We did our wedding of ~150 people in less than 4 months from engagement to ceremony (and that included Xmas/thanksgiving during planning season). Fancier than most here but it was about $10k and fairly traditional. We've had a lot of people say it was the nicest/best wedding they had ever been to.
There are a multitude of wedding timelines which are interesting to look at. Find out the "long timeframe" items. Normally date, venue, catering, photographer, dress/alterations. Plan to lock those down early (date is complicated because of venue/family potentially if you want everyone there and care about a place, caring less makes it easier) if you care about them. The less you care, the less important timeline is.
Have a document for the details you care about. Google had a good template we used and then removed things we didn't need -
https://drive.google.com/previewtemplate?id=0AhN0y99GtIFTdEc0ZzFkMU8tZmFTSVp3dmhhMlRycWc&&ddrp=1# The budget was particularly useful as there were a ton of random line items. We removed most of them, but a few of them were good "oh right"
Figure out your budget. Make a goal to stay within your budget. You'd be surprised how much easier planning is when you have constraints. If you only have $X for food then.. you can immediately eliminate places that are way more than $X.
To save your sanity, unless you are planning the biggest wedding ever, don't delegate decision making. If you plan a smallish wedding (even our 150) it is often easier to just work with your fiance and figure the details yourself. Adding other decision makers makes everything more complicated, because you can't decide on things without a committee. Feel free to delegate tasks - just not decisions. Things like, "Aunt Betty will coordinate the meal [and we don't care what it is]" can be good. Things like "Aunt Betty will coordinate the meal and ask us tons of clarifying questions" are bad.
Last, if you have reliable friends, give them the responsibility of ushers for the day of. We had four close friends as ushers and basically told them "just make any unexpected problems go away" and knowing that they would, since we trusted them (sorry random cousins I hardly know, but I trust my close friends as heck of a lot more to do this than you!) made worrying about all the details a lot easier.
Oh, and all this is made a heck of a lot easier if you don't have crazy family. If you do... I'm sorry.