A twelve-month timeline for a wedding split across two countries

Every planning checklist you will find assumes your guests live nearby, your vendors answer the phone in your time zone, and the only travel anybody does is to the venue on the day. If you are marrying in one country with family in another, that timeline gets you into trouble around month four, when it turns out the things you left until later needed to start first.

This one is ordered by lead time rather than by importance. The jobs that depend on somebody else's calendar come first, because those are the ones you cannot rush later.

Twelve months out: the dates everything else hangs on

Pick the date before anything else, and pick it around the people who have to fly. December and the weeks around Easter are when the diaspora goes home, which means cheaper leave from work and more expensive flights. Ask the handful of people whose absence would actually change the day, then commit.

• Lock the date and the main venue, in that order.
• Ask the four or five people who genuinely cannot be missed before you announce anything.
• Start a rough list of who is travelling from where, even if the numbers are guesses.
• If anyone on either side needs a visa, this is when that starts, not later.

Ten months out: tell people early, in one place

Guests who need to book flights and take leave want to know now, and they want it somewhere they can go back to. This is what the website is for at this stage: the date, the city, roughly what the days will look like, and a note that details will follow.

Put it up before it is finished. A page with the date and a paragraph is worth more in month ten than a polished one in month four, because people are booking around you whether you have told them or not.

Eight months out: vendors, in their own time zone

Booking vendors from abroad is its own job, and the thing that catches people out is not price, it is response time. Expect a week for a reply, plan around it, and get anything agreed in writing with dates and figures in it. Where you can, have somebody local see the venue in person before money changes hands.

• Venue confirmed and deposit paid, with what the deposit covers written down.
• Photographer and caterer approached. These book furthest ahead.
• Ask every vendor what they need from you and when. Their lead times set yours.

Six months out: aso-ebi, fabric and anything made to order

Anything that has to be bought in bulk, dyed, cut or sewn needs longer than feels reasonable. Fabric has to be sourced, orders collected, sizes taken and the whole lot delivered to people in several countries. If you leave this to month three you will be paying for express shipping to four continents.

Put the fabrics up with prices, let people reserve their own, and watch the tally rather than chasing a group chat. The number you need is the number who have actually committed, not the number who said they were interested.

Four months out: invitations and the real headcount

Send the invitation properly now, with every event on it and a way to reply to each one separately. A guest coming to the reception but not the traditional is a different number for the caterer, and you want that split from the start rather than untangled later.

Expect the first replies within a fortnight and a long silence after that. The silence is normal. Build the chase into month three rather than treating it as a failure.

Three months out: chase, and plan the logistics of arriving

Go through the list and contact everyone who has not replied, individually. A group message gets ignored; a message with somebody's name in it does not. At the same time, start collecting who is landing when and where, because airport runs are the thing that quietly eats the week before the wedding.

One month out: the running order and who is doing what

Write the order of the day with real times against it, not approximate ones, and give it to everyone who has a job on the day. Collect vendor phone numbers into one place where somebody other than you can reach them, because on the morning you will be unavailable.

The week itself

Confirm every vendor by phone, not message. Make sure whoever is handling arrivals has the flight list. Then hand the list of jobs to somebody else, because the one thing no timeline can arrange is you actually being present at your own wedding.