The first two weeks after an engagement are mostly noise. People ask for a date you do not have and a venue you have not seen, and it is easy to start making decisions in whatever order they get asked of you.
That order is wrong, and it is expensive. Five things determine almost everything else, and they have a sequence.
1. What you can spend, in one number
Not a range. One number, agreed between the two of you, before anyone else contributes an opinion. You can revise it later, but you cannot negotiate a venue without it.
2. Roughly how many people
Within about twenty. This is the multiplier on your entire budget, and every venue conversation starts with it. Fifty versus a hundred and fifty is not a detail to settle later: it is a different wedding.
3. What kind of day it is
A long dinner with forty people, or a party with two hundred. These want different venues, different budgets, and different vendors. Deciding this now stops you touring places that were never going to work.
4. Season and rough geography
Not a date. A season and a region. Peak Saturday in a coastal city and a Friday in March two hours inland can differ by forty percent for the same wedding.
5. The two things you actually care about
Each of you names two. Those get funded properly and the rest gets handled competently. Couples who skip this step tend to spread the budget evenly and end up with a wedding that is fine everywhere and memorable nowhere.
