Christine Parascandola and Aditya Seeramreddi started planning their wedding in February 2024, four months before Mr. Seeramreddi proposed to Ms. Parascandola. They hired a wedding planner, picked a wedding date and even booked their venue in Windham, N.Y.
After securing a place, Ms. Parascandola informed her friends to save the date: May 10, 2025.
“You don’t have a ring on your finger, what are you doing?,” she recalled her friends asking.
“I was like, ‘You guys think I’m crazy, but we’re getting married,’” said Ms. Parascandola, 28, a veterinary medical school student.
For many couples, proposals are becoming more of a formality. Getting married is a major life decision that people are discussing before an engagement, and for practical reasons, many couples are getting a head start on planning.
According to a 2024 study by the wedding planning website Zola, 89 percent of couples began the wedding-planning process before formally getting engaged. Zola surveyed about 7,000 couples nationwide.
Seventeen percent took “a very concrete step” in the wedding-planning process before any question was popped, including booking the wedding venue, creating a wedding website, shopping for wedding attire or sending out a save-the-date card.
“Obviously the proposal and the ring is really nice, but we felt like talking about marriage and talking about spending your life with somebody else is definitely a huge conversation,” Ms. Parascandola said. “As opposed to one person getting down on one knee and surprising their partner with this huge question.”
Shauna Sommo, a 28-year-old optometric technician in ChampionsGate, Fla., and her partner, Austin Manmiller, have been planning their 2027 wedding since March — researching venue options and preparing a guest list — but didn’t get engaged until September. Additionally, Ms. Sommo has had a Pinterest board for her wedding for years.
Ms. Sommo also wanted to get an early start on wedding planning so that she and Mr. Manmiller, 27, had enough time to save up. “If we can book it further out, that gives us a little bit more time to prepare for those deposits,” she said.
Ms. Sommo is estimating a budget of around $60,000 for a 130-person wedding. She said that quotes from venues, designers, florists, caterers, D.J.s and other vendors quickly add up. According to a study by the wedding planning website the Knot, the average cost of a wedding ceremony and reception in 2023 was $35,000, a $5,000 increase from the previous year. The Knot surveyed about 10,000 couples who had married in the United States in 2023. In larger cities, the cost of a wedding tends to be even higher.
“I would love to get married quicker, but I’m willing to sacrifice the time if it means that I’m coming out of the wedding debt free,” Ms. Sommo said. “I don’t want to totally cripple us financially and prevent us from getting a house — that is part of the next step.”
In some cities, snagging a popular date at a well-known venue can also be competitive, which is why some couples start looking into venues before a proposal. Amaira Din, the founder of FabDay Events, a wedding planning company based in Farmingville, N.Y., noted that Saturdays in May and September at popular venues have been tough to secure.
Dolly Meckler and Jordan Cohen booked their venue, Temple Emanu-El on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, a month before he proposed. They had attended an event there in 2022 and knew it was where they wanted to get married.
Ms. Meckler, 32, who works in public relations, also started looking for the wedding dress that she really wanted — a theatrical, reconstructed Pucci gown — months before they were engaged.
When he did propose in July 2023, “I didn’t even say, ‘Do you want to marry me?’” said Mr. Cohen, 34, who works in marketing. He even sent her a calendar invitation because she hates surprises. “I said, ‘Let’s do this thing.’ I think it’s a very strong symbol of our partnership. We’re a team. And we like doing everything together.”
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