How Do You Plan a Wedding in Less Than a Year?
By Derrick Bassett-Alee, Rental Manager at The Felt Estate - a Michigan wedding venue
A shorter engagement does not mean a lower quality wedding, and it does not mean you have to live in a constant state of catch up. It means choosing carefully where your time goes and trusting a few key decisions early, so the rest of the process can move at a steady, manageable pace. We work with busy professionals who pull this off all the time, and the ones who enjoy the process most are rarely the ones scrambling. They are the ones who set up a simple system early and stuck with it. So how do you plan a wedding in less than a year?
Photography: Chrystin Melanie Photography
What Makes The Felt Estate One of the Best Michigan Wedding Venues Near Chicago?
The Felt Estate sits in Saugatuck, Michigan, less than two and a half hours from Chicago, according to Saugatuck Douglas Visitors Bureau, which is why so many couples searching Michigan wedding venues near Chicago end up here. It is close enough for a weekend trip but far enough to feel like a real getaway for you and your guests. If that describes you, everything in this guide still applies. You will just lean a little more on virtual tools to make it work from a distance, which we cover in the next section.
Should You Hire a Wedding Planner When You’re Planning on a Short Timeline?
Yes. If you are a busy professional planning a wedding in under a year, hiring a full service wedding planner is one of the best decisions you can make, and it is where we recommend starting. The Felt Estate has been hosting Michigan weddings for over twenty years, and the couples who handle a short timeline best are almost always the ones who bring in the right support early instead of doing all the research themselves.
A full service planner already knows the vendors in your market, who is reliable, and who is actually available on your date, so you are not spending weeks finding that out yourself. That one decision, made early, is what makes everything after it feel more manageable. We go deeper on what a full service planner costs and exactly what they take off your plate in our companion article on hiring a wedding planner.
It also helps to know that a wedding planner, a wedding coordinator, and a venue coordinator are not the same role. We break that difference down in more detail on our blog, Do I Need a Wedding Planner for My Michigan Wedding? , if you want to dig into which one fits your situation.
How Many Venues Should You Tour Before You Decide?
Two or three. That is how many venues we recommend touring and vendors we recommend having discovery calls with, before you make a decision. With planner support in place, this is usually the next step, and it is where a lot of couples end up slowing themselves down without meaning to.
A longer list feels productive, but it tends to work against you. The more venues and vendors you are comparing, the harder it becomes to remember what made each one special, and the longer it takes to feel confident in a choice. A short list keeps the process focused and lets you move forward with clarity instead of second guessing.
Before you tour any Michigan wedding venues near Chicago, it helps to know two numbers: your rough guest count and your total budget. Those two alone will help filter through your options quickly, which is exactly why we tell couples to nail them down first before touring. Read Three Things to Know Before Touring a Wedding Venue to learn more.
If you are planning from a distance, or you simply want to move faster, a virtual tour can help. At The Felt Estate, we offer a few different ways to see the venue depending on your schedule, including private one on one tours, self-guided video tours, and full virtual tours. Plenty of couples feel completely comfortable making a decision after a virtual tour alone, especially once they have already narrowed their list through research.
The same approach works for vendors. A full service planner can again be a real asset here, since they can do the initial research for you and hand you a short list that already fits what you are looking for. If you are building that list yourself, a good place to start is your venue’s preferred vendor list, if it has one. Ours at The Felt Estate is built entirely on merit, made up of vendors who have consistently done great work for our couples. For now, the short version is this: a tighter list, built from good sources, is what actually makes the decision easier.
How Do You Choose a Wedding Date When You’re Planning Fast?
Pick your venue first, then choose your date from what is actually available. That is the shortcut that saves the most time once you have a small, strong list of venues you are excited about.
On a shorter timeline, a lot of the most popular Saturday dates at the most popular venues are already spoken for. Staying flexible on the day of the week opens up far more options, and a Sunday wedding deserves real consideration, not just a backup plan. Saturdays book up fastest and earliest, so Sunday dates tend to have far more availability, which matters most when you do not have a year to wait for your first choice to open up. Sunday weddings also tend to come with better access to in demand vendors, since photographers, caterers, and other popular vendors are less likely to already be booked elsewhere that day, and many venues and vendors price Sunday dates lower than Saturday.
