Abby Gordon and Tamar Frieze are the co-owners of Two Eight Four Weddings & Events, a long-standing, highly regarded, word-of-mouth-only wedding planning and design company based in Boston. Two Eight Four are the wedding planners that if you know, you know!

Over the last 25 years, Abby and Tamar have planned some of New England's most celebrated weddings for their wonderful and discerning clients. From intimate gatherings at private estates to elaborate seven-figure weddings in tents, museums, ballrooms and beyond, Abby and Tamar (and Abby’s mother, famed event planning pioneer Linda Matzkin of Hopple Popple) have seen and done it all.

And now, Abby and Tamar are your wedding planners and it’s time to plan your wedding! They are here to give you the same personalized time, attention, advice and service they give their own clients through their eight-episode wedding planning series. They will walk you through your wedding planning process step by step, and share all of the same downloads and resources they share with their clients.

Let's Plan Your Wedding is the eight-episode wedding planning podcast where you are Abby and Tamar’s newest wedding client. Each episode is structured like a planning meeting between the three of you and mimic the meetings Tamar and Abby have with their own IRL clients.

Each episode covers a planning topic that follows the natural chronology of planning your wedding. But you can join in and skip around episodes any time depending on where you are in your process.

For each episode, Abby and Tamar frame the topic, clearly outline what you will need to do when – and why - and share their experience, wisdom, opinions, and funny stories along the way. And when you listen, you get access to all their proprietary event planning tools and templates which are
available to download online.

This is the first and most frequent question we get both from clients and from friends and family. It also can be one of the biggest stress points throughout wedding planning, so establishing a budget (and your guest count) is the first thing we do before anything gets booked.

When people ask us what a wedding cost, we often reply, “well what does a car cost? You could buy a Honda Accord or buy a brand-new Range Rover Autograph,” so it’s really about having honest conversations about what you want to spend. There is always a number!

In Episode 1 and 2, we dive deep into budget and how to allocate the number you have with great accuracy. By the end of those episodes, you are going to have a very clear and specific picture of your own budget and access to our Let’s Plan workbook that includes our tried-and-true automated
budget allocator. You enter the number you have in mind, and our budget will automatically populate each wedding vendor and line item so you can set the budget with ease and with confidence.

Click here to download the Let’s Plan Podcast Workbook complete with our proprietary budget template, timeline and guest list manager.

We’ve planned weddings in as few as 14 weeks and as long (during Covid) as three years! It’s less about the amount of time and more whether your ideal venue, key vendors and loved-one’s calendars all align.

In Episode 3, we talk extensively about timeline and how to choose a wedding date. If you download our Let’s Plan Workbook, you will have access to our timeline, which acts as a comprehensive check list of wedding planning and gives you the flexibility to track tasks as you go.

But to give you a more direct answer, a year or so is a good amount of time to plan your wedding. Anything over 18 months, book your key vendors and then put it to bed until you’re 12 months out. Anything less than 6 months is very doable if you can commit the time and be decisive. We’ll tell you how!

"It's intense at the outset — both because you want to secure your vendors quickly and because there's this outside pressure from your friends and family. Then there's a lull. And then about eight weeks out, you're back to that kind of daily situation. It's a pressure cooker." — Abby · Episode 3: Timeline & Getting to Your Wedding Date

Click here to download the Let’s Plan Podcast Workbook complete with our proprietary budget template, timeline and guest list manager.

This is an excellent question and such an important one! In Episode 4, we talk all about a wedding’s flow of events and how to craft one, minute by minute, that will be perfect for you and your guests. We talk about everything from hair and makeup schedules to timing your first look, how to create your own ceremony, the pros and cons of dining then dancing versus get on the dance floor right away, and our advice – nay, insistence! – on speech timing. We also have shared free samples of flow of events for your use.

Click here to download the Let’s Plan Podcast Workbook and the free sample flow of events.

Arguably our best episode is our episode all about wedding invitations and other printed materials. We interview Lisa Wyatt, owner of Mark Harris stationer and her sage and hilarious advice will ensure you get your wedding invitations out (with rsvps back!) on time. 

Generally, we recommend wedding invitations be sent approximately 10 weeks in advance. That said, there have been frequent, if not totally consistent, issues with the USPS over the last few years and invitations are not as reliably delivered as they used to be. In our episode, we talk all about the timing of the design process, the print process, when to send them, and tips and tricks on how to ensure they arrive to your guests on time.