Planning your wedding can be one of the most stressful times of your life. Of course, you are excited, but it is stressful nonetheless. As there are so many issues to consider, it is worthwhile to create a wedding checklist to ensure that you do not forget or overlook anything. Everyone will have an opinion as to what is important and what is not important, but there are some major items that most people would agree are critical. These are items which, being potential showstoppers, need to be given careful consideration. Working out your budget should be the first item on your wedding checklist, as it will have an effect on everything else on it. Be clear on how much can you spend in total and how much you want to spend on each aspect of your wedding. Then, you need to decide on who will be fulfilling the major roles for your wedding. Who will be the best man? Who will be the maid of honor? Who will carry out the other, still important, roles? The earlier this is decided on the more help you can for the rest of the planning process. Next up should be the bridal gown and the groom's attire, followed by the attire for the members of the bridal party. The attire portion of your checklist is important as you are going to have to arrange things like rentals and fittings. Other important items on your wedding checklist are the venues for the wedding and the wedding reception. Then there is the food, decorations and entertainment for the wedding reception. Other things to consider include the rings, invitations, flowers, photography and honeymoon reservations. There are others too, but the ones mentioned are the absolute essentials. Unfortunately, you will encounter unexpected delays with one thing or another, so leaving any of these until a week or two before the day of your wedding can cause real problems. Deal with them as soon as you have the time and money to do so. To ensure that you do not miss anything off of your wedding checklist, it is advisable to start off with a sample wedding checklist from a wedding website and then to customize it. You can download sample wedding checklists for free, so it makes sense to at least browse one or two before creating your own.