• To be honest, I can't give much advice in this area because I'm lucky enough to have an Oma (German for grandma) that knows how to make bouquets with silk flowers and offered to do all of my flowers for me! Once choice you have to decide is real or silk flowers. I chose silk flowers because they are less expensive and I won't be limited to the seasonal selections. Also, I'll be able to keep some of my bouquets and flowers and my bridesmaids can keep their bouquets if they want.
15. TAKE A BREATHER!
• Congratulate yourself - you've got almost all of the big things out of the way. Once I had gotten past this point I felt so accomplished and on top of things. I knew that all the big things had been taken care of.
16. Start thinking about invitations
• Depending on how far away your wedding is, you've got some time before you have to actually order them and send them out.
17. Start thinking about decorating
• This is when the smaller things start coming in to play. How are you going to decorate your ceremony? What about your centerpieces? The cake table? etc etc.
• This is where I'm at right now actually, and I can't decide how I feel about it! Some days I love it and I can't wait to start collecting more things. Other days I feel like it's a daunting task. I keep thinking of more and more things that I need to figure out and buy.

This is where I'm at now, and I plan on writing detailed posts about my experiences with each of these little milestones. I'm loving this journey and I hope others will enjoy hearing about it!