Planning a Wedding in 6 Months (or less)
You’re engaged – congratulations! Are you hoping for a short(er) engagement? Are family and friends telling you it “can’t be done” in 8, 6, 3 months?
Good news is – it can be done! And not just with a courthouse elopement.
You can have a beautiful wedding with the people you care most about AND it can be done without too much stress. (Spoiler – there is always a little stress when planning a wedding. Sorry!)
How do I know it can be done?
Because I’ve done it – many times!
Cale and I planned our own wedding in just 3 months. 🎉
At Pleasant Union Farm, we’ve planned MANY weddings in short time frames. It’s one of the biggest perks of our All-Inclusive Packages!
The first step is finding the right venue with a date you love
A shorter engagement might limit your choices some, but if you are looking for a gorgeous outdoor space with views of the North Georgia countryside and a great indoor reception space – we might just have the perfect venue for you!
Venues come in all shapes and sizes (and we don’t just mean guest count). Some venues max out every weekend with weddings. Those venues often fill up quickly.
Other venues host fewer weddings each year and they might have more openings.
We intentionally host a smaller number of weddings each year which allows us to serve our couples to the best of our ability and remain flexible.
It also means we often have availability for shorter engagements – which we love!
I highly recommend looking for venues that offer All-Inclusive Packages if you are planning a shorter engagement. These packages help you pull everything together with less stress!
Our wedding packages provide you with details and pricing upfront so you know how to budget. Plus we have referrals for any other vendors you might need.
We work with amazing North Georgia wedding vendors that help pull all the details together!
We will help connect you with the vendors, answer questions you have along the way and our amazing coordinators put all the details into a wedding day timeline which they make sure flows smoothly for you.
From coordinators to catering, cake and DJ, we have an amazing team. Plus we have some great suggestions for photographers, officiants and other vendors you might be looking for.
So, after you have the venue set and a wedding package chosen – what’s next?
First, guest list
Get that nailed down and get invitation sent out. You want to get those out 4 – 5 months before the wedding (or 3, if you are working on a timeline like we did!) Make sure you ask guests to RSVP 6 weeks before your wedding so you know how many to plan for. (And to give time to follow up with the people who don’t RSVP, because there will always be a few).
Then, dress shopping
Finding a dress you love that can arrive in time can be a challenge. Make sure you communicate your timeline with bridal shops so they can guide you to dresses that will arrive in plenty of time for your wedding. Get this done as soon as possible!
Next, schedule a consultation with the florist
Share inspiration photos and details for the flowers. They can help guide you to what flowers are available in the season of your wedding and help you develop a plan to meet your budget. We recommend meeting with your florist 3 – 4 months before the wedding.
Then schedule a tasting with the caterer and cake designer
Most of the time, these vendors will have a menu for you to choose from so it’s a little easier to plan after you get the date set. They will need a final guest count 3 – 4 weeks before the wedding to order supplies and plan for staff. Try to schedule your tasting at least 2 – 3 months before the wedding.
As you are working through these items, take moments out to think through a song list for the DJ. They usually don’t need this until a couple weeks before the wedding but it usually takes more than just one “meeting” with you and your fiancé to come up with all the songs. So, spread it out over a few weeks!
When you are a month away from the big day, schedule a final meeting with the coordinator to go over all the details
Often they will give you some “homework” before the meeting to get vendor contact info, bridal party order and other details.
They can confirm the table layout, timeline details and answer questions at that meeting. Chances are good that you will still walk away with a few things left to do, but you will have a clear plan in place.
The best piece of advice I can give is trust the experts. The vendors you choose to work with should know what their part in your wedding clearly looks like. They will know what they need to provide and what information they need from you.
Ask them if you are missing anything and if they have everything they need. And then trust them to take care of you!
We get to work with an amazing team of vendors at our North Georgia venue and they truly make all the difference!
Good luck with the wedding planning – you’ve got this!
Owner, chief dreamer and assistant farmer at Pleasant Union Farm
