Ditch the Wedding Planner BinderA wedding planner with page separators and pockets is not what you need to stay organized. A lack of organization will bring the wedding planning process to a grinding halt and increase the likelihood of problems on your wedding day. Losing important notes or contracts, receipts, and vendor contact info and correspondence (because you stuffed them in the back of a wedding planner) can be time-consuming and costly. You need to have a better system of organization in place. Bookstores are chock full of big wedding planner binders, but they aren’t really that useful or worth the price. There are often no sleeves or pockets to hold contracts, receipts or notes, and the weight of the hardback wedding planner plus the written info included and the additional pages you will add makes these binders pretty heavy. Do you really need to take all that info in a cumbersome wedding planner to each meeting with a vendor? What if you lose it? Learn how bride Lisa Spooner saved over $20,000 on her wedding There’s a better way. To plan your wedding, all you really need is a place to file paperwork, a little room on your hard drive and space to store wedding related items.
Keeping track of correspondence is huge. Your computer makes it easy! After each meeting with a vendor you’ve actually contracted, email your vendor a summary of what was discussed. Here’s why it’s important to do this:
If your email provider does not automatically store your sent emails in a folder or allow you to set this up, copy yourself on the email and then move it to your wedding folder. If you have a wedding website with email, you may want to use that email address for all wedding correspondence. A few more tasks you’ll want to do electronically:
Storage space is also huge. What most couples miss: Where will you put the boxes of invitations, thank you notes, and other printed materials? What about wedding favors, the guest book, the toasting glasses and cake cutter, gifts that come in early, decorations (a big one), candles and votives for the tables, that slotted box for cards that goes on the gift table, the basket with rice, bird seed or bubbles, gifts for the bridesmaids and groomsmen, signs to post along driving routes…. the list goes on. A lot of stuff goes into planning your own wedding. Know where you intend to store it ahead of time! Here’s a method for storing wedding-related items I learned from working in the props department on TV shows: Use big plastic storage containers with fold down lids and then stack them in a designated space. Tape a sheet of paper to each container identifying what’s inside and what needs to happen to those particular items on The Big Day. For example:
Find an organization method that works for you Some people are visual, and need to stay organized in a visual way. One bride I interviewed used a dry erase board to keep track of tasks. Each week she updated the board with tasks she needed to accomplish. As the weeks progressed, she checked off each task she’d completed. Seeing the checked off task list each week gave her a visual confirmation that she was getting things done, and that gave her a sense of accomplishment. Don’t underestimate your need to feel like you’re actually getting somewhere over the next few months. So toss out your wedding planner binder and devise an organizing system that really works for you. And don’t take on elaborate organization systems – like the specialized wedding software programs – unless you’re willing to commit to the the zillion hours learning how to use them. You have enough going on right now! Adjust your organizational system to suit your personality, but keep it simple. When it comes to wedding planning, simple = sane. More Articles:
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