How long do you think an engagement should be, in reality? More then a year? Around a year? Less then a year? Could you pull off a wedding in less then six months and still be happy?
I’m not engaged (yeah, you knew that!). I was looking at the website for the place I am currently loving for a reception venue, and the list the available dates on the site. It turns out that Sunday, September 20, 2009 is still available, so I may have mentioned to Steve that if he wanted to propose likerightnow, we could get married then (he didn’t propose, obviously). I was telling a friend of mine this (who is engaged and getting married in October) and she said that there is no way I could pull this off because (mainly) I couldn’t find a dress in this amount of time and would need to buy off the rack (the horrors!). She thought I might not enjoy it as much, because I wouldn’t have all of the things I wanted, because there just wasn’t enough time.
So dear friends, what do you think? Would you be happy to plan a wedding in less then six months? How long was your engagement? Would you have wanted more or less time? Thoughts?
P.S. This is in no means being to belittling to any brides in the least! I’m sure I’d probably want more then six months, but I just think I could do it in less. Granted, I am not planning a wedding, so I could be way off :)
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I hear the shorter the engagement, the cheaper the wedding. Because with less time, you don't invest on meaningless things like monogramed napkins and such. Heh.
Personally, I'd want a year to plan in, especially because of the dress. Also, i'm indecisive. I'd need the plan to decide, redecide, and then decide that I'm happy. Sheesh!
Ours has been a long engagement. In fact, in a few weeks, we will have been engaged for a year, and are not getting married until November!
As for how quickly I could have planned the wedding? I could have had our wedding in six months, and ready to go, if I had the finances at my disposal. As it stands, we're paying for everything ourselves, so it has to be spaced out farther.
Really what it comes down to is that a lot of people start booking wayyyy in advance, so if you're planning a quick wedding your options might be limited for some things.
In terms of dresses, it's definitely doable. A lot of times it can take EXTRA time to come in, if you're someone like me. I'm very tall (six feet), so I have to have extra length added, which can add a substantial amount of wait time. Those who are about 5'9" or 5'10" and under can usually get away without the extra length. Most places? It's about 1 to 3 months, or at least that's what I've seen.
Also, the amount of time you want for planning is usually directly proportionate to how complex your planning may be. Are you going to have a lot of customized stuff? Are you picky about everything? For me, I'm not, so I'm finding myself twiddling my thumbs a little bit, without much planning to do, while others are laboring over favor choices, etc. Not that I won't be right now, it's just that I don't have many details I want to obsess about.
We were engaged for two years, but only because I was in school and didn't have time to plan things. In terms of planning though, I probably spent 5-6 ENTIRE days doing wedding stuff, over a span of a year. I am sure you could plan a wedding in a few months if you were efficient and organized, and you pick sites and vendors that are seasoned and know what they are doing. As for dresses, I went dress shopping once, chose the first dress I tried on, and bought it off the rack. Maybe I am easy-going and it all worked out too perfectly, but I secretly think brides are too picky about the dress. No matter what the bride is wearing (with a few exceptions), she is going to be beautiful!
I'd say a year. 6 months leads to a grumpy and stressed mugwump! And you would need to give both families time to save $$$
We were engaged for 13 months - we both thought that was way too long, but living 1200 miles away from the wedding site + Sam's school breaks dictated that. And, if you acutally add up the amount of time we spent "planning" it was nowhere near 13 months. There was a 3-4 month gap in the summer before that we did not one wedding-related thing.
I think 6 months is perfectly fine, provided you have the time and the stamina for that. If you plan on being a fairly laid back bride, I would say it's fine. I've known a bunch of couples who were in the 5 months (Kathy and Steve) to the 8-9 months range and were fine.
I'll be engaged for just over a year when we get married. But we wanted it that way, so there's no rush for anything, it's a warmer month (kind of haha) and also, we can take our time looking for exactly what we want.
I'm not engaged but I think it all depends on how big of a wedding you want and where you're having it. If you're getting married in your backyard with 10 family and friends in a dressfrom JCrew, sure, you can pull it off in a month! ;o)
We were engaged five months and that seemed like plenty of time. My mom says now we could have done it in six weeks. There really just isn't THAT much to do, although you can make every task take FOREVER.
We were engaged for nearly 2 years (20 months) mostly because we don't like to rush things. We both are not picky people and lots of things we did were easy (my dress was the second I tried on, photog, venue, DJ and JP were all the only people/places we saw) so we could have done it in less time.
Though I'm a firm believer in good things coming to those who wait. Would you want to be proposed to simply because the venue was free or because it felt right for you both
I've been engaged for two months (which I missed on Sunday)and we still haven't set a date. In total it will probably be like 21 months mainly because we both wanted a fall wedding and didn't want to spend the next 9 months stressing. What can I say, we're lazy.
you can plan a wedding in any amount of time. i know people who have pulled it off in just under 2 months.
it all depends on what you want. if you're the type of person who HAS TO have this venue/bakers/florist/dress/etc. then you'll probably need more time because you'll have to work around their schedules.
the HUGE upside to planning a wedding with little time means that the vendors you do find available will give you a good deal just to book that date.
you just have to be open to options and it can be done in any time frame. we're less than 5 months out and haven't even sent our venue contract back yet... all i have is a dress : )
personally, i like the short engagement. i have no paitence. if i had to plan a wedding for 20 months i'd snap someone's head off and end up changing my mind about 30 times... for EACH detail.
if your only concern is that you get married to the man you love with the people you love to witness, then you can get married in a week if you want : )
Six months is totally doable. You might want or need more time to be able to mull things over, but if you are the decisive type, it's completely possible. This may just be the Lazy Californian in me, but wedding planning has been fairly low-stress, despite my NY future-mother-in-law, who insists that everything needs the be planned out about 18 months in advance (which, whatever, lady).
I want to do it in 12 months or less ideally, leave me out for 2 years I am bound to change my my mind 200 times.
If it were all to happen "ideally" it would ben winter 2010 in the Northwest. Winter wedding.
I think it will have to stretch out b/c we will be paying for our own wedding.
If it was up to me we would have been married yesterday. Oh but I don't have a ring yet either.
I got engaged on August 1st and married that same year on December 28th. It was the perfect amount of time for me, but my wedding was not quite as big of an engagement as some.
I'd say 6 months would be my minimum.... I'd just want enough time to get stuff together.
Oh, you could totally do it. I planned our wedding in 9 months. As for the dress, mine was "last season" so it was totally off the rack and about 10 sizes bigger than I wear. I had a great seamstress...it fit perfectly and everyone loved my gown. So I wouldn't let that worry you :)
i think 6 months to a year is a good length of time. Adam and I will have been engaged for about 15 months - but we didn't want to deal with birthdays so April/May were out and june/july/august are too hot in DC so september it was!
You can get a dress in about 3 months, some are longer some are not as long and if you get it off the rack and just get it altered it would be even less. The real thing is to make sure you can get all the vendors in line since so many people are OMGINEEDTOPLANTWOYEARSINADVACE...you know ;) . I think it's doable.
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