I’m currently nine months away from THE day and I definitely don’t have it all figured out but I can share a few of the things I’ve learned so far and would DO or DON’T do again.
DO talk budget from the start.
Nicky and I are paying for the whole shebang ourselves so we started by sitting down one night and organizing all of our priorities in a list. The list ended up looking something like this:
From there we pretty much divided our budget in half with 50% being saved as our honeymoon fund (our #1 priority) and the other 50% being priorities #2 to #4.
*If you have parents or family helping to pay for the wedding I would include them in the making of that priorities list*
DON’T discuss the potential locations with too many people. Other than your partner and immediate family, try to keep the options to yourself until you fully make up your mind. I went from wanting a wedding in Miami, to Tulum, to Dallas, to Italy and finally pulled the trigger on Cabo. But by the time I made up my mind a lot of my friends/family had heard of a few different locations and everyone was confused and had an opinion about it.
DO start by researching average wedding costs on all potential locations.
My first option was Miami and overall costs were significantly more expensive than most other locations. Italy was a no-go due to COVID (and budget) and Mexico ended up being the best value for our buck. We chose Cabo over Tulum because #1 Nicky gets eaten alive by mosquitos and #2 it rarely rains in Cabo.
DO hire a wedding planner before picking the venue.
Once we decided on Cabo, I immediately started researching wedding planners in the area. I knew an experienced planner would be able to help us find the right venue since they’re obviously more knowledgeable and are constantly working directly with these places (this is especially true for destination weddings). Soon after we shared the budget with our planner she sent us a list of venue suggestions fitting our wants & needs, reached out to our top picks and provided us with proposals/quotes alongside all pertinent paperwork.
DO or DON’T
Nicky and I decided not to send Save The Dates since it’ll be a pretty small wedding and everyone already knows the date but that’s just us.
Up to this point this is pretty much all I can confidently tell you to DO and DON’T. I still don’t exactly have my wedding dress (I do have a fitting with a designer coming up in Oct though). I have yet to meet with vendors in person (scheduled for January/February) and I have not created/sent official invites either.
I will most likely be sharing Part #2 once I have most of these things checked off my list, I presume a couple months before THE day. In the meantime feel free to follow my wedding prep on IG stories and my wed stuff highlight for more inspo!
