It’s been an exciting 2 months being engaged!! The planning is really truly underway, being the type A person that I am I needed to get all my notes started! There is so much that goes into wedding planning and I honestly wasn’t expecting there to be so much to do and think about. And you definitely want to think about it especially when you’re planning to spend a lot of money!!
According to the Bridebook app, that I downloaded immediately after the proposal, we’ve completed 25% of the wedding planning process. A 1/4 of the way through at month 2 nearly 3, makes me feel good. Considering slowing down a bit, relaxing my mind, tuning out the wedding thoughts but I don’t think I can! Already thinking of what’s next to do but I did think that it’s a good point to stop, reflect and record all the progress that we’ve made so far. So here is everything that we’ve done so far and it’s conveniently 10 things so fits perfectly for a blog post title!
- Surprised my new fiancé with an engagement gift
As I did have the strongest feeling that Connor was going to propose, I wanted to completely surprise him with a gift for our engagement. If I get a beautiful ring, he deserves something too! He’d been pointing out the Tag Heuer watches for a while, saying that it was his dream watch and how he’d love to have it one day.
I hid the box on my side of the wardrobe, knowing that he would never venture into my area! I brought it in my bag when we went on holiday, fully thinking if he doesn’t propose on this holiday this watch is coming back with me and I’ll save it for when he does!!
2. Started a Pinterest board
I’ve been working on my Pinterest board for probably forever, saving everything that came up on my home feed that looked cool for a wedding. But now I’m finally at this point, I looked at the board as a whole and it just didn’t work at all. It was all mix-matched, no clear theme and colours that were giving autumn, not the summer vibes that I want now.
I deleted it all of my previous pins and started again, then showed Connor to see if he liked it. I’ve also shared the board with all my bridesmaids as I know they love pinning and could help me find things that go with the vision.
3. Created a wedding planning spreadsheet
I’ve become a self proclaimed excel queen. I’ve got a tab for the guest list, with a sidebar that calculates how many people we’ve invited, number of plus ones and adults v children. Once we’ve sent the invites we can track how many people have rsvp’d and how many people we’re still waiting to hear back from. On the reception tab it will track everything for the wedding breakfast, seating and food choices. The budget shows what we’ve estimated for every section vs the actual cost and the difference. It will also allow us to keep track of how much we’ve paid so far and the outstanding invoices. I’ve also started the music playlist tab, a list of all the songs we definitely want to play and the ones we want for key moments like the first dance.
There’s so much in this so I feel like I might do a post for the full breakdown! It took a long while to create and get all the formulas perfected so it showed exactly what I wanted it to.
4. Visited wedding venues
We started visiting venues last month, when I booked the first viewing I thought it would just be a bit of fun, have a cute browse around as I thought 2025 is so far away, they’d even think that we were crazy for going for a viewing so soon. I’ve never been humbled so quickly, when I told the lady that was showing us around the dates we were thinking, she turned her computer screen around and showed that all the weekends in June and July were BOOKED!! People are faster than I thought, maybe I’m naive (I mean understandably so I’ve not planned a wedding before…) but I was not expecting that. It made me think oh we’ve actually got to get our boots on with this and get a move on.
Once we’d figured out which other venues we wanted to see, I sent out emails to connect with the events team, get more details of their wedding packages and book in viewings. For all the viewings we were asking loads of questions, making notes and taking photos so we could remember it later but most importantly I was taking it all in and thinking if I could envision us getting married at this location. After each venues we did a pros and cons list and an overall rating.
5. Bought a wedding planner
Along with my spreadsheet planner I really wanted to have a wedding planner binder. I found this on Etsy and sent it to Connor as a major hint for a gift and my first answer back was “Do you really need it?” and the reply (which he should know by now) is always yes! The planner goes through a lot of details that you have to fill out, it’s very handy to have to see all the little things that you need to consider. I also like that it has a section for the honeymoon planning, which I think is also important to take into account especially when budgeting.
6. First bridal shopping experience
I had my first Bridal shopping experience with my mum and younger sister last month. It felt so surreal to be in a wedding dress, feel like it’s something that you think about when you’re younger and now I’m at this point in my life. It honestly felt a little overwhelming! In this store we could not take any photos, my mum did take some sneaky photos like this one just so we could remember this moment. The feeling of being in a wedding dress for the first time would never come round again so we wanted to make the most of the moment! As we couldn’t take proper photos of the dresses it was hard to keep track of which dress was what, the designers and the name. After we’d left I had to make sure to google search all of the ones I’d remembered.
Overall it was an amazing day, it was so lovely to have a day out with my mum and sister and have our first moment in this wedding process together.
7. Created my Bridesmaid proposal boxes
After seeing this all over social media, I thought that this was a big tradition in the wedding world and expected to do for your bridesmaids. But looking into it is just something that is trending, so if you are a bride to be like me and looking at all the TikToks seeing all these extravagant boxes and gifts and panicking. Please remember that your bridesmaids are your true friends and they will not be expecting the world. It is most definitely the thought and effort that you put into it that counts. I had written personalised notes in a card that went into the gift bags with the boxes and it was reading that note that made everyone cry. The cards were easily my favourite thing to give them as I could see that the messages meant so much to them. So it just shows that the smallest thing could be the most meaningful.
8. Ordered swatches for the Bridesmaids dresses
Had to get these as I feel like the colour of the bridesmaid dresses has to fit into the theme and colour palette, arguably it’s what you build the complimentary colours around. As this would be my bridesmaid’s dresses I don’t want to make this decision without them, I want them to like their dress and for it to be something they could wear again. The swatches really helped to see the different materials, feel like I’m leaning more towards satin. With the swatches you can feel the material and put it against your skin, see how it looks with your skin tone. Which is super important when you’re thinking to order online and I definitely do not want to order 6 dresses and the colour/material doesn’t suit them.
9. My second wedding dress shopping experience
Had another bridal appointment with my bestie, Aimee, accompanying me this time. It was a smaller shop compared to the one I went to last time, there was only space to have one bride to be there at a time, so we had the shop all to ourselves! The sales advisor had dresses pulled out for me that she thought I would like following the consultation call before the appointment. And she pulled out some amazing dresses! Again it just felt so weird being in a dress, just feels more real that I’m getting married. This time we were allowed to take photos and the advisor was encouraging it, showing us how the dresses would look after alterations and giving really good advice and tips for finding a dress.
10. Booked our venue and the wedding date
After much deliberation, looking over our notes and ratings from the day we viewed the venues. We also ranked the venues by which one liked the most and for the one top of both our lists we went to visit it again with my parents and younger sister to get their opinions, to me I couldn’t fully commit until I got my mum’s approval. I did ask a lot of questions on the first visit but there were so many things that I didn’t even think about that my mum and dad had thought to ask. By the end of the second visit we both knew that this was the one, I could see us getting married there and having the most amazing day. So then there wasn’t much more deliberation to be made and we went forward with booking and securing our date!
Thank you for reading and following our wedding process! This has been so exciting and I’m so looking forward to the next steps for us to get through.
Please let me know if you’re also in the wedding process and want more information about anything. I will be doing more posts about the wedding but if there is anything specific content you want to see let me know.
If you have any tips for wedding planning please share, I’d love to read your experiences!
Antonia
xoxo
Antonia Conduah 
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