Being four months away feels so surreal…this past weekend we went to Dallas for our final menu tasting and everything is falling into place so beautifully! I can’t wait to see all of these incredible moving pieces assemble together on our dream day.  

Timeline – 4 Months in Advance

List Ceremony Extras to Buy: I highly recommend this! Once I put down all of the signage, easels, flowers and whatnot that weren’t being taken care of by our vendors, it helped me get ahead on ordering the items. I have reception extras that’ll need to be ordered as well, so having the perfect list of everything is great for not only timeliness on ordering but also for budgeting. 

Order Wedding Rings: Garrett and I have both tried on our wedding bands and although we haven’t ordered them yet, we have decided which ones we want. 

Buy Stamps for Invites: This is a really easy (and kind of expensive) step to overlook. I had some leftover stamps from our Save-the-Dates so I didn’t need to order as many, which was helpful for the budget. 

List Gifts You Need to Buy: I recently spoke to my parents and they said that we don’t need to buy them a gift? This was news to me, so I would definitely go with your gut on this…since they are paying for the wedding, I’m definitely getting them a gift but others on the list included my Maid of Honor, Matron of Honor, Bridesmaids and Garrett. I am also planning on getting my wedding planners a gift for their service and work. 

Plan Big Exit: This is the only snag on planning that I’ve hit…do I want sparklers? No. But it’ll be night so does it make sense to have white flowers? I have no idea! If anyone has any suggestions or something that worked really well for them…send it my way! 

Buy Cake Topper: We are foregoing a cake topper in the traditional sense at the advice of our Baker. However!! We are adding a little Fenway to the side of our cake, since he is the center of our universe. 

Address Invites: Thankfully our vendor, Papier, did the addressing of our invites for us! I ordered beautiful return address stickers from Etsy because my penmanship is not phenomenal. I highly recommend where we ordered our stickers from – we’ve used them twice and they are phenomenal every time we order them! 

Now onto the Tips: 

How to Say “No Kids”: This was something that has caused a lot of stress because I’m so worried people are going to show up with their kids. We only addressed our invites to those attending, so “Mr. and Mrs.” vs “The whatever Family.” We also put on our wedding website that we were politely requesting no children at the wedding. And, for those who may think this doesn’t include babies, we put individual inserts in the invitations exclusively for those with children that called out (in a polite manner, with the same language as our website) that their kids were not invited. If you’re looking for assistance in how we wrote it, look below:

As much as we love your children, we want to give our guests the opportunity to celebrate without having to worry about little eyes & ears. We politely request no children.

We respect whatever your decision may be regarding your attendance and assure you that we will celebrate with each and every one of you in one way or another. 

When to Send Out Invitations: We are sending out our invites eight weeks in advance, and the typical timeline is six-to-eight weeks before the wedding. Since our wedding is in peak wedding season and in another state, we want to give our guests the most appropriate amount of time to plan and request off, buy plane tickets, etc…