A year is the engagement most guides assume, and most of those guides fill all twelve months, because a twelve-month checklist with four empty months looks like a mistake. It is not a mistake. A wedding planned in a year has a heavy first quarter, a heavy last month, and a long middle where the right thing to do is very little. Here is what each month is for, including the ones that are for nothing.
Month one: the decisions
The feeling, the total, the guest list in tiers, the season. Then the venue, the photographer and the officiant, booked, and the legal notice period looked up. If you do only this in month one, you have done the hard part of the year. The order matters and is set out in the step-by-step guide.
Months two and three: the long lead times
Book and order
The dress
Made-to-order needs six to nine months plus fittings, which at a year out means now.
The caterer, if not included, and the band or DJ
The two suppliers most likely to be booked out for a summer Saturday.
The florist and the planner or coordinator, if you want one
One shared moodboard
Started, and edited down to a direction. The Pinterest-is-not-a-plan piece is about this month.
Months four to six: quiet, on purpose
Three months in which the wedding needs almost nothing from you. Save-the-dates go out at month four if you are sending them. Hair and makeup are booked. The wedding party is asked and their outfits decided. The honeymoon is planned. Otherwise, this is the stretch in which couples invent work: a second moodboard, a new venue, a different florist. Do not. Everything that matters is booked, and the right thing to do with month five is to stop.
Month five is for nothing. The couples who fill it are the couples who are tired by month ten.
Months seven to nine: the paper and the people
In this order
Invitations
Designed at month seven, sent at month nine, reply date at one month out.
The suit, the shoes, the rings, the cake, the transport
One a week. None of them is hard.
The ceremony
Vows, readings, who walks and who stands where. Written now, so it is not written the week of.
The rehearsal dinner and the room block
Booked, and the block's release date noted.
Give legal notice
Where it has to be done in a window. This is the deadline that cannot move.
Months ten and eleven: closing
Chase replies and close the list. Send final numbers on the date in the contract. Build the seating plan once the numbers are firm, and not before. Write the one-page timeline and send it to every supplier with a request to confirm. Final fitting, in the shoes. Confirm every booking in one email each.
Month twelve: the week
Pay the balances. Hand the rings, the timeline and the supplier list to one person who is not you. Print the vows and the speeches. Take two days off before, and keep them. Then attend.
Laid out this way, a year has about five months of real work in it. UNSTAGED's to-do list is built on this same month-by-month order, with the empty months left empty, which is the part most checklists get wrong.
Front-load the decisions, protect the quiet months, and close in the last six weeks. A year is enough time to plan a wedding twice. Plan it once.
— The UNSTAGED Studio
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