diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index ca37f5c45..97422f96a 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -2,6 +2,10 @@
 All enhancements and patches to Cookiecutter Django will be documented in this file.
 This project adheres to [Semantic Versioning](http://semver.org/).
 
+### [2016-04-25]
+### Added
+- Check to confirm that the user has a modern version of Cookiecutter. (@pydanny)
+
 ### [2016-04-20]
 ### Changed
 - Default to today's date in cookiecutter.json. (@audreyr)
diff --git a/hooks/pre_gen_project.py b/hooks/pre_gen_project.py
index 83b726498..3dfc190a2 100644
--- a/hooks/pre_gen_project.py
+++ b/hooks/pre_gen_project.py
@@ -1,4 +1,8 @@
+import cookiecutter
+
 project_slug = '{{ cookiecutter.project_slug }}'
 
 if hasattr(project_slug, 'isidentifier'):
     assert project_slug.isidentifier(), 'Project slug should be valid Python identifier!'
+
+assert cookiecutter.__version__ > '1.3.0', 'Please upgrade your Cookiecutter installation'