Guests can benefit too. A Sunday wedding with a Monday off tends to be easier on out of town guests than a Friday wedding that eats into their work week. We wrote about this in more detail on our blog: How to Plan a Sunday Wedding. What we see here at The Felt Estate: over 60 percent of our weddings happen on a non-Saturday date, with Sunday leading that trend at roughly 30 percent, which lines up with what venues are seeing nationally. Friday and midweek weddings can work well too, depending on how many of your guests are local versus traveling in.
Before you start reaching out to venues, it helps to talk with your partner about season first. Are you drawn to spring or summer? That conversation narrows things down right away. It is also worth remembering that Michigan couples and Chicago couples date for two to two and a half years, on average, before they get engaged according to World Population Review. So once you do get to this point, moving efficiently toward a date is not rushing anything. It is simply making good use of momentum you already have. From there, take a few minutes to figure out your blackout dates. Are there work obligations, major projects, holidays, or a friend’s wedding you would rather not compete with perhaps any family birthdays or anniversaries you would like to protect? Sorting this out up front takes a little time, but it saves you from having to backtrack later, and it gives you a clear window to hand to venues when you start reaching out.
Once you know your season and your blackout dates, you are ready to check availability. And whenever you reach out to any wedding vendor, whether it is your venue or anyone else, share your date and your budget range right away. It keeps the conversation moving and respects everyone’s time, yours included.
Which Wedding Vendors Should You Book First?
Book your venue’s required vendors first, such as an exclusive caterer or bar company, then move to whichever vendors matter most to you personally, especially anyone who only takes one wedding a day. With your venue and date settled, the rest of your team typically falls into this order:
Vendors your venue requires, such as an exclusive caterer or bar company
Vendors who can only take one wedding per day, especially your photographer or videographer
Everyone else, in whatever order fits your priorities
In our 13 years of working with couples here at The Felt Estate, venue and planner are typically booked first, somewhere between 12 and 24 months out, with photographers right behind them, since photographers typically only work one wedding a day and book up accordingly. If there is a photographer whose work you have followed for years and truly want, reach out to them early. Vendors like that tend to book up quickly, and on a shorter timeline, it is worth prioritizing the people you would be genuinely disappointed to miss. Even with Michigan wedding venues near Chicago and and wedding vendors booking up to two years out, there are amazing options available even when planning in less than a year.
What Is Appointment Batching and Why Does It Help You Plan Faster?
Group your in person appointments together instead of booking them one at a time, especially if travel is involved. Once your vendor team is coming together, you will likely have several appointments to handle:
A tasting with your caterer
A signature drink tasting with your bar company
A bakery tasting
An engagement photo session
A hair and makeup trial
Some couples turn a batch of these into a short wedding planning getaway. It is a practical way to make the most of a single trip, and it has a nice side benefit too. It gets you out of your everyday environment and gives you dedicated time with your partner that is not only about logistics.
How Do You and Your Partner Make Wedding Decisions Together?
Set aside dedicated time each week, ideally a couple of nights, where you and your partner sit down together and work through wedding decisions on purpose. That balance between logistics and connection matters just as much day to day as it does on a planning trip. Make it a date night if that helps. Order your favorite carry out, pour a glass of wine, and tackle it as a team.
Staying organized helps too. If a joint wedding email makes sense for you, only set one up if you will both actually check it regularly. When you do, build a signature with both your names, your venue, and your date, so that information is included automatically every time you email a vendor. If a shared inbox is not realistic for your household, that is completely fine. Just make sure both partners stay looped in on vendor communication, whether that means CC’ing each other on emails or keeping vendor texts in a shared group thread.
It also helps to keep the circle of actual decision makers small. Input from people you trust is valuable. Final say is a different thing entirely, and the more people who have it, the slower everything tends to move.
How Do You Set Boundaries When Family Helps Pay for the Wedding?
