Today instead of sharing inspiration for our wedding I wanted to do a little check-in of sorts on where we stand in the whole wedding planning process. It’s been exciting for me to see how many of you are planning your weddings at the same time and all your feedback has been a huge help to me on everything from bridal accessories and floral inspiration to bridesmaids’ dresses and groomsmen attire. Because we’re having a longer engagement (21 months total, with 15 months to go) our timeline is a little more flexible than most of the guides I’ve seen online but I thought it might provide fun insight into what we’ve been up to!
What’s been done:
- First things first: we chose a date! Getting engaged in December would have made it too stressful (for me personally) to plan a summer wedding on Nantucket and since we’d always known that’s where we’d be married, pushing the wedding to the next summer was a no-brainer. So we contacted our preferred reception venue and made sure they were available on the same date as the chapel. Having our pick of dates was definitely a huge advantage of a longer engagement and I’m so happy with where we’ll be celebrating that everything else feels like the icing on the cake!
2. We asked our bridesmaids and groomsmen. I can’t imagine our day without all of our closest family and friends! You can see how I asked my bridesmaids here.
3. I said yes to the dress! This definitely didn’t need to happen so soon in the process but I couldn’t resist seizing the opportunity to dress shop when my mom, dad, Grandy, future mother-in-law, sister, and cousin/bestie were all in town on the same weekend (that literally never happens!). I didn’t feel like I absolutely needed to find my dress that day and I think that mindset made the whole outing stress-free and all about fun… which in turn made the serendipity of finding my dream dress a day I’ll never forget!
4. We had an engagement party in Dallas, hosted by Will’s parents’ friends and attended by all my family members listed above! It was such a magical evening and the first time we got a taste of how it will feel to have all our favorite people together for one weekend next summer… I get teary just thinking about it! I polled you all about which engagement party dress I should wear and ultimately decided on this one with these shoes. And I had too much fun to stop and take a single picture… Oops!
5. We found our photographer! Cameron & Kelly Studio photographed our friends Jane and Scottie’s wedding in Lyford Cay two summers ago and their photos turned out so incredible (and they raved about the process of working for her!) that this massive decision actually wound up being pretty easy! I couldn’t be more excited to work with Cameron to capture our engagement pictures this summer and all the little details leading up to the big day next summer.
What’s a work in progress:
- We’re thisclose to booking our band and videographer. These vendors, along with the venue and photographer, are a top priority as they can only work one wedding on a given day (unlike the vendors responsible for flowers, paper goods, the wedding cake, etc.). I will definitely be breathing a sigh of relief once we cross these off the list!
- Speaking of other vendors… I’ve begun looking into florists and stationery designers and am a little overwhelmed by both. Definitely a work in progress!
3. We’re hoping to help family and friends book houses around the island instead of doing a traditional hotel room block. We’re hoping this will save our guests money as hotels are pretty pricey during the peak season and it’s already a long haul for some of our guests to get to Nantucket in the first place. That’s definitely a downside of planning a destination wedding but as my family has always said: the juice is worth the squeeze! (Which could be taken pretty literally as an ice cream cone from the Juice Bar is always one of my first stops upon arrival.)
What’s left to be done (narrowing it down a little because, umm, everything!!!):
- Put together our wedding registry. I might be the only person who finds this more stressful than fun so I’d love any words of wisdom you might have!
- Find bridesmaids’ dresses. I ordered swatches after last week’s post and am feeling super optimistic!
- Find hair and makeup people for the day of.
- Take our engagement pictures — this is happening in August and I can’t wait to share more!
- Send our save-the-dates (hopefully in September post-engagement photos!).
- Plan our bachelor/bachelorette weekends.
- Find wedding shoes. Not to give too much away, but unlike with most wedding dresses, you’ll totally be able to see my shoes underneath my dress so they need to be just right!
And a million more things that I’ll spare you today as this post has become a novel and I’m sure you all have things to do today! 😉 Thank you for reading and sharing in our wedding planning process — I can’t wait for more exciting developments in the months and weeks to come!
