Constraint-first planning

What to do 6 months before the wedding

The question

What should I be doing 6 months before my wedding?

The short answer

At six months out, the work is conversion: turning shortlists into signed contracts. Specifically — send invitations or save-the-dates if they have not gone out, lock catering and bar, confirm the photographer and any second shooter, book hair and makeup, order attire that needs alterations, reserve the hotel block, and put a written timeline in front of every booked vendor.

Six months is not the halfway point of the work. It is the last comfortable moment to change anything structural. After this, changing venue, date, or guest count stops being a decision and starts being a recovery.

The single most common six-month mistake is treating the timeline as a to-do list rather than a dependency chain. Attire alterations cannot start before attire arrives; the seating chart cannot be finished before RSVPs close; the photography timeline cannot be set before the ceremony time is fixed. Ordering matters more than completeness.

The full sequence, by months remaining

Every horizon below assumes the previous one is done. If you are behind, do not skip forward — find the earliest unfinished item and start there, because the later items depend on it.

12 months: budget position, guest list draft, venue and date, planner or coordinator if using one, photographer and band or DJ (the three vendors that book out furthest).
9 months: save-the-dates, attire ordered, catering direction and tasting scheduled, hotel block opened, officiant confirmed.
6 months: invitations designed, catering and bar contracted, hair and makeup booked, florist contracted, rentals scoped, written timeline circulated to every booked vendor.
3 months: invitations mailed, menu and bar finalised, alterations begun, ceremony details and readings, rain plan confirmed in writing, transport and shuttles booked.
1 month: RSVPs closed, final headcount to caterer, seating chart, final payments scheduled, day-of timeline distributed, marriage licence, and a named person who is not you holding the vendor contact list.

What is genuinely late at six months, and what is not

Checklists tend to induce panic evenly across every item, which is useless. Some things at six months are urgent and some are simply not.

Urgent: anything with a lead time you do not control. Attire (ordering plus alterations routinely runs four to six months), printed stationery, and any vendor whose calendar fills a year ahead. Not urgent: favours, signage, playlists, welcome bags, and almost every decision that can be made in an afternoon at the two-month mark.

The dependency chain most timelines get wrong

A wedding timeline is not a list of tasks; it is a graph. Four dependencies cause most of the real trouble.

Ceremony time depends on sunset, which fixes the photography timeline, which fixes when hair and makeup must start, which fixes the getting-ready call time.
Final headcount depends on RSVP close, which fixes catering numbers, rentals, and the seating chart — none of which can be finished early no matter how organised you are.
Load-in and strike windows depend on the venue contract, and they quietly govern what florals and lighting are physically possible.
Alterations depend on attire arrival, which depends on an order date you may already have missed.

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Now answer it for your wedding

Everything above is true in general. These three things are only answerable for you:

Re-derives the sequence from your actual months remaining rather than a generic 12-month chart, so nothing that no longer applies is shown to you.
Puts your fixed constraints — venue already booked, date immovable, guest count set — ahead of the checklist, which is what changes the order of the remaining work.
Names the next single decision instead of a list, which is the thing a checklist structurally cannot do.

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Questions couples ask

Frequently asked questions

Is 6 months enough time to plan a wedding?

Yes, with two conditions: flexibility on date or venue, and willingness to shorten the vendor search rather than the vendor quality. The binding constraints at six months are attire lead times and the calendars of photographers and venues, not the number of tasks.

What should be booked by 6 months before the wedding?

Venue, date, photographer, and music should already be signed. At six months you are contracting catering and bar, florist, hair and makeup, and rentals, and circulating a written timeline to everyone already booked.

When do wedding invitations go out?

Design and order at around six months, mail at three months for a local wedding and four or more for a destination. Save-the-dates go out at nine months, or as soon as the date and venue are fixed if that is earlier.

What is the most common six-month mistake?

Working the list in order of ease rather than dependency. Favours and playlists get done because they are pleasant; alterations and the vendor timeline get deferred because they are not — and those are the two that cannot be recovered later.

Wedding Timeline Template

The planner is free and always will be. Wedding Timeline Template is the working file for the plan it produces — the version you fill in, print, and hand to a vendor.

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