I Planned My Wedding in 3 Months… Here’s How

January 13th of 2024, I FINALLY got engaged to the love of my life. On April 22nd of 2024, I married the love of my life. That’s right, I planned my wedding in three months.

Not many people do that. It isn’t easy. There are a ton of resources on planning weddings, so I’m going to avoid touching on more or less generic wedding advice. My main focus is to tell you my tips, tricks, and observations from specifically planning a wedding in a short amount of time!

People are gonna have something to say.

Our reasons for getting married so quickly were sound, but not everyone understood that. I won’t go into the details of our lives too much, but just know, because of things that had already happened, things that were to happen, and things that were currently happening, this was the best decision for us.

People asked us why we were getting married so quickly, why we were getting married on a Monday (more on that later), and were we pregnant (we’re not)?

Why NOW, why not in a year? The answer is pretty simple, as Christians we did not live together prior to marriage, which means our lives were separated. To echo Harry’s words in the famous romcom “When Harry Met Sally”, we had met the person we wanted to spend the rest of our lives with, and we wanted the rest of our lives to start as soon as possible.

Both sides of our families questioned us in their own way about our choices. We handled it in a manner which worked for us and our families.

My best advice is to have your reasons between you and your future spouse, be solid in your decision, and take the time to explain it lovingly at least once to those who ask. If they keep pressing, sometimes a simple “this is what works for us,” sets a gentle but firm boundary.

No matter what you do, not everything will be perfect.

Seriously, it honestly makes me mad the messages modern day brides are hammered with. I saw a reel on Instagram where a bride claimed having the wrong colored napkins ruined her wedding.

Ladies, please don’t let something as minuscule as a napkin ruin what should be the best and most fun day of your life!

I saw a post I did agree with though: you’re having a celebration, not an event. The most important thing is that you and your loved ones are celebrating this milestone event in your lives, and at the end of the day you’ll be married to your best friend and the love of your life (how many times can I say ‘love of your’ life in this post?).

Pick the things most important to you. The dress, the photographer, the food, the DJ, the venue. Those were some of our top priorities. And not even all of those things went perfectly! My dress, though beautiful, had cups added which were somewhat visible. The DJ was included in our venue and to be rather frank, we weren’t particularly pleased with his work. Because of him (and our day-of coordinator), our guest book was not put out until much later and we missed out on all the messages we could have gotten from loved ones.

We didn’t care so much about decor and what people wore. I know it sounds like a much shorter list, but decor in my mind includes things like chairs, table settings, bouquets, etc. So a lot gets encompassed here.

Remember, you’re getting married and you’re planning a celebration. Not necessarily throwing an event to please the attendees. Don’t get so invested in the details that when something goes wrong it ruins your whole day.

Pick an all-inclusive venue.

I really think this was key when it came to planning a whole wedding in three months. It’s also why it was highlighted as a priority in the previous section. We were willing to pay more if it meant more was included and we had less to worry about.

We had two separate venues, one for the ceremony and one for our reception. As Christians, it was important to us we were married in a church or chapel. However, the chapel we liked best did not offer any space for reception. Both venues had quite a bit included. Most importantly, the chapel offered a selection of complimentary decor, their own sound tech, and a coordinator. We still hired a coordinator to make sure the second part of the day went smoothly, but she was affiliated with the reception venue.

The reception venue also had a decor closet, their own amazing menu , a partnered DJ company, and bar service. They even had servers to walk around during cocktail hour offering our appetizers! So classy and it didn’t cost us anything extra for that service.

To find places like this, I recommend using google maps and searching for “All inclusive venues”, and “Affordable wedding venues”. You can also get recommendations! We had found the ceremony venue first, and since they didn’t offer reception space, they sent us a list of options. While we didn’t end up going with anything we’d found on the list, it did lead to us finding the venue we ended up using.

Don’t be too picky.

I want to preface this by saying this is your wedding day! If you want to be picky about something, please be picky about that thing! My main point is to be flexible and open to different outcomes, and not to be picky about EVERYTHING.

For example, I had a couple of emotional break-downs over my outfits for my bridal showers and the rehearsal dinner. It’s my one chance to be celebrated as a future bride, so it was important to me I had white or mostly-white outfits. But white must have not been in season quite yet, because I couldn’t find anything I loved. I eventually found beautiful and unique dresses which fit the bill.

Sometimes it’s worth it to step back and look at the big picture. Like I said before, as long as I got married to my husband, it was a good day.

I sent my bridesmaids a color palette and told them I wanted a mis-matched look. I didn’t care what colors or what style dress they wore as long as they were wedding-appropriate (fairly modest, ankle length, ect.). In fact, other people seemed to care more about what they wore and how they looked than I did.

Since we chose venues with decor included to avoid that expense, we had to be happy with the options they had. Thankfully, we were. Our venues were naturally beautiful and did not require much additional decor. My mom did the bouquets for us, and the flower arrangements for the venue. The best part about this is we used artificial flowers. I will get to use them as floral arrangements in my home! I’ll have a house decorated with the flowers we had when we got married, and I think that’s wonderful.

Don’t get too caught up in ‘inspiration’ on social media.

This still kinda goes hand in hand with some of the above messages, so I’ll keep it short. Social media is designed to make you think you don’t have enough, you’re not doing enough, or you’re not good enough. There were some ideas I liked, but eventually I realized a lot of posts were about really minor details I didn’t want to be convinced I needed. I already have a hard time with anxiety and overthinking, so after a while when I saw posts like “My BIGGEST REGRET at my wedding” I scrolled by real quick.

Buy a dress off-the-rack.

In most cases, this will save you a lot of money. I bought from a boutique whose stock was rather exclusive. They did not discount for off-the-rack because they couldn’t sell that style again until they got another sample dress. If I took one of their dresses from the rack, they would not be able to sell that dress again until they got a replacement. However, it did save me a lot of time as dresses can take months to come in. They’ll also often try to sell you a size much larger than you actually need and make alterations. While alterations will almost always need to be done, you don’t need a dress three sizes too big to do so.

Pick a weekday to get married on.

We got married on a Monday, which got us a lot of surprised reactions from family and guests. However, with prices of weddings skyrocketing, weekday weddings are significantly less expensive than weekend weddings.

Since they are less popular, this means you’ll have your pick of vendors for the most part. As more young couples are picking up on this trick, there will be little more competition than perhaps, a year or two ago. Particularly, Fridays are the choice. We didn’t get our first pick for a reception venue because they already had that Monday booked. The venue we did get originally had a ”soft hold” for our day.

Still, if we’d tried to pick a weekend instead, it would have been impossible to get married in three months unless we went as simple as going to the courthouse.

Give responsibilities to friends and family.

I did almost all the planning, but I was able to take a few things off of my plate. As previously mentioned, I sent a color palette to my bridesmaids and they found styles and price ranges they were happy with. My mom arranged all our bouquets and centerpieces with artificial flowers from Hobby Lobby. My husband made the final decision for his and his guy’s suit rentals. And of course, any pre-wedding parties were lovingly planned and executed by family and friends.

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That’s it! Those are my top tips and observations from planning a wedding in 3 months! I know some points might seem similar, but anything repeated is really what I think were the most important factors.