Civil Wedding Vows - How do I start my wedding planning?

How do I start my wedding planning?

I've just recently gotten engaged and now need to start planning everything and I'm lost on where to start or even what my overall budget could be. I want a larger, more formal wedding, but I don't want to spend tons of money. I live in Iowa so there isn't many grand places to have a reception or get married at. Any ideas?

Public Comments

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Start by booking the church. Decide on the number of guests and the budget. Then go looking for the reception location. Check out these bridal websites. They might help. Ask people where they got married. They might be able to give you some advice on local venues. Never rule out a friend's backyard or a local park or historical building.
Sweetie, I truly believe that you should take this one day at a time. What is your date? What is your primary color? What are your accent colors? What type of food do you want to serve? Ethnic, Grandios, etc. What overall style will your wedding take on? How many people will be invited? If you think of these questions, I will be happy to help. Just need a little more information.
Start by looking online for ideas. There are tons of wedding planning websites out there (i.e. theknot.com, brides.com, etc.) Also, there is probably an online wedding forum for your area, which will have local brides discussing their own planning and vendors. Bridal magazines are also good for getting ideas, but they can be very trendy and maybe not your style. You need to set a date if you haven't already to give yourself a timeline (there is A LOT of stuff involved... more than I realized!) Figure out how much money you, your family, and your fiancé's family is willing to spend and also the cost distributions. If you end up having a very tight budget, there are lots of sacrifices you can make, while still having a nice wedding. (For example - I will be making my own bouquets and centerpieces, I didn't get a one-of-a-kind designer dress, and we'll be serving beef brisket instead of steak.) Good luck!
start with some of these questions & see if you can answer them: what is your budget?!?! what season? then you can narrow down a date guest list? what kind of ceremony & reception do you want? hometown C&R or destination wedding? (location) who do you want as your MOH? BMs? colors? how many do you want? (i have 3) flowers? menu? what is your fav. meal? what is your FI fav meal? That's a LOT right there. oh, and FYI, we went through ~10 places before we picked our location. GL. go to these sites to help ya out: theknot.com weddingbee.com
There are a lot of great wedding websites like those already mentioned. The only issue is they do tend to overwhelm and confuse. I would take a look at the online wedding guides such as WhyWhite? at http://www.whywhite.com which starts of with budgeting, then goes through each of main topics you need to cover: Your Dress, The Venue, Readings, Food, Entertainment, Hair and Beauty. It also contains a nice wedding checklist. Once you have been through the outline then I would start to browse http://www.theknot.com and http://www.marthastewartweddings.com/ Then have a look at some of the wedding forums where you can ask other brides to be for advice and help. Have fun and don't stress about it. One step at a time.
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I would either hire a planner or purchase an online planning guide if you want a bigger more formal type of wedding. If you decide to go more low key then it's pretty easy and you could do it on your own.
Here is a site where you can get the Bridal Magazine free for a year just by entering your email. Bridal Magazine helped my sister a ton when she was planning her wedding. It has all the wedding info you could ever want http://www.mb01.com/lnk.asp?o=2014&c=918273&a=42707
If you don't know how to determine a realistic budget, you might want to research some venues just to see what prices look like. Or you can start by setting a date and figuring out what you can realistically save in that amount of time, base your budget off that and then do your venue research. Here are some sites specifically for Iowa brides to help you out: http://www.yourweddingiowa.com/ http://www.weddingsiniowa.com/ http://www.iowaweddingideas.com/ http://www.iowabride.com/index.html