Wedding Planner
You're engaged! Now the planning starts, but where do you start?
First things first, what type of ceremony do you want? There are three main choices.
The Church Wedding
When it comes to choosing the church, your selection will usually be restricted to the parish in which you live, where you grew up, or where your family live.
Some churches will require you to attend regularly before your wedding, but not all insist on this. The banns, or public announcement of your intention to marry, will be read out in church on three consecutive Sundays. Your marriage must then take place within a three-month period of this announcement.
The Civil Wedding
The change in law means you're virtually free to marry anywhere (well at least that's somewhere with a roof and that's licenced, it's not quite Vegas yet). Your local authority will have a list of all these venues. This ceremony has no religious connotations and apart from the legal stuff is left relatively up to you to choose what you would like said and music that should accompany the ceremony.
Both types of service can be booked up 12 months in advance, but be aware that weekend services get booked up very quickly.
The Overseas wedding
Thousands of couples now get married overseas and if the idea of escaping to more exotic climes is your things then the choices are huge. Marriages can now take place on mountaintops to beaches and they can all be organised through an experienced tour operator.
The main thing to note when planning an overseas wedding is deciding who will be joining you, and ensuring you give them as much warning as possible. It's quite difficult to co-ordinate this, and to make sure everyone can make it.
Setting the budget
Romance and money were never a natural combination, but when it comes planning you need to set a realistic budget. A simple way to budget is allocate 60% to everything at the reception, 15% on clothes, 5% on flowers, 10% on photography and the last 10% on invitations, thank you gifts and contingency.
The honeymoon expense is outside of this budget, but you should be prepared to spend approximately £2000.
Now you've decided on the foundations to your dream day.
Click here to go back to the articles homepage - where you can discover advice for all the other aspects of your wedding, including our wedding checklist, which will count you down through all the activities you need to complete before your big day.
