Wedding Planning Checklist: Month by Month, Dated to Your Wedding (Plus the 6-Month and 3-Month Versions)

Every wedding checklist on the internet has two hundred items and no opinion about which twenty matter. This one has an opinion. It comes from nine years of shooting weddings and watching which tasks, done late, actually hurt: the venue, the photographer, the caterer, the music, the invitations, the license. Everything else has slack in it. The list below is organized by month so you can find where you are, and each month leads with the things that have a real deadline. If you would rather not do the date math, the free timeline generator takes your wedding date and dates every one of these for you.

The booking windows that drive the whole list: venue 12 to 18 months out for a peak Saturday, photographer and caterer 9 to 12 months, band or DJ 9 months, dress 8 months because it takes six to arrive and two to alter, florist 6 months, invitations in the mail 6 to 8 weeks before the day. I explained why the order goes this way in the right order to book vendors. This post is the list itself.

Twelve months out, or the month you get engaged

• Celebrate for a week before you plan anything. Nothing on this list is urgent in week one.
• Set the budget from three numbers: what you have saved and will spend, what you can put aside monthly until the wedding, and what family has actually offered. Where the money goes shows how that total splits.
• Agree on a guest count range, a floor and a ceiling. The guest list is the budget, so this comes before venues.
• Pick a season and a year. The venue will pick the date.
• Choose one place to keep everything. Not a spreadsheet, for reasons I covered in this piece.
• Start the guest list draft with names, not addresses. Addresses come later.
• Tour venues and book one. If the ceremony is somewhere else, book that too. Read the contract for what is included: tables, chairs, linens, a coordinator, a kitchen.
• Decide whether you want a planner or a day-of coordinator. You do not have to book yet, but decide, because it changes how much of this list is yours.

Eleven to ten months out

• Book the photographer, and the videographer if you want one. The good ones in every market fill a year ahead.
• Choose your wedding party and ask them.
• Start the wedding website. Here is what goes on it and when.
• If the venue does not include catering, start tastings now.
• Reserve hotel room blocks. They are free to hold and they vanish in cities with conventions.
• Start dress shopping. Not buying yet, looking, so the order in month eight is not a panic.

Nine months out

• Book the caterer.
• Book the band or the DJ.
• Book the officiant. If a friend is officiating, confirm they can legally do it in your state and start their paperwork.
• Send save-the-dates. Nine to twelve months if it is a destination wedding or a holiday weekend.
• Set up the registry so it exists when the save-the-dates land.
• Take engagement photos if you want them on the website or the save-the-dates.

Eight months out

• Order the dress. Six months to arrive, two to alter. Suits take four to five months if they are made to measure, so partners can wait a bit.
• Confirm the hotel block is live and on the website.
• Get florist quotes. Bring the venue photos and the budget line, not a Pinterest board of peonies in January.
• If the venue provides nothing, get rental quotes now for tables, chairs, linens, and a tent. Peak-season rental inventory is real.

Seven to six months out

• Book the florist.
• Book the day-of coordinator if the venue does not include one and you decided in month twelve that you want one.
• Order invitations. Printing and addressing take longer than you think, and they need to be in the mail at eight weeks.
• Book hair and makeup and schedule the trial.
• Book the cake baker after a tasting.
• Plan the honeymoon. Check passports now, because renewals take months.
• Meet the officiant about the ceremony: readings, music, who walks with whom, how long it runs.
• Pick wedding party attire and tell them the deadline to order it.

Five to four months out

• Buy the wedding bands. Engraving and sizing take weeks.
• Plan the rehearsal dinner: place, list, invitation.
• Finalize the guest list for invitations and collect every address. This is the moment the guest count becomes real, and the budget should move with it.
• Book transportation for the wedding party and a shuttle for guests if the venue is far from the hotel.
• Book lighting if the venue is a blank room. Uplighting and candles are the cheapest transformation on this list.
• Confirm rentals against the layout: how many tables, which size, how many chairs.

Three months out

• Mail invitations at eight weeks with an RSVP deadline three to four weeks before the wedding.
• Finalize the menu and the bar order with the caterer.
• Start writing vows. Draft done by two months, read aloud by one.
• Order the small paper: programs, menus, place cards, signage, a guest book.
• First dress fitting.
• Draft the wedding day timeline and send vendors their arrival windows. The venue coordinator, if you have one, wants this now, not in the last week.
• Book the rehearsal time at the ceremony site.

