Wedding planning template
Wedding planning timeline
Wedding planning isn't hard so much as badly ordered: a few decisions gate everything else, and they're the ones people put off. Budget and guest list come before venue, venue comes before suppliers, and everything else has more slack than it feels like. Here's the twelve-month version.
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Opens in the editor. Free, no signup.
The milestones
Roughly 48 weeks end to end. Weeks are relative to the first milestone — set your own dates once it's open in the editor.
| When | Milestone | Phase |
|---|---|---|
| Week 0 | Budget & guest list agreed | Foundations |
| Week 5 | Venue booked | Foundations |
| Week 12 | Photographer & catering booked | Suppliers |
| Week 18 | Save the dates sent | Guests |
| Week 26 | Outfits ordered | Suppliers |
| Week 34 | Invitations sent | Guests |
| Week 44 | Final numbers to venue | Final details |
| Week 48 | Wedding day | The day |
What to put on it
- Budget and rough guest count — nothing can be booked before these two exist.
- Venue booked, which fixes the date and the ceiling on numbers.
- The suppliers that book out furthest ahead: photographer, catering, band.
- Save the dates, then invitations, with the RSVP deadline in between.
- Final numbers to the venue, usually two to four weeks out.
- The day itself.
Questions
- How far in advance should you plan a wedding?
- Twelve months is comfortable for a venue with a fixed capacity and a popular date. Six is workable if you're flexible on the day of the week or the season. Under three months, pick the venue first and let it decide the rest.
- What should be booked first?
- The venue, but only after you've agreed a budget and an approximate guest count — those two determine which venues are even on the list. Photographers and caterers come next because good ones book out a year ahead.
- Can I share the timeline with family and suppliers?
- Yes. Publishing gives you a link anyone can open without an account, and it previews as an image when you paste it into a message. Nothing in it is editable by whoever you send it to.
Make it yours in about a minute.
The template opens as a draft in your browser. Edit the dates, publish when it's right, and share the link — it unfurls as a preview of the actual timeline in Slack, Teams, Discord, and iMessage.
Use this template