With 9 months to go (and under a stay-at-home quarantine), I got as much done as I possibly could. I’d always wanted to have a year-and-a-half to plan a wedding, so I hit the ground running the second we got engaged. Here’s all I got accomplished in the first month of our engagement!

Book the venue

As I mentioned in the pre-planning post, we had already picked out our venue and I was so scared our date would be taken by the time we finally got engaged. So, the first thing I did was call the venue and put down our deposit so our date was saved. That was such a weight off my shoulders!

Ask ring bearer and flower girls

Before officially asking my cousins to be in my wedding, I called their parents to make sure they would be ok with it and would be able to attend the wedding. Once I had the all-clear, I got together some cute little gifts for them to “officially” ask them to be part of our special day. I sent my newest baby cousin Jack this ring bearer teddy bear and my other cousins Julianna and Autumn a flower girl gift box with a personalized cup, bracelet, and t-shirt I made for them to wear getting ready the day of the wedding. I had the girls’ mom FaceTime me when they opened the boxes and the girls were so excited!

 

Finalize the guest list

I went through the guest list with Jared, my parents, and Nana to make sure we got everyone we thought should be there to celebrate with us. We had to keep it mostly to family since our number of family members on my mom’s side alone is over 100 people. Once the list was finalized I started gathering addresses so I would be ready when it came time to send save the dates.

Ordered bridesmaid and groomsman proposal gifts

I ordered some things off Amazon and Etsy to put together to ask our bridal party to stand by us on our wedding day (but most importantly to party with us at our bachelorette/bachelor parties). I ordered these personalized knives off Etsy and made koozies with my Cricut. I also added in a small pack of beef jerky and travel bottle of Jameson. For the girls, I put together these robes I personalized with their monogram and “Bridesmaid” on the back, personalized wine tumblers, and a champagne lollipop I found at Total Wine. I used my Cricut to put each person’s name on the lid of these boxes and inside the lid wrote “This could’ve been a text, but she’s making me do this. Will you be my groomsman?” for the guys and “Will you be my bridesmaid?” for the girls.

 

Bridal party “proposals”

It was so much fun asking all of our bridal party to be in our wedding! However, due to the COVID-19 quarantine, we weren’t able to get together with everyone quite as easily. Zack and Devin were easy to ask because they live in our apartment complex. We spend almost every weekend at my parents’ house so Ryan and Ashlynn were easy to check off the list. Tyler and Ashton live close so that was like getting two birds with one stone. We got together with Juliana at Nana’s house so I could give her her box. We did drive-bys to give Ernesto, Andy, Kate, and Allie their boxes and Maddie’s had to be mailed out to Texas.

I loved seeing everyone’s reactions to their boxes! We are so grateful to have such good friends in our lives.

The Groomsmen

The Bridesmaids

Book photographer

I did lots of shopping around to find the perfect photographer. So many of the portfolios I looked at seemed so stiff and formal with their photos and that’s just not me and Jared at all. Finally, I found Christine Wozz photography from a few friends’ recommendations and just from her Instagram I instantly knew she was the photographer for us. She expressed her love of capturing the “in-between” moments as well as the traditional formal portraits. That’s exactly what I wanted! She has been so sweet and accommodating to work with so far!

Build wedding website/Start registry

I chose Zola to do our wedding website through because it conveniently had a registry through Zola. You can easily link outside registries like Amazon and Target and the items would show up on the Zola registry. I love web design so this has been one of my favorite parts so far and I can’t wait for everyone to see our website!

As far as the registry, it was kind of a challenge at first since we already live together. We have so many things that we need around the house. Since we’re moving there were some things I needed to add and others I upgraded and put on the registry. You can also add honeymoon funds for different activities on your honeymoon people can put money toward, but we haven’t figured out our honeymoon yet so that is still to come.

Book band

At a Miss Florida event a few years ago, the Phase5 band played and I knew right then that I wanted them to play at my wedding. I’ve been following them since and was quick to contact them after we got engaged. I’m so excited for them to really hype up the party atmosphere of our reception!

Engagement photos

Of course for my engagement photos I asked none other than Jenn Soos to take them. She’s the photographer for Charley’s Boutique so I’ve worked with her a ton and knew Jared would like her and feel comfortable with her since he usually hates taking pictures. We took pictures for about 30 minutes and even brought Moose for some of them. The pictures could not have turned out better – and you never know how it will go with Moose and Jared!

Ordered Save the Dates

As soon as I got our engagement photos back I made up our save the dates on Minted and ordered them so we could get them out ASAP. I picked one of my favorite engagement pictures (so hard to pick just one!) and found the perfect template for us. Soon they’ll be gracing everyone’s refrigerators.

Ask officiant

Jared and I aren’t religious so we didn’t have an obvious choice of a pastor or minister to officiate our wedding. We thought a lot about who knows us really well and would also be able to do a good job as officiant. It was actually my dad who thought of our longtime friend Jerry Howze and it couldn’t have been a better choice. He knew Jared from marching band before I joined and our families grew close once I joined marching band. Mrs. Howze is actually the reason I joined marching band at all! We love that he’s known us separately and together. I was nervous to call and ask him because that’s a tall order, but he was very happy to accept the honor.

Book photo booth

After going to a few weddings with photo booths, we knew we wanted one at our wedding to use as our guest book. After doing research I found White Tie photo booths. I’m so glad I contacted them as early as I did because they only had one of their 4 booth setups left available for our date! So lucky we snagged them!

Book hotel block

This one was my dad’s job. Since the venue is in Sarasota, but we live in Bradenton, we wanted a hotel that was central to both. We settled on Homewoods Suites on University so not only would out-of-town guests be in between us and the venue, but they also have tons of dining and activity options on University. We have lots of guests coming from out of town so this was important to us.

Book makeup

Although I plan to do my own hair and makeup for the wedding so it is exactly how I like it, I want my bridesmaids to have the option of getting their hair and makeup done if they don’t feel comfortable doing it themselves. I reached out to my pageant friend Lexie Lowry and she happily agreed to make sure we all look our best on the big day!

Discuss wedding day timeline with venue

A lot of the vendors wanted to know a timeline of the day of the wedding so I set up a call with the venue’s wedding coordinator to discuss this and some other questions that arose during the first month of engagement. Reaching out to her made me feel so much more organized and set in the preliminary plans for the wedding. While on the phone we booked our menu tasting and got some other details sorted out.

April was definitely a big wedding planning month since I wanted to get as much done as possible while quarantined. May definitely won’t be as intense on the plans, but I still have some fun stuff planned! Stay tuned!

If you missed my first post about the planning I did before we were even engaged, check out my Wedding Pre-Planning post!