A wedding planned in three months is usually a better wedding than one planned in eighteen, because there is no time to second-guess anything. Every decision is made once. The constraint is not the planning; it is availability, and the way to solve availability is flexibility on the date, the day of the week and the size of the room.
This is the order for twelve weeks. It assumes a guest list under a hundred, a venue that either includes catering or has a caterer it works with, and a couple willing to buy the dress from stock. If any of those is not true, add a week to month one and take it from month three.
01Weeks one and two
Everything that has a waiting list
Numbers first
Total and guest count, agreed in one evening. At three months, the guest list is also the invitation list, so it has to be final.
Legal notice
Give notice or file for the licence in week one. In England and Wales it is 28 days minimum; in most US states it is days; in much of Europe it is longer. Look up your own before anything else.
Venue
Call, do not email. Ask what dates they have in your window, take a weekday or a Sunday if that is what there is, and book on the call. Restaurants with private rooms, hotels and registry offices are the fastest to confirm.
Photographer
Message five, book the first good one who is free. At three months you are choosing from who is available, and that is fine.
The dress
Off the rail, from stock, or a designer who ships in weeks. Book the alterations appointment the day you buy it.
02Weeks three to six
The people and the paper
Invitations out by week three
Digital, with a reply by date at week eight. Paper only if the printer can turn it round in a week.
Officiant, music, florist, hair and makeup
One a day for a week. Send each of them the date, the venue, the budget and the moodboard in the first message, and book the first who says yes and feels right.
Rings and the suit
Rings from stock or a jeweller who can size in a fortnight. A suit off the peg, tailored, looks better than a rushed made-to-measure.
Honeymoon
Book it now or plan it for later. A wedding at three months and a two-week trip the day after is a lot to arrange in the same twelve weeks.
03Weeks seven to ten
Cake, transport, the wedding party's outfits, a room block if guests are travelling, the rehearsal dinner if there is one. Chase replies at week eight and close the list at week nine. Build the seating plan at week ten. Send the timeline to every supplier at week ten, one page, and ask each of them to confirm they have read it.
At three months, the answer to most questions is the simplest version that is available. That is also, usually, the most beautiful one.
04The last two weeks
Fourteen days out
Final numbers to the venue and caterer
Whatever they asked for, on the day they asked for it.
Final fitting
Wear the shoes to it.
Vows, speeches, readings
Written and printed. Nobody reads from a phone well.
The morning
Decide who is where at what time, and who has the rings. Write it down.
Two days of nothing before
Not one. Two.
What a three-month wedding does not have
A custom gown, a florist mockup, letterpress anything, a band that was fully booked in January, a Saturday in June. It has the same ceremony, the same dinner, the same photographs and the same people, and it has them twelve weeks from now.
Three months is enough for a wedding. It is only not enough for the version of the wedding built to sell you twelve months of planning.
— The UNSTAGED Studio
