How to Plan a Wedding: A Step-by-Step Guide

Most wedding stress comes from doing things in the wrong order: booking a photographer before the date is fixed, falling for a venue that seats sixty when your family alone comes to ninety, or finding out two weeks before that the antenuptial contract had to be signed before the wedding. If you want to know how to plan a wedding step by step, the answer is to make the four big decisions first, in this order: budget, guest count, date and venue. Almost everything else follows from them.

Below are fourteen steps in the order that works in practice, with a link at each step to a deeper guide. If you’d rather have a dated to-do list, use our wedding planning checklist. This page is the reasoning behind it.

How to plan a wedding step by step: the short version

1. Set a budget and agree on your priorities.
2. Draft the guest list and settle on a rough number.
3. Choose a season, then a date, with a backup or two.
4. Book the venue, or the beach plus somewhere for the reception.
5. Decide who will run it: a planner, a coordinator or the two of you.
6. Book the key suppliers, starting with the ones who can only be in one place on your date.
7. Start the legal paperwork: Home Affairs, your documents and, if you want one, an antenuptial contract.
8. Decide on the look: colours, flowers, décor and hire.
9. Send save-the-dates, then invitations.
10. Sort the personal details: outfits, rings, the ceremony, vows and speeches.
11. Book the finishing touches: cake, hair and makeup, transport.
12. Pull it together in the final month: numbers, seating, timeline, payments and plan B.
13. Hand over the day to whoever is running it.
14. Wrap up afterwards: certificates, returns and thank-yous.

Steps 1 to 4 are a chain. Change one and the others move, which is why it pays to settle them in the first few weeks, in that order, before you pay any deposits.

Start with money and people

1. Set a budget and agree on your priorities

Before you look at a single venue, sit down together, and with anyone who is contributing money, and agree on two numbers: the most you will spend, and the amount you’d be comfortable spending. Then each of you names the three things that matter most. Food and a long party? Photographs? A ceremony on the sand? When money runs short (it usually does somewhere), your priorities decide what gets cut.

Keep 5–10% aside as a contingency for the costs nobody mentions upfront, such as supplier travel, service charges or a generator for a farm site. Our wedding budget breakdown shows how the total is typically split, and who pays for the wedding covers the family money conversation, which goes far better early than late.

2. Draft the guest list

Write down everyone you’d invite in an ideal world, then everyone you’d invite if you had to pay for each of them out of your own pocket. The real list sits somewhere in between. Guest count drives most of the budget, because every extra person adds a meal, a chair, a glass, a place setting and a share of the bar, and it decides which venues are possible at all.

A rough number is enough for now: “about 80”, not “76 plus maybe the cousins”. If the number doesn’t fit the budget, how to cut your wedding guest list has a fair way to do it.

Choose the date and the place

3. Choose a season, then a date

On the Eastern Cape coast, December to February is peak season: warm evenings, the longest light, and the most competition for venues, suppliers and holiday accommodation. Outside those months, dates are easier to find. Winter weddings work well if you plan around short days. In Jeffreys Bay the sun sets at about 17:20 in June, against about 19:30 in late December, and that two-hour difference reshapes the whole day.

Then check your shortlist against school holidays (which decide whether families with children can travel), long weekends (good for travelling guests, harder on accommodation) and the people you can’t imagine the day without. Have a second and third choice ready before you phone venues. How to choose your wedding date goes through the trade-offs, including Friday, Sunday and weekday weddings.

4. Book the venue (or the beach)

The venue fixes the date, the maximum guest count, the catering rules and a large part of the budget, so it comes before any other supplier. Ask what’s included (tables, chairs, linen, kitchen, staff), whether you must use their caterer or bar, whether there’s a noise curfew, what happens when the power goes off, and where everyone goes if it rains. How to choose a wedding venue has the full list of questions to take on a site visit.

A beach ceremony is really two bookings: the stretch of beach, which may need permission from the local municipality or, inside a national park, from SANParks, and a place for the reception. Choose the spot against the tide table and look at it at the time of day you’ll marry, because the summer afternoon wind on this coast is no myth. Our guide to planning a beach wedding covers the details, and beach wedding permits in the Eastern Cape explains who to ask.

Do you need a wedding planner?

5. Decide who will run it

Decide this early, because it changes who does steps 6 to 12. Broadly, there are four ways to do it:

• Full planning. A planner helps with the budget, finds the venue and suppliers, deals with permits and logistics, styles the wedding and runs the day. This suits couples who live far away, work long hours, or are marrying somewhere with no infrastructure.
• Styling and flowers only. You book the suppliers; a stylist designs the look, sets it up and takes it down afterwards.
• On-the-day coordination. You plan everything, and a coordinator takes over your file several weeks before (we do it about six weeks out), confirms every supplier, writes the running order and runs the day.
• Doing it yourselves. This is realistic for a small wedding at a full-service venue, as long as someone organised, sober and not a guest is in charge on the day.

A venue coordinator is not the same thing: they work for the venue, not for you, and they don’t manage your outside suppliers. What a wedding planner actually does explains the work involved, wedding planner vs day-of coordinator helps you choose between the options, and our questions to ask a wedding planner help you compare the people on your shortlist.

