Thursday, June 21, 2012

The best wedding planning tool(s)

When I first started planning my wedding over a year ago the first thing I did was to try to figure out how I was going to get organized. If you know me personally you know that I LOVE the idea of organizing..executing it?...not so much! So I went on the hunt for the best wedding organizer and the best wedding checklist. Here is the wedding binder I bought:
The Ultimate Wedding Planner & Organizer I purchased it from  www.booksamillion.com
Here is what I loved about the binder.
  1. I LOVED the calendar! it has nice large boxes perfect for jotting down all of my appointments.
  2. I LOVED the budget breakdown. It tells you what % of your budget should go where
  3. I LOVED the zipper pouches to hold bridal consultants cards, swatches etc
& here is what I ended up not being so crazy about
  1. this thing is HUGE! I'm talking 3 1/2 in. trapper keeper from the 90's full of homework  cutesy folded notes passed during math class HUGE!. after carrying it a few months I found myself leaving it in my car/home more often than not.
  2. It comes with several labeled folders (which leads back to my #1 dislike) which I'm sure to some would be great but at 99 days til my wedding I hardly have anything in them...waste of space

-If I could redesign this planner I'd nix the folders, add a few more zipper pouches, maybe a note pad on one side & of course I would 100% keep the Calendar. Id also try to add something where you can recorded spending. I know I know you can use excel (i like hands on & for me thats writing things out in good old pencil and ink) or I could just jot them on notebook paper ( i currently have 4 MEAD notebooks full of jots and number) I just wish it maybe had an excel-esque formatted notepad for keeping all my  number down. If I was at all honest (which Ill try to be) I have NO idea what this wedding has cost us so far. I obviously know all my major vendor prices and I can give you a really good guestimate of what my extras have cost but if someone wanted cold hard numbers?...id be in trouble!

In hindsight I should have simply bought a 3 ring binder (a simple 2 incher) added a calendar, notepad, and a few zipper pouches & called it a day. I still probably would be stuck on the whole record of spending deal..but maybe I should have sucked it up and done an excel spreadsheet? yup, probably so.

The other thing I wanted was an awesome checklist! Ive NEVER planned a wedding..DUH! and I needed someone to hold my hand and tell me what to do next! Enter PROJECT WEDDING! This site is absolutely amazing! Not only is a forum where you can chat with other Brides about wedding planning, post pictures, get their opinion (because lets face it, your wedding is a much bigger deal to you than to those around you. They probably don't want to hear what shade of peach looks better with your dress 5 bazillion times, or give you there opinion on your umpteenth DIY project) but it also has a FREE wedding website where your guests can RSVP (I'm going the paperless rsvp route) I love that it has a vendor review, where other brides can give you their review on Caters, videographers, florist etc.( nothing is worse than working with a horrible vendor only to hear later from other Brides that "oh yea I totally could have told you that"...awesome) & of course an AWESOME wedding checklist! It gives you month by month what you should be doing and when you check them off...they DISAPPEAR! which for me is great! Out of sight, out of mind! I can check it off and its done done done! <-love that! OK so now that you know what PW is, head on over and friend me! ashle1738! Let me know if you join and ill make sure you get a big PW welcome!

Hope your wedding planning is going Maaahhvalously!
xoxo- soon to be Mrs.

1 comment:

  1. Your wedding planning tools are so smart..Thanks for sharing your information.It helps me feel better about what might be ahead... wedding planning

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