How to Start Planning Your Wedding: The First Steps Every Couple Should Take

You're engaged! Congratulations! Take a moment to soak that in before the planning begins, because once you open Google and type "how to plan a wedding," you'll be hit with approximately one million checklists, and it all gets a bit overwhelming very quickly.

If you’re anything like me, then you’ve had an amazing day telling your family and friends the good news, and now you’ve settled down for the evening together to start planning your wedding.

So let's slow it down. Before you dive into colour schemes, cake flavours, and centrepiece inspiration boards, there are a few groundwork decisions that everything else will hinge on. Get these right first, and the rest of the planning will fall into place much more easily.

Start with your guest list

I know, you want to look at venues. But here's the thing: venues have capacity limits, and until you have a rough idea of your numbers, you can't start shortlisting. So begin here.

Write a day list and an evening list. Be honest with yourselves. This is often where couples have their first (and sometimes only!) wedding-related disagreement. One of you will want to invite everyone you've ever met, and the other will be quietly hoping for something more intimate.

Top tip: use your phone contacts and social media friends lists as a prompt so nobody gets forgotten.

Struggling to trim the list? Ask yourself: have you seen this person in the last two years? Would you happily spend £40 to £50 on a meal for them at any other time? If the answer is no to both, it might be time to move them to the evening list.

Set your budget

Once you have a rough guest number, you can start talking money. Sit down together, say your numbers out loud at the same time (seriously, it avoids one person anchoring the conversation too high or too low), and then meet somewhere in the middle.

The average UK wedding costs around £20,000, with roughly half of that going on the venue and catering alone. The day of the week and time of year make a huge difference, too. A Saturday in July will cost significantly more than a Tuesday in November, so keep that in mind if you have flexibility.

One thing couples often forget: a lot of your suppliers will ask for deposits upfront, sometimes totalling several thousand pounds, before you've even had the wedding. Build that into your planning so it doesn't catch you off guard.

Choose your date

Date and venue are so closely linked that you'll likely end up deciding them together. But it helps to at least know whether you have a preference before you start venue hunting.

Think about: time of year (summer weekends book out fastest, sometimes two years in advance), whether a weekday wedding might free up more of your budget, and any dates that are meaningful to you as a couple. If you have children and/or friends or family who are teachers, consider school holidays as well.

This may seem like an odd one, but it's something both my husband and I took highly into consideration. Hayfever! We both suffered with it terribly so we knew having a wedding between March and July wasn't going to be a good idea, unless we wanted puffy eyes and runny noses.

Find your venue

Now you can look at venues! Armed with your guest numbers, rough budget, and preferred dates, you're in a much stronger position to shortlist and enquire. You'll be able to rule venues out quickly based on capacity and cost, rather than falling in love with somewhere that was never going to work.

Before you start sending enquiries, it helps to have a rough idea of the type of venue you're drawn to. A rustic barn wedding feels very different to a grand country house, a boutique hotel, or a marquee in someone's garden, and your choice will set the whole tone of the day. Spend an evening browsing a few options together and see what excites you both.

A few practical things worth thinking about at this stage:

• Are a lot of your guests travelling from further afield? If so, a venue with on-site accommodation or plenty of nearby options can make a big difference to how relaxed the end of the evening feels. Nobody wants to be watching the clock because the last taxi is at 11.

• Do you want an exclusive-use venue, or are you happy sharing the space with other guests of the hotel? Exclusive use gives you more flexibility and privacy, but tends to come at a premium.

• Are you set on an outdoor ceremony, or would you prefer everything under one roof regardless of the weather? This is the UK, after all!

Visit your favourites in person before you commit. Photos rarely do venues full justice, and the feel of a place matters just as much as how it looks. I actually dismissed my own wedding venue several times when I saw it online before we finally went to visit, and the moment we walked in, we knew it was the one. So if something keeps catching your eye, go and see it. You might surprise yourself.

Book your photographer early

Once your venue and date are confirmed, your photographer should be one of the very next calls you make. Good wedding photographers in Wiltshire and across the South West get booked up fast, often 12 to 18 months in advance for popular summer Saturdays.

Your photos are the one thing you'll have forever after the day is done. The flowers will wilt, the cake will be eaten, but your images will be with you for the rest of your lives. It's worth prioritising.

Don't leave it until everything else is booked. By then, your date may already be gone.

And there you have it. Five decisions that give you a solid foundation to build the rest of your wedding planning on. Once these are in place, everything else, the dress, the flowers, the seating plan, can slot in around them.

If you're at the venue-hunting stage and still looking for a photographer for your Wiltshire wedding, I'd love to hear from you. Take a look at my wedding packages or drop me a message. I'm always happy to have a no-pressure chat about your plans.