10 Wedding Planning Milestones You’ll Want to Celebrate
Everyone knows by now that wedding planning is a marathon, not a sprint. It can be easy to get swept up in the initial excitement and go so hard that you burn out. The key to making this process ENJOYABLE and FULFILLING from start to finish is to slow down every once in a while and celebrate milestones when you can.
Here are 10 milestones you should consider celebrating and some ideas on how you can celebrate them!
1. Budget & Guest List Done
The two most important factors to determine what kind of wedding you can have can also be the two hardest decisions to make. After all that research, hard conversations with your family and each other, and most likely decision fatigue, you should celebrate once it’s done!
You can have a fun related game night where you play games like Monopoly or Guess Who, or create your own game boards for extra fun! One family replaced photo cards from What Do You Meme with photos of their own family. That’s a lot of prep work but I bet with a couple glasses of wine that game would be hilarious and fun to play.
2. Venue Booked
Your venue is going to be one of your biggest expenses in this process, but once it’s booked and you have a date you’ll be amazed at how much weight feels like it’s been lifted off of your shoulders.
If you and your partner are the entertaining type, consider hosting a Date Reveal Party. You can host a small dinner party with your family or even set up charcuterie for your friends. Then reveal your wedding date in a cute way! We love to see all of those gender reveals on the internet, and this surprise would be just as fun for your guests.
Photo by The Candid Studio Photography
3. Wedding Party Proposal
We’ve already seen this one around the internet, but no one said this had to be an expensive event. Celebrate your friends with a nice gift in the mail or a brunch at your favorite restaurant. Making your people feel special and loved doesn’t have to take a lot and it’s definitely a planning milestone to celebrate.
4. Finding Your Dress
Finding your wedding dress can be a huge milestone to truly feeling like a bride! Celebrate by dressing up super fancy with your partner, pop some champagne, and do a photo shoot at home. Or go out to a nice (or your favorite fast food) restaurant!
5. All Major Vendors are Booked
You should FEEL the sense of accomplishment after this one! Have a “Booked” party with your partner. Go to your local library and pick out a new book for each other, make a new recipe from a cookbook you haven’t used in a while, write in an engagement journal, or watch a movie together inspired by a book!
Photo by The Candid Studio Photography
6. Finishing Your First Dance
If you have choreographed your first dance or maybe just finally picked the music, this is a great milestone to celebrate.
Move all the furniture in your living room and have a dance party! Play music from different genres, from your childhood, or new music and just enjoy dancing together.
Photo by The Candid Studio Photography
7. 100 Days Until the Wedding
This one is fun because the wedding is starting to feel real! Do something equally as fun to celebrate. Go thrifting together and pick out outfits for one another to look like 100-year-olds, then go bowling or to the movies! Bonus points if you reuse the costumes on your first Halloween together as an “Old Married Couple.”
Photo from Pinterest
8. DIY Day for Final Projects
Depending on how close you are with your family, your partner’s family, or to your wedding party, consider hosting a “DIY Day” to tackle all of those daunting projects at once. Some projects could just use extra hands, so why not make it a chance to celebrate with people you love.
Host a workshop and show everyone how to make your centerpieces. Have a flower bar at your Bridal Brunch for your bridesmaids and moms to make their bouquets. At the end of the event don’t forget to CELEBRATE with food or games and something to say thank you.
9. Picking Up Your Marriage License
For me, this was such a small thing that made what we were doing feel REAL. No matter how long you’ve been together, holding a legal document like that truly feels like commitment personified. It deserves its own celebration.
You’ve just made your future together feel REAL, so build on that. Build a fort or set up a cozy spot in your living room and plan your future together. Make it fun and cut out magazine pictures to put on a poster. Draw out your dream home. Make a marriage bucket list. Watch YouTube videos and learn a new skill together. The possibilities are endless!
Photo from the day we picked up our marriage license!!!
10. Monthly Date Nights
If celebrating all of these milestones seems daunting and you’d rather have a regular schedule, consider monthly date nights. Once you book your venue it could be fun to make that date night on the same night as your wedding date. The point is to find joy in the journey and spend time together.
Photo of one of our Monthly Wedding Status Update meetings.
So what do you think? Would you try any of these? Do you have any of your own ideas to add to the list?
Want some guidance on your own wedding planning journey? Check out our Services page to learn more about how we can help YOU. Or if you’d prefer the DIY approach and want to plan your own milestones & date nights, check out our Digital Wedding Planner with monthly checklists, budget tracking, and journaling pages.
