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Even the best made marriage plans can go wrong if you are not well organised. Most of these problems can be sorted out if they happen early on; if they happen at the last minute they can be more serious and you should always have contingency plans. When it comes to making your marriage plans, timing is everything.

Go to the start of this article about planning a wedding.

Previous page about wedding arrangements.

Our free wedding planner form will enable you to contact all the wedding services you will need to arrange your wedding. You will find the following advice invaluable.

Tell your parents. You should tell your parents of your engagement before you tell anyone else. Your parents could be upset if a friend let the news slip before you have told them. It is advisable, if possible to get both sets of parents together to make your announcement. There are a few decisions that you and your partner need to make together before you tell your parents.

Agree the type of wedding you want. Do you want a white formal wedding with a religious ceremony, a more casual registry office affair, or a theme wedding set at a special venue? You both need to agree what you want your wedding to feel like. The best way is to simply bounce ideas off each other and take the costs into consideration. This is your wedding and if you have agreed together on the type of wedding that you want, you will avoid outside interference by presenting a united front. Parents, especially if they are contributing or even paying for the whole affair will have their own ideas - this is your wedding but tact and diplomacy will be needed with a little gentle but firm handling from both of you.

Set the wedding date. One of the most important decisions you have to make when planning your wedding is the date. This is likely to be the first question everyone will ask you. It is extremely difficult to make any progress on planning your wedding without having a date to work towards. You need to give this a lot of thought and research. It is always advisable to set a date well in advance. This gives you time to prepare and organise everything. Gives you and anyone contributing financially time to save up and gives all your guests plenty of time to set their own agenda. Give consideration to things like guests having booked holidays, booing travel and hotels and try not to clash with any major sporting events that guests may have planned to attend.

Fix your budget. Take a good look at your finances and work out how much you already have in savings, and how much you can comfortably save each month. Your parents may well offer to contribute to the overall costs, or specify certain things that they would be willing to pay for. Then fix your budget and stick to it. It will not be the end of the world if you cannot have the limousine or menu you wanted. Your wedding day is not nearly as important as your marriage and since married couples argue more about debt problems than anything else, we would strongly advise against you getting into debt. The day is made special by the two of you and nothing will ever be as important as that. Get into debt over your wedding plans and you could be counting the real cost in the divorce courts in the near future. "Don't say "that won't happen to us" as that is what every divorced couple said. Marriages are made in heaven and settled in court.

Apply for your marriage licence. Having set your wedding date you will need to apply for your licence.

Book the venue. Whether you are opting for a traditional religious ceremony, registry office or other licensed wedding venue, you need to book and get conformation that your dates and time are available. Once you have your marriage licence and wedding venue booked it is all systems go. Now the real work starts as you begin to pull all the arrangements together to coincide at the right time and place.

Announce Your Engagement. Tell everyone the good news. You can do this by email, telephone, letter, card, an engagement party or simply face to face. Some parents will want to place an advertisement in the newspaper. If you have your wedding date fixed you can tell people that you plan on inviting that they will receive a formal invitation nearer the date.

Planning. Get yourself a diary or all wall chart that you can use to chase up or confirm progress regarding each service or company that you will be employing. By monitoring progress, you will ensure that nothing is forgotten and nothing is left to chance. Four weeks before the wedding, you should chase up and confirm that everything is in order.

Pick your attendants carefully. Your Maid of Honour, bridesmaids, Best Man and Ushers, as your attendants can do a lot more than just stand next to you on your wedding day. Now is the time to get them involved in helping organise things like the stag and hen parties. Give yourselves a few days to recover. Having completed the wedding planning form, delegate the task of sifting through the various quotes but make sure you have given clear and precise instructions to everybody. The bride and groom do not plan their wedding alone - they get help from family, wedding planners or trusted friends.

When planning your wedding, you need to focus on what you are trying to achieve and how your guests will feel. Some of the loveliest weddings where the guests have felt most comfortable have been the less expensive informal weddings where the guests felt relaxed. Sometimes weddings can be over staged, guests feel uncomfortable, get bored and frustrated being herded around. Over staged weddings are usually the ones where catastrophe strikes because there is so much that can go wrong.

That is just the first step to planning your wedding, there are scores of other things to organise regarding your marriage arrangements.