Things I Regret Not Doing When I got Engaged

December 1, 2023

Getting engaged to the love of your life is one of the most exciting things to happen in your life. My fiancé proposed to me after 6 years of dating and the proposal was everything I dreamed of and more. We got engaged in September of 2022 so we decided to enjoy the last 3 blissful months of the year just enjoying being engaged and celebrating this exciting milestone.

Then reality hit.

It started when we started exploring venue options in our home state of Pennsylvania– which if you don’t know is a large agricultural state. This wouldn’t be a problem, but we are not barn people, we are mountain people, but the majority of venues in PA are barns converted into wedding venues.

This greatly shrunk the number of options we had to choose from so we started calling and visiting venues while we were home for the Christmas holiday. Of the venues we had time to visit, only one fit our style.

Next, we needed a date. We had already been together for a long time, so we were hoping to get ready within the year. No problem, right?! Wrong!

The wedding industry is still catching up with the pandemic so we tried and tried different venues and our best option was over a year and a half away.

Lesson #1: Find your venue & date ASAP

If you are anything like us, you are not the only ones in your life getting married. My fiancé and I had several weddings between the time we were engaged and our wedding date and since we had to travel to all of these weddings, we kept putting things off for our own wedding. Most importantly, our engagement photos.

We had a very clear vision for “outdoorsy” engagement phones, and well, Dallas, TX is about as far from “outdoorsy” as you can get. Which added to delaying our engagement photos.

After almost a year of engagement, we were finally able to organize photos in Waco, TX with Soul Fire Photography by Baylee Hollingsworth. The photos turned out incredible and it was a huge weight off our shoulders.

Lesson #2: Do your engagement photos sooner than later.

Not getting our engagement photos done sooner also presented us with another problem, we also weren’t able to send out save the dates! Yes, we could have simply chosen to create save the dates without photos of us on them, but I really enjoyed filling our fridge the last 3 years with our friends and family’s save the dates that had photos on them. So this was non-negotiable for me.

This time didn’t need to go to waste. I didn’t realize until we finally ordered the save the dates that there were so many addresses that we didn’t have ready to go. I regret not being more proactive with getting this information collected. They even have sites, like Postable, where you can share a form link and friends and family can enter their mailing information and you will receive it in one nicely organized spreadsheet.

Lesson #3: It is never too soon to gather your guests' information

The final and maybe the most obvious, but also not obvious lesson…

Lesson #4: Weddings cost more than you could ever imagine.

I share this because no matter how many times you hear it, you don’t realize truly the magnitude of the statement until you are in it.

If you are reading this and you plan to get engaged and have a wedding with your closest friends and family at any point in your life, I highly recommend starting to save now. I use SOFI Bank, which allows me to set up automatic savings goals in a High-Yield Savings account. This method of saving has completely changed my financial health, not only for the wedding but for all my financial goals.

I am sure these are the first of the many lessons I am going to learn on this wedding planning journey, but I am sure I am not alone in struggling in the 2024 Bride Club. I hope by sharing these lessons with this community no one else finds themselves in my shoes a year from their engagement.

Xx,

Becky

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