Wedding Engagement

This checklist is part of a series to help you plan your wedding. It was derived from many sources to serve as a guideline to help you think of all the things you might need to do. Following are items to consider upon engagement:

• Tell your parents the happy news, if they do not already know.
• Arrange for the parents to meet if they haven’t already done so.
• Call or write to your close friends and relatives to let them know of your engagement.
• Have an engagement photo taken for your wedding announcements.
• Make a wedding organizer. You should have an organized way to keep track of appointments, payments, etc., and a system for keeping track of invitations, gifts and thank you notes.
• Find out the engagement announcement policies of the newspapers where you and your fiancé grew up and where you now live. They may have specific guidelines about how far in advance of the wedding they will publish an announcement. Submit engagement announcements to the papers at the appropriate time.
• Keep up with thank you notes as you receive gifts. The best time to write a thank you note is immediately after opening the gift. It should never take more than 6 weeks to send a thank you note. Or, if need be, send a gift acknowledgement to the givers upon receipt of the gift to let them know you have received their gifts and will send a personal note as soon as possible.
• Have an engagement party!