Have the conversation about expectations early, before you are deep into planning, especially when parents or other family members are contributing financially. Ask directly what they are expecting. Are they hoping to be part of the decision making? Is there a specific piece of the wedding they would like to be involved in, based on what they are contributing toward?
If you are open to that kind of involvement, tying it to the part of the day they are helping fund is often a natural way to include them. If you are not, it helps to say so early, and to say it with gratitude. Something like, we really appreciate you contributing to this, and we want to make sure we can move quickly and bring the day together the way we are envisioning it. Most people respond well to honesty offered with warmth. If it does not land the way you hoped, it is still okay to say thank you, but no thank you.
If you and your partner are covering the wedding yourselves and would rather keep the decisions fully in your hands, that is just as valid a path. Either way, the goal is the same: know where you stand, and say so early enough that it does not slow down your planning later.
How Do You Avoid Decision Fatigue While Planning a Wedding?
Build in breaks on purpose, before you feel worn down, not after. All of this, the vendors, the dates, the conversations with family, adds up to a lot of decisions in a short window, and it is worth naming that plainly.
You have probably heard the term decision fatigue, the idea that your judgment gets worse the more choices you stack in a row. Researchers are still working out exactly how that plays out in the brain, according to Psychology Today, but what is not in question is that a lot of decisions made under time pressure wears on you, whatever you want to call it. So regardless of the exact science behind it, the fix is the same.
Plan a date night now and then where wedding planning is simply off the table. Come up with a few conversation starters ahead of time if that helps you stay off the topic, and choose something other than dinner and a movie so the evening feels distinct from your regular routine. Whether that break happens weekly, every couple of weeks, or once a month, the point is the same: protect time that has nothing to do with the wedding. That space is not time away from planning. It is part of what makes the rest of the planning sustainable.
Planning a wedding in under a year takes focus, but it does not have to take over your life. Bring in the right help, keep your lists short, communicate clearly with your partner, your family, and your vendors, and build in the breaks you need along the way. Do that, and you will get to your wedding day feeling ready, not run down.
The Felt Estate is a nonprofit historic landmark and Michigan wedding venue located between Holland and Saugatuck along the shores of Lake Michigan. The estate features the magnificent Felt Mansion, a 110-year-old Chapel at Shore Acres, a Carriage House, water garden feature, manicured gardens, and the large West Lawn wedding reception tent. Beyond weddings, The Felt Estate serves the West Michigan community through historic preservation efforts, guided mansion tours, and seasonal public events that bring the estate's century-old story to life. Destination wedding packages and single-day wedding rentals are available from May through October, with on-site lodging for up to 24 guests and easy access from Chicago, Detroit, and beyond.
The Felt Estate
6597 138th Ave., Holland, MI 49423
General Inquiries: (616) 335-8982
contact@feltmansion.org
Weddings & Events: (616) 218-0078
events@feltmansion.org
About the Author
Derrick Bassett-Alee is the Rental Manager at The Felt Estate, a Michigan wedding venue. As part of The Felt Estate team and as an Event Manager for Holden Michael Events, he has spent 13 years working in the wedding industry as a venue manager and wedding planner in Michigan.
Sources
A Chicago Getaway: https://saugatuck.com/chicago-getaway/ (Saugatuck Douglas, MI tourism)
Do I Need a Wedding Planner for My Michigan Wedding?: https://www.feltmansion.org/blog/do-i-need-a-wedding-planner-for-my-michigan-wedding (The Felt Estate blog)
Three Things to Know Before Touring a Wedding Venue: https://www.feltmansion.org/blog/three-things-to-know-before-touring-a-wedding-venue (The Felt Estate blog)
Dating to Engagement Time by State: https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/dating-to-engagement-time-by-state (World Population Review)
How to Plan a Sunday Wedding: https://www.feltmansion.org/blog/how-to-plan-a-sunday-wedding (The Felt Estate blog)
Is Decision Fatigue Real?: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/stretching-theory/202309/is-decision-fatigue-real (Psychology Today)