Where to start?

He's popped the question, you said "yes."

Now let the preparations begin!

But, wait... where do you begin?

I remember when my hubby gave me the engagement ring. After letting our families know that we were getting married, the first thing that came to our heads was, "What now?"

At the onset of planning our wedding, the initial thing we did, after determining our wedding date, was to plan a budget. Getting inspiration from friends' weddings, we more or less had an idea of how much to save. The first stage was purely forming the discipline of setting a portion of our income for the wedding budget. And because we had a year to go, and chances are prices were going to increase sometime during the preparations (which it did), we thought of saving double of what we initially planned.

During the "saving period," we were also planning about our ceremony and reception: when and where. Hubby and I are both Catholics, so it was an automatic Church wedding (here in the Philippines). The question now was, "Which church?" I think it took us three trips and numerous phone calls before we decided on the one.

At the same time, we also looked for reception areas that are near the ceremony venue. The church we wanted had a reception hall near it -- a convenient walking distance. A plus to us and our guests, which led us to reserving both ceremony and reception venues in one go.

After that came the photographers, caterers, invitations, dress and flowers and all other stuff, in no particular order. I guess after the church and reception venue we reserved what we thought was priority among the wedding suppliers. You could always prioritize one over the other, depending on how you allocate your budget. But what's important is that you know your budget early on, so you could avoid overspending.

Photo credit: diamante by lifan, sxc.hu