Book suppliers in the right order

6. Book the key suppliers

Book in order of scarcity. The suppliers who can do only one wedding on your date, and who fill their diaries first, go first:

• the photographer, and a videographer if you want one
• the caterer, if the venue doesn’t provide one
• the marriage officer or minister
• the band or DJ
• décor, flowers and hire items, especially for a December date

Get every booking confirmed in writing: the date, the times, what’s included, the deposit, when the balance is due and what happens if either side cancels. Our guide on when to book wedding suppliers has a table of typical lead times and the reasons behind them.

What legal paperwork do you need to get married in South Africa?

7. Start the legal paperwork

This is the step couples leave too late, and some of it can’t be fixed afterwards. Here it is in broad terms. It is general information, not legal advice, so confirm the details with Home Affairs, your marriage officer or an attorney.

• Check your marital status. Home Affairs asks people who intend to marry to visit an office and verify their status on the National Population Register. It’s how you find out about a marriage recorded against your ID without your knowledge, and that is far better discovered now than at the signing table. See how to check your marital status.
• Gather your documents. Each of you needs your ID. If either of you has been married before, you’ll need the final divorce decree or the death certificate. A foreign national needs a valid passport and further documents, including a letter of no impediment from their home country, so read getting married in South Africa as a foreigner well ahead.
• Confirm your marriage officer. Make sure the person marrying you is a designated marriage officer, and give them your details in good time. After the ceremony, you, your marriage officer and two competent witnesses sign the marriage register, and the marriage officer sends it to Home Affairs. Our guide to marriage officers covers what they need from you.
• Decide on your property regime. Without an antenuptial contract you are married in community of property. An antenuptial contract must be signed before a notary before the wedding, and the Deeds Registries Act requires it to be registered in a deeds registry within three months of signing, which the notary normally handles. Choose a notary a few months ahead and aim to sign two to three months before the wedding. Antenuptial contracts explained covers the choice between with and without accrual.

Same-sex couples marry under the Civil Union Act with the same basics: a marriage officer, two witnesses and your IDs. If you’re also concluding a customary marriage, it has its own requirements and its own registration with Home Affairs, explained in lobola and customary marriage. The full picture is in the legal requirements for getting married in South Africa.

Make it yours: style, invitations and the details

8. Decide on the look

Start from the setting and the season rather than from a screenshot. A beach at 17:00 in summer, a farm in autumn and a forest clearing in winter each suggest their own colours and materials. Pick two or three colours plus neutrals (our guide to choosing wedding colours shows how), then turn the mood board into a list: arch, aisle, signage, tables, linen, flowers, lighting.

Decide what to hire and what to buy. Our wedding hire checklist helps with quantities. On the coast, choose décor that copes with wind: arches that are weighted, candles in glass, and dried proteas and grasses rather than soft fresh stems that shred.

9. Send save-the-dates, then invitations

Send save-the-dates as soon as the date and venue are booked, and treat it as urgent for a December or long-distance wedding, when guests need to book leave, flights and accommodation in holiday season. Invitations follow later, with an RSVP date set by your caterer’s deadline for final numbers. See when to send save-the-dates and invitations for timings, and wedding guest accommodation and travel for helping guests find somewhere to stay.

10. Sort the personal details

• Outfits. A made-to-order dress can take months, plus fittings, so start early. Our wedding dress shopping guide has the timeline.
• Rings. Allow time for sizing and engraving.
• The ceremony. Plan the running order with your officiant. If you’re writing your own vows, they’re added to the questions and declaration your marriage officer is legally required to use, not said instead of them. How to write wedding vows helps.
• Speeches and music. Agree who speaks, for how long and in which language, then give the DJ or band a must-play and a do-not-play list.

11. Book the finishing touches

Cake, hair and makeup (with a trial), transport, and anything else that is easy to find but easy to forget. These usually book later than the key suppliers, but in peak season the good ones still fill up, so don’t leave them to the last two months.

The final month, the day and afterwards

12. Pull it together in the final month

The last four weeks turn decisions into numbers and times. The caterer needs final numbers and dietary requirements, the seating plan can only be finished once RSVPs are in, and balances fall due on the dates in your contracts.

The document that matters most now is the running order: one timeline from the first delivery to the last vehicle out, sent to every supplier so nobody works from their own version. Our sample wedding day timelines are a starting point. For anything outdoors, settle plan B in writing too, with a fixed time for making the call; the outdoor wedding rain plan explains how. The week-by-week to-do list for this stretch is in the wedding planning checklist.

13. Hand over the day

On the morning, one person should have the timeline, the supplier contacts and the authority to make decisions. If you’ve booked a planner or coordinator, it’s them. If not, choose someone calm who will stay sober, and brief them properly a week before. Your job on the day is to get married and enjoy your guests.

14. Wrap up after the wedding

Hired items go back on the hire company’s terms, so check beforehand how crockery and linen must be returned and who is doing it. Once the marriage is registered, get your marriage certificate; you’ll need the unabridged marriage certificate for visas, emigration or registering the marriage abroad. If either of you is changing surname, start with Home Affairs, then update everyone else, as set out in changing your surname after marriage. Then write the thank-you messages while you still remember who gave what.

Where to start this week

If you haven’t started yet, don’t try to do everything at once. This week, have the budget conversation, write a first draft of the guest list and pick a season. Next week, shortlist venues for two or three possible dates. Once the venue is booked, you’ll find the rest falls into place much faster than you expect.

If you’d rather not work through all fourteen steps yourselves, see how Tarika handles full planning, styling and on-the-day coordination between Gqeberha and Plettenberg Bay, in English or Afrikaans. Or send us your date and we’ll tell you within a working day whether it’s open.