If your wedding is next June, July or August, you are somewhere between nine and eleven months out from the big day. That is the stretch where most couples have the venue and the date and very little else, and where the planning stops feeling exciting and starts feeling like admin.
We don't think it should. In fact, we think every part of wedding planning should feel joyful. So, to keep you on track, we've mapped the upcoming milestones to watch out for, and exactly how those decisions will affect your guests.
Now, nine to eleven months out
Give notice. In England and Wales you can give notice of marriage up to twelve months before the ceremony, and it has to be at least 28 full days before. For every summer 2027 date, that twelve-month window is already open. You both need to have lived in your registration district for seven days before you go in, and you book an appointment at the register office rather than turning up. In Scotland it's the M10 form, submitted at least 29 days ahead, though the registrar will want it far earlier than that. Northern Ireland works on a 28-day minimum too.
Most couples know about the 28-day rule at the back end. Fewer know there's a front edge, and that it's open now. Doing it this autumn takes a legal deadline off a spring that will already be full.
Draft the guest list properly. Not the aspirational version. The version with numbers attached, split into definites, maybes and the people you're inviting because someone else will notice if you don't. Everything downstream, catering, seating, stationery quantities, accommodation, scales off this number, and every supplier will ask you for it before you feel ready to answer.
Send save-the-dates. Eight to ten months is right for a summer wedding, at least a year if people are flying in. A save-the-date is doing one job: getting the date into a diary before someone else books the weekend. A Gather save-the-date helps you build your guest list at the same time, asking guests to add their own phone number and email address when they receive it.
Book the suppliers who sell out. Photographers, bands and good caterers take peak summer Saturdays twelve to eighteen months ahead. If any of those are still open on your list, treat this month as the deadline.
Order the dress. Lead times of six to nine months are normal, and alterations need another two to three on top.
Eight months out, around November
Sort accommodation. With guest numbers locked, you're ready to start making bookings, pulling together a list of nearby options at different price points, and make a note of anything that gets booked up by other events that weekend.
Guest-side note: accommodation is the single biggest cost you're asking guests to absorb, and the one they have least visibility on. Three options at three prices is more useful than one recommendation at the venue's rate.
Transport. Coaches if the venue is rural, taxi numbers if it isn't, and a realistic view of what happens at midnight in a place with no phone signal.
Six to seven months out, over Christmas and January
Menu tasting and final catering decisions. Including cake, if you're having one separately.
If opting for print, design and order the invitations. Order 10 per cent more than you think you need. Reprints are expensive and slow. And don't forget to include your Guest QR code so they know where to RSVP.
Open RSVPs. This updates your guest list with real-time responses, and opens the doors to personal Guest Hubs, where they'll find everything they need to know about your celebration: travel, parking, timings, dress code, accommodation, who to contact on the day.
Decide the difficult policies now, not later. Children or no children. Plus-ones or no plus-ones. Whichever way you go, the decision has to be consistent and it has to be written down somewhere guests can read it without asking you directly.
Four to five months out, February and March
Set an RSVP deadline and put it in writing. Six to eight weeks after initial send out. Whatever you choose, expect to chase. Don't worry, we make nudging simple.
Guest-side note: this is the moment guests are asked to do the most, and it's the moment most couples lose control of their own data. Every reply arriving by a different route, WhatsApp, text, a card in the post, a conversation at a party, means someone is maintaining a spreadsheet by hand and someone is going to be missed. Collect the RSVP, the menu choice and the dietary requirement in one place, at one time, or you'll ask three separate times over the following two months.
Three months out, around April
Chase RSVPs. Assume a third of your guest list will need a reminder.
Share menu choices and dietary requirements. Caterers want an indicative picture around six weeks out and exact numbers two to four weeks before. Once every RSVP is in, you can export guest details from Gather, ready to send on to the team.
Hair and makeup trials.
Two months out, May
Seating plan. It takes longer than anyone expects and it can't start until the RSVPs are closed.
Order of the day.
Final dress fitting.
One month out
Final numbers and final payments to the venue and caterer.
Write the day-of contact sheet. One page, every supplier, plus the two people who are handling problems so you don't have to.
The fortnight before
Rings collected. Legal documents in one envelope. Wedding party briefed on where to be and when. Someone nominated to carry the phone.
A week out and 24 hours out, we'll automatically remind guests to visit their Guest Hub to make sure they have everything they need to make the day seamless for them, and special for you.
Guest-side note: a guest who doesn't know what time to arrive or where to park will text you, on the morning, while you're getting ready. Every piece of information you send in advance is a message you don't receive on the day.
The part that isn't on any timeline
Almost everything above is a task you do for your own wedding. The guest-side notes are the exceptions, and they are the items most reliably left until the month before, when they turn into forty individual messages about parking.
Your guests are making their own plans in parallel with yours: travel, accommodation, leave, childcare, what to wear, what they can eat. They start those plans when you tell them the date, which for summer 2027 is roughly now. The earlier you give them something to work from, the fewer questions come back at you in June.