First of all YAY, I got engaged a month ago! I have so much to thank to this subreddit, the last couple of years have been a journey for me in which a relationship ended, I dated around, and now I’m here! The most important thing that I would like to thank you girls for, is that through reading posts and articles, I got the chance to reconnect to what I really wanted, deep down, and not what I’ve been taught to want/like for myself. It made me reflect on what I really need out of life, and observe my own emotions, without fear of finding something that is not “acceptable”. I met my guy two years ago, and let him chase me. I didn’t follow all the “rpw rules” to the T, but listened to my heart, which often pointed me in the same general direction. For example, we moved in together after a couple of months already. I wasn’t afraid that this would lower our chances of getting married, because I was confident that we were looking for the same things in a relationship. To be honest, I didn’t think I would be engaged so quickly (none of our friends are engaged or married, however they do cohabit), but he went ahead and asked already, so I’m very pleasantly surprised! Thank you so so so much!

Okay, so my question is: I have never indulged in fantasising about my wedding before, and have only ever attended one wedding, so I have NO IDEA of all the little tips and tricks and stuff you don’t think about while planning for your wedding, and no one to tell me. All advice welcome!

To give you an idea:

  • Budget is limited, cause we’re also saving to buy a house, but that’s not so bad, because we’d like the party to have a pretty bohemian/romantic vibe
  • We’re designing our own ceremony, with his oldest friend as ceremony master
  • Ceremony and party will be in the same location, probably a garden with festival tent or orangerie with big garden. (We’ll be having a garden party with a solid backup plan if it rains)
  • Finally started visiting locations, wedding ideally takes place in June next year
  • No wedding planner due to budget, but we make a very very good team together so I’m confident that we will be able to cover all obvious aspects of it

What I could use advice on:

  • Practical tips or little hacks that you don’t know you if you haven’t organised a wedding before and have no one to advise you
  • Advice on how to stay relaxed if/when things go wrong or when you get anxious
  • Experiences in being engaged and wedding planning together: did it change the dynamic in your relationship? Are there things I should watch out for? How did you tackle the planning of your wedding together?

Right now I was anxious because I would have preferred to get married in the summer of 2020, as my fiancé will be collaborating with the Sorbonne for a semester next year (so basically gone from September till December) and we’re both finishing up and defending our PhD next year in May/June and planning/figuring out our careers after that, so it seemed like too much to handle with wedding planning on top of all that. However, he really wanted to get married next summer already, and insisted that he would take on a lot of the planning workload. We only just discussed some locations today, though, and that required weeks of me patiently waiting for him to make time/bring it up after gently blowing me off and finally suggesting that we schedule a weekly “Wedding planning Wednesday” to sit together and talk wedding. For other things I can usually really count on him (he knows how to get shit done), so his confidence that we still have plenty of time to find a location and fix everything kind of freaks me out, as I’m afraid that the whole thing will somehow slowly slide to me over time, because I worry more :D How can I handle this?

TL;DR got engaged, thank you rpw! Need ALL the tips and advice on wedding planning, especially planning together, also want to know how engagement/marriage changed dynamic of your relationship.