Two months out

• Invitations are in the mail. If they are not, they go today.
• Final fitting for the dress or suit.
• Vows written.
• Send the DJ or band the must-play and do-not-play lists and the names of everyone being announced.
• Buy gifts for the wedding party and parents.
• Check the hotel block. Most release unbooked rooms at 30 days.
• Confirm transportation pickups and addresses in writing.

One month out

• Apply for the marriage license. Every state has its own waiting period and expiration window, usually a few days to wait and 30 to 90 days of validity. Look yours up and put the appointment on the calendar.
• Chase the RSVPs that have not come back. Text, do not wait.
• Finalize the seating chart. The calm method is here.
• Do the final walkthrough at the venue with the layout in hand. Confirm where every table, the bar, the DJ, and the cake go.
• Send the final timeline to every vendor and the wedding party.
• Schedule final payments and put tips in labeled envelopes.
• Build the hair and makeup schedule: thirty minutes per service per person, working backward from the first look or the ceremony.

The final two weeks

• Final headcount to the caterer and the rental company, usually due ten to fourteen days out.
• Print the escort cards or the seating display.
• Confirm delivery and arrival times with every vendor by phone.
• Break in the shoes. Steam the dress. Pack an emergency kit.
• Name one person, not you, who vendors call with questions on the day.

The week of

• Rehearsal, then rehearsal dinner.
• Hand the rings, the license, and the vows to the people responsible for them.
• Give the envelopes with payments and tips to your point person.
• Drop decor, welcome bags, and signage at the venue.
• Sleep. The couples who look great in the photos slept.

After the wedding

• Return rentals and the tux. Get the dress cleaned or preserved within a few weeks.
• Thank-you notes within three months. Write ten a night and it is done in a fortnight.
• Leave reviews for the vendors who earned them. It is the currency they live on.
• Name change paperwork if you are changing it: Social Security first, then license, then everything else.

If you have six months

Six months is a normal engagement in most of the world and a completely workable one here. The list does not change. The order compresses and a few doors close. In the first two weeks, do everything from the twelve-month section: budget, guest range, venue, and, in the same fortnight, the photographer, the caterer, and the music, because those four are the ones that book out. Months five and four are the eight-month and six-month sections combined: dress off the rack or a sample sale rather than a custom order, florist, officiant, invitations ordered immediately so they can mail at eight weeks. Save-the-dates are optional at this length; a wedding website and a text to the people who need to travel do the job. From three months on, the list above applies exactly as written.

If you have three months

Three months is a wedding, not a compromise, and I have shot beautiful ones planned in less. Three rules. First, take the venue that has the date rather than the date that needs a venue; restaurants, breweries, and off-season weekdays are your friends. Second, skip anything that requires a lead time longer than you have: custom dresses, engraved invitations, save-the-dates, a tent. Buy the dress off the rack, print the invitations online in a week and mail them at six weeks, or send them digitally and keep the paper for the day itself. Third, book the photographer and the caterer in week one, because those are the two you cannot replace with a friend and a speaker. Everything from the one-month section onward happens on schedule. The license, the headcount, the seating chart, and the timeline do not care how long you were engaged.

Planning as a team

One more thing the two-hundred-item lists never say. Split the list by category, not by task. One of you owns the food and the bar, the other owns the photography and the music, and both of you own the guest list, because that one needs both families. A shared list where each of you can see what is due this week, without the other explaining it, is the difference between planning a wedding together and one person planning a wedding while the other attends meetings about it.

Questions people ask

When should we start planning? The month you get engaged, in the order above, and no faster. What should we book first? The venue, because it sets the date and the capacity everything else depends on. What is the last vendor most couples book? Transportation, and it is the one that strands a shuttle of guests at 11 PM when it is forgotten. What if we are already behind? Find your month in the list, do that month and the one before it this week, and you are caught up. What if we are not having a big wedding? The list shrinks but the order holds. The case for the 45-person wedding is the version of this list for a small room.

If you want the reasoning behind why each block lands where it does, the 12-month timeline that does not assume you have a planner walks through it. This post is the list to actually work from. Put a date on every line and let something other than your memory keep it.

Armin Korsos is a filmmaker who spent nine years shooting weddings before building Altessa (altessa.studio), an all-in-one wedding planning workspace that replaces the spreadsheet.