After the Proposal

Now you're engaged...What's next?

First things first, enjoy your engagement. Once the initial shock of being engaged wears off and you've stopped staring at that sparkly diamond on your finger, many decisions will need to be made. What time of year should the big day happen? Where will it be? Who will be in your wedding party? Here are the first things you need to do.

Start planning, by envisioning your event. What size wedding do you want? Do you want a large wedding or a small wedding? Is there a particular location you have in mind? Do you want a destination wedding? Get yourself a check list and start reviewing the items with your fiancé and family.

Decide on a budget. If your parents are helping with the cost, be sure to include them in your discussion about budget. Once a dollar amount is agreed upon, start getting price quotes for items you need.

Don't know where to begin? Based on who's financing the festivities and the monies available, figure it out: What's your basic budget? How much are you going to allocate to each area? Who's contributing? Maybe you'll need to save money before you can afford the wedding you want. For some perspective, the average American wedding costs about $19,000.

Choose your attendants (wedding party). There are no rules or regulations to who can be in your party. So who do you choose? Those you want to share your big day with: best friends, siblings, even your dog.

If you haven't already decided, select a wedding date. Choosing the wedding date can be a complex production. The exact day you select will depend on several factors: The time you will need to prepare your dream wedding; If you have your heart set on a particular place, caterer, band, or photographer, the availability of these vendors may play a large part in your decision. Try to avoid dates of big events or other large crowd events if you'll have guests in need of hotel rooms.

Announce your engagement. Formal engagement announcements can go out immediately. If you want to send out formal engagement announcements, call a local stationery store to have cards printed. For public announcements, check your local newspaper for rules and guidelines. You can find the information you need by calling the editor, checking online listings for the newspaper, or looking in the wedding section in the Sunday paper. 
What to include? Typically, published announcements mention career details about the two of you, your parents' names and places of residence, your educational credentials, and the planned wedding day. Only include what you'd like the world to know. If you haven't nailed down your wedding date or want to keep readers in suspense, you can include something like, "A June wedding is planned."
 
Personalize Your Rings

Make your engagement and wedding that more special. You can customize your wedding rings with inscribing a special message. The special engraved message from you to your spouse will be with him or her at all times. You may simply inscribe your wedding date or your initials. 

There are two ways to engraving your wedding rings, by hand or by machine. Even though hand engraving is a little harder, the engraving will last longer as it's usually deeper than machine engraving. However, hand engraving is more expensive than machine engraving. 

Before you engrave your ring make sure it's sized properly. Otherwise, you may forfeit some of the engraving if the ring needs to be sized. Make sure your message is spelled correctly. Ask to see a sample or sketch of the lettering and message before its engraved. Engraving can take anywhere from a week to 30 days, so plan ahead to get the ring back by the time you need it.