Photographed while working for Manali Photography | manaliphotography.com
Wedding Wednesday… on a TUESDAY?! I have a HUGE announcement coming to the ‘gram tomorrow, so this week’s wedding post is coming to you a day early! (Lucky you!!!)
I have SUCH a treat for you today! I’ve been welcoming new couples into the CKP Couple family, and overwhelmingly, they’ve let me know that they have been struggling with keeping tabs on their wedding vendor booking process. This is a huge task to take on, so I wanted to create a little something to help. Enter: The Wedding Vendor Cheat Sheet!
Now… before I get too far ahead of myself, there are some things that I think you really need to know. If you are really finding yourself struggling with finding or booking vendors, you need to ask yourself two questions:
- Have I set my wedding budget yet?
- With the follow-up question of: have you broken your wedding budget up by categories of how you’ll be spending? (Example: “We plan to spend approximately xx% of our wedding budget on photography.)
- Have I set my wedding guest count yet?
If you answered no to either of these, quick backtrack & have a conversation with your fiance to decide what the answers may be for your wedding day. Once you have solid a solid YES! for both of these questions, it’s time to start thinking about selecting and booking vendors.
Keep in mind, selecting vendors is such a personal experience. Between budgets and personal taste, the list of vendors that I would recommend booking may differ from the list of vendors that you may end up hiring for your wedding day. My advice may differ from what is right for your day which may differ from the lists you find online. Take my advice with a grain of salt!
The question that I’ve found I have been getting a lot recently is: “When should I be booking which vendors?” My answer to this question may not be what you want to hear, but this is the truth: I recommend booking your vendors as soon as possible after you officially book your wedding date with your venue! Why wait if you’ve found someone that you would love to work with? I’ve seen countless timeframes and “best booking window” recommendations online, and while these are helpful, they shouldn’t be used as an absolute. Because of this, I have decided to forego including recommended booking windows in my answer to this question & instead am going to encourage you to book vendors earlier to avoid stress later! This isn’t meant to stress you out— I would just hate to set you up for stress or disappointment later on by recommending a specific timeframe for a specific vendor that turns out to be booked!
Now… the exciting part! I DID create a fun & free resource to help you stay on top of your wedding planning! This simple vendor cheat sheet list can serve as both your vendor booking checklist (to make sure you got everything covered!!) AND a contact sheet (to make planning even easier!). With recommended vendor categories, space for contacts and notes, and more, you’ll have everything you need to keep things simple and organized!
Is it in a specific order? Yes and no… Becuase I’m not offering recommended booking ranges for vendors, I tried my best to place the first sheet of this list in a priority order (especially for the first 10 or so vendors!). After that, the order is a little looser!
Simply click below to get your hands on this goodness!
A few things: this PDF is BEST accessed on your computer. It is designed to be printed and posted where you’re doing your wedding planning but can also be used digitally (it’s interactive!). There is a page full of vendor categories and another is totally blank, just in case you wanted to create a custom list or have a few more vendors & contacts to add to your list! It’s meant to be marked up, so feel free to download and print as many as you need!
EEP! I think that’s it for me… I’m going to leave you to play with and enjoy your wedding planning freebie! Feel free to comment below if you have any questions!
If you enjoyed this post, you may also like:
