Congrats, you’re engaged, now what?
It’s been over a year since we got married and I felt it was finally time to share my thoughts, experiences, tips, and everything else I missed when I was planning my own wedding. And while there are so many things to do I’ll keep this engagement topic short and just list the top five things I did that helped get me organized and focused for my our special day!
1. Get your ring properly sized
If you fiancé got it right, then skip on over. If he didn’t like mine, then head to your trusted jeweler and get it perfectly sized. When rings don’t sit properly on your finger it can A. make your diamond seem less sparkly and big B. You could (God forbid) lose your ring if it’s too big! C. your man just spend a ton of $$$ on your beautiful ring, don’t you want it to look perfect? Bottom line- get it resized, please!
2. Get your ring insured
If you want to 101 here’s a great post on all that but if you just want the basics:
The yearly cost to insure your ring is $1 to $2 for every $100 that it would cost to replace. In plain English, this means that if your ring would cost $9,000 to replace, you might expect to pay between $90 and $180 per year to insure it—or slightly more in cities where the risk of theft is higher.
3. Timeline your asses + Create a Pinterest board
It only makes sense now that you’re engaged that you need to obvi find a date. It doesn’t have to be exact since you won’t know till you find a venue but if you have an idea of which month or even season then you’ll be able to start making a timeline. A timeline will seriously keep tensions low, stress manageable, and deadlines met. Here’s one that I followed religiously!
I combined creating a Pinterest board and timeline together since I found my timeline checklist on Pinterest while making my boards (yes boards, I made tons and tons but to spare you a million hours I’ll just share my “my overall wedding Pin board” (P.S. Add me!)). I’m unsure what type of person doesn’t make a Pinterest board the second (or even months before) your engaged, (hah jk, I don’t judge you if you don’t have a Pinterest board) but if you don’t, get on it for obvious reasons.
4. Start building your wedding website
It’s not too early to start. I used Weebly to build mine which you can take a look here. It was pretty self-explanatory and more customizable than other websites offered but it was seriously very time-consuming. Now, if you’re looking for something a bit more hands-off with beautiful already made templates that you can still customize, I would highly recommend Zola. I wish I knew about Zola when I was engaged because that would have saved me a good 3 weeks of building my own template.
5. Create your registry
So, here’s where you guys can learn from my mistake. When I created my registry, I had no idea exactly what I really needed for our future home/life. I made my registry on West Elm. Now that may sound appealing because I mean it’s West Elm, but it really wasn’t efficient or practical. I ended up with a bunch of kitchen items that were “sooooo cute” but soooo not practical. Bottom line is to add items you really NEED versus WANT.
I recently came across Zola (also mentioned above, yup!) which is honestly kind of genius. I don’t know why I didn’t come across it when I was engaged because it’s literally the first thing that pop-ups on google when you search “wedding website” *eyes rolling* but whatever, at least I’m here letting you guys know everything about Zola. On top of building your wedding website on Zola, you can also create your registry on it. The best part about this registry is you’re not tied down to one brand (like me, West Elm *ugh*). With Zola registry, you can curate an individualized registry featuring a huge variety of impressive brands (Le-Creuset, GSI Outdoors, Brooklinen, etc.) and when I mean variety, I mean variety! You can add kitchen appliances to bedroom necessities to home decor items, Travel items, tech gagdets, the list goes on. If I could go back here’s what my registry should have looked like: https://www.zola.com/registry/johnandellen
View our entire Engagement Session here!
Wearing: Chi Chi London Dress, Manolo Blahnik Heels
After these five things are officially being worked on or completed, I think it officially becomes wedding planning territory which I won’t go too heavy on because there are tons of resources out there that would put my “tips” to shame. To all those engaged/wedding planning my biggest advice would be to slow down and try to enjoy it. Although it may be stressful, you only get to experience this once in your life so don’t let the small things get to you. Keep your eye on the prize AKA your perfect wedding day!
Read our engagement story see here!