Wedding Planning
Do you need a wedding planner?
Some of you will be lucky enough to hire a wedding planner, but unfortunately most will see this a luxury and will need to keep on top of the planning themselves. It is worth investigating hiring a wedding planner if you are very busy or hate organising things – you may be surprised, sometimes a wedding planner can save you money as they can get good discounts with preferred suppliers. you may also choose to do all the planning leading up to your wedding and just use a wedding planner on the day to co-ordinate and smooth the way. This leaves you and all your guests able to enjoy the day without having to worry about whether the flowers or cake have turned up!
Are you the wedding planner?
If you have decided against hiring a wedding planner and are going to plan your wedding yourself, you will almost certainly need some help from other people or from planning tools, preferably both. Make sure give the groom some tasks and your maids. There are many wedding planning tools out there, including some great mobile phone apps, planning spreadsheets and checklists.
If you would like some wedding planning tools don’t forget to check out my free wedding planning checklist and wedding budget spreadsheet ( coming soon).
What key wedding planning tools do I need?
Wedding planning checklist
Wedding planning is key to a stressless wedding day, the more you plan your wedding day, the smoother the day will go and the more you will enjoy it. The more you use a wedding planning checklist the less work you will have to do and the more time you can spend enjoying the build up to your special day. Don’t forget to download my printable wedding planning checklist.
Wedding Budget spreadsheet
A wedding budget spreadsheet will help you keep track of costs down to individual items and will alert you to potential or real problems with budget overrun. Money is a common cause of conflict wen planning a wedding and therefore should be managed as closely as possible to prevent issues from arising. I will be adding a free download wedding budget spreadsheet for you soon, don’t forget to come back and get it!
Wedding Inspiration Journal
A wedding Inspiration Journal is a great keepsake and will help you find your perfect wedding look. You can use a scrapbook or wallboard to create your wedding mood board, but whichever way you do it, you need to do is keep little scraps of textures, ribbons, colour samples, bits of fabric and lots of images. You can tear out images that catch your eye in magazines and create a collage. In the end you will build a collection of things that appeal to you visually and the result will help you to see what your wedding should look like. See more about creating a wedding mood board here
Wedding Role Task List
The tasks leading up to your wedding should not all be managed by you alone or you will look like a frazzled wreck come your wedding day. You need to look as fresh as a daisy on your special day and so you will need to enlist as much help as possible. Each of your wedding attendants has a role to play and with each role comes a list of tasks. You should assign each attendant with a list of tasks to do in the build up to the wedding and a wedding day schedule so that they all know what is happening and when. You can also do the same for any relatives that volunteer to help, then all you need to do is concentrate on the tasks that you own and follow up as the deadline approaches for the tasks that attendants need to do. Hopefully they will say “yep – done” and you can give it a big tick! I will be running through roles soon and will have a handy printable task list for you to provide each with.
What other wedding tools could I use?
Table planner
There are many table planner tools out there for you to find, most allow you to choose how many tables you need, number them and add names to each table. Once you have created your table plan you can print it off for you to refer to. This will need to be amended as you receive acceptance and declines to your invites.
Wedding Guest list spreadsheet
Organise your guest list as early as possible so that you can track RSVPs and re-allocate invitations that have been sent to people that can’t make it. You can create your own spreadsheet with name and addresses of guests or you could use the Wedding Guest Organiser template that I have created and will be posting soon.
Wedding website or wedding registry
There are many sites offering to host your wedding site, they allow you to set up guest lists, build gift lists and much more, or you could opt for a wedding registry that concentrates more on managing your gift list or you could buy your own domain and set up your own website quite easily using a package with a template website builder like Create, who I can personally recommend, their customer service is excellent!
More wedding planning tips and tools coming soon! so don’t forget to come back for more info and freebies!
