Most of the difficulty of planning a wedding is not the volume of decisions. It is that a handful of them have to be made before the others are possible, and nobody tells you which. Choose the flowers before the venue and you will choose them twice. Send invitations before the guest list is closed and you will send some of them to people who cannot come. The fourteen steps below are in the order that removes that problem. Each one makes the next one easier, and none of them can be done well out of sequence.
The fourteen steps, in order
1 · Decide the feeling
One sentence, agreed by both of you, about what the day should feel like. Every later decision is measured against it. It takes one evening and saves a hundred arguments.
2 · Agree the total
The number you are both at peace with, before anything has been fallen in love with. Include what parents are contributing, and what they expect for it.
3 · Draft the guest list in tiers
Must, should, could. The count of the first two tiers is the size of the wedding, and the size of the wedding decides the venue.
4 · Pick a season and two or three dates
The date is decided by the venue that says yes. A season and a preference is enough to start.
5 · Book the venue
With the count and the total in hand, you can tell in the first email whether a venue is possible. Read the contract for curfew, corkage and what the hire includes.
6 · Book the photographer
The second booking that cannot be redone. Look at a full wedding, not a highlight reel.
7 · Book the officiant and start the paperwork
Notice periods and licences run from days to months depending on where you marry. Find out now.
8 · Order the dress and buy the suit
The longest lead time in the wedding. Six to nine months for made-to-order, plus fittings.
9 · Book the rest of the suppliers
Caterer if needed, music, florist, hair and makeup, in that order. Send each the date, venue, budget and moodboard in the first message.
10 · Send the invitations
At three months, with a reply date one month before the wedding. Digital is fine.
11 · The middle decisions
Rings, cake, transport, stationery, the wedding party outfits, the honeymoon. One a week. None of them is hard once the first nine are done.
12 · Close the list and write the timeline
Chase replies, send final numbers, build the seating plan, write the one-page timeline and send it to every supplier.
13 · The last fitting, the balances, the handover
Two weeks out. Shoes worn in, balances paid, rings and timeline handed to one person who is not you.
14 · Rest
A day of nothing before. Then attend your wedding.
Steps one to five decide ninety percent of the wedding. They are also the five steps most couples rush, because they are the ones that feel like admin.
Why this order
The feeling comes first because it is the only decision that does not depend on another one, and it is the one everything else answers to. The total comes second because a venue tour without a number is a tour of venues you cannot afford. The guest list comes third because the count is the single input every supplier asks for. The venue comes fourth because it fixes the date, and the date unlocks every booking after it. Everything from step six onwards is simply a queue, sorted by how far ahead each supplier books.
What is deliberately missing
Favours, a wedding website, a hashtag, a signature cocktail, a photo booth, a second photographer, a videographer, a planner. None of these is on the list because none of them unlocks anything, and every one of them can be added at any point if you want it. A step-by-step plan is a list of dependencies, not a list of ideas.
If the steps above look like a lot, they are fourteen decisions over roughly a year, most of them made once. UNSTAGED puts them in this order for both of you, with the to-do list, the budget and the vendor list built around the same sequence, so the next step is always the one on top.
Do them in order. The couples who find planning hard are almost always doing step nine before step two.
— The UNSTAGED Studio
