Yes, You Can Plan a Wedding in Less Than a Year

If you've just begun your wedding planning and have even opened a bridal magazine you're probably under the assumption that you'd best plan on being engaged for at least a year. There are only two reasons you should wait--a) your dead-set on the ceremony site and it's booked out a year and b) your dead-set on a reception site and it's booked out a year.

There are so many different options now for venues that if you are flexible on the time of year and whether or not you can do a Friday or a Sunday wedding, you can definitely do it in less than a year.

Prioritize. I booked an October wedding in July. No vendors had yet been selected. Because we were in a time crunch, one of the first things my bride and I sat down to discuss was what was most important to her. Besides the food and the wedding date she'd wanted great pictures.

Pick up a bridal magazine and flip through it cover to cover so you know everything that's involved in a wedding. Now that you have the idea in your head, write down everything that's important to you. Don't leave anything out--that includes the date of the wedding! Have alternate dates available so that if the photographer you love is booked and you absolutely have to have her, go to your back-up date. Do this too for your ceremony site and your reception site: in order of importance.

If you have the funds, hire a wedding planner to do the search and recommendations for you. Most planners either have budgeting packages available that provide you with vendor referrals based on your budget and your needs or can provide you with a list of recommended vendors for a flat fee. Even if you picked a planner's brain for a couple hours (or whatever their minimum is) you'd be much farther along than when you started. We do this for a living; you're doing this once.

My bride was fabulous and was flexible with the ceremony site and the reception site but was set on October 6th as the date. Fall weddings are extremely popular so her date was already booked at most non-denominational ceremony sites in the Chicago suburbs. But with a little imagination we were able to locate a gorgeous little chapel in a forest preserve of Oak Brook, Illinois.