Online Wedding Planning Guide

There are those who say that I’m obsessive about notebooks. (You may soon be one of them.)

But I want you to hear me now when I say that the presence of a notebook in your wedding plans (I would say in any plans you have for your life—but that might sound obsessive) will be the difference between success and failure. You must have a Wedding Notebook.

In your Wedding Notebook, you’ll either write down (or print out, if you write things down on the computer) the things that you just realized (during the previous exercise) are essential to planning the wedding you really want.

Later, you’ll write down everything from the names on your guest list (that will require several drafts) to exactly what you want your florist to do in the hours prior to your ceremony.

Your Wedding Notebook will contain very personal information, but it will not be private. In fact, for you to plan the wedding that you really want, it’s essential that the notebook not be private. (Use a diary or journal if you need to write down private thoughts. That way you get to have multiple notebooks! )

Example Uses of Wedding Notebook

1. Use the notebook to provide your bridesmaids and other delegates with lists of their responsibilities.
2. Keep lists of important addresses and phone numbers.
3. Use the statements you’ve written in the notebook to communicate your wedding vision to your vendors (in fact, it doesn’t hurt to make copies of your vision description and hand them out to your vendors).
4. Compare different vendors of the same product, to choose the vendor (florist, caterer, etc.) who will be best for you.
5. Clip pictures from magazines that represent the effect that you want to achieve with your flowers or your dress.
6. Depending on the type of notebook you choose, you may file incoming information such as vendor contracts with your notebook.

Type of Wedding Notebook.

Keep a couple options in mind when selecting your Wedding Notebook.

1. When you’re removing pages and passing them out, it’s nice to have a small, wire-bound notebook with smooth perforations. This notebook type is also the easiest to keep on your person at all times. However, if you choose this notebook, you’ll have to supplement it with a folder in which you can insert pictures you tear out of bridal magazines, copies of formal letters you send out, and vendor contracts that come in.

2. A three-ring binder with some blank insert pages takes up more space in your briefcase but allows you to have one location where you write notes and file incoming paperwork. You can supplement it with all kinds of insertable pockets and magazine hangers, etc. You can do just about everything with a notebook these days, but it will be bulky. Decide whether you’d rather organize with one tool (a binder) or two (notebook and folder).

3. A lot of your wedding planning is best done on the computer. A spreadsheet program (like Microsoft Excel) lets you make a list of every person you’re thinking of inviting and then columns in which you can denote whether you’ve invited them, they’ve RSVP-ed, they’ve sent a gift, you’ve sent a "Thank You" note for the gift, etc. Tracking these kinds of things on a computer is great, but it doesn’t negate the need for a Wedding Notebook, in my opinion, because you can’t carry your computer around with you. You’ll need to print out the data that you’ve put in your computer files, and once you do that, you’ll need something to keep it safe and organized in: the Wedding Notebook.

Even if you have a personal organizer, which essentially is a computer you can carry around with you, I believe you still need a Notebook to store in-coming paper (contracts, magazine pages) and to allow you to hand out information to others. When personal organizers come with teeeeny tiny printers, they’ll be awfully close to ideal. Maybe magazines will be all digital by then, and you won’t need a Wedding Notebook at all. I’ll probably cry if that happens.

Tags: 2. Figure Out What Matters by Debbie
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Ask yourself why you are having a wedding at all.

Why not go down to the courthouse and get married in front of a judge tomorrow afternoon (or as soon as you can get a license)?

I’m serious. Think about that question carefully. Your answer to this question reveals a lot about what’s important to you in your wedding planning.

Once you get consumed by the planning process and “I am planning the perfect wedding, and I’ll do whatever it takes” becomes your daily mantra, you lose grips with the real reason why you’re getting married, and forget that you’re about to embark on one of the greatest adventures in life: marriage and starting your own family. – Mika

If the first thing that pops into your head as a response is, “Oh, no, I can’t elope. I’ve always pictured myself in the white dress with the veil and gloves, holding flowers,” then you know that achieving those elements in your wedding is important to you.

If your response is, “I can’t elope. I really want to share this experience with the people I love,” then you’ll know that you should spend money on your guest list (in terms of affording food and space for all your guests) as you plan your wedding.

Prioritize what you think is important so you know where you can compromise (and you will have to). – Angela

On the other hand, if your response is, “I can’t elope. My mother would kill me” then maybe you should let your mother plan your wedding.

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Did that suggestion just give you the chills? Even if it didn’t, you should really try to get an image of what you want from your wedding, or don’t bother having one.

Think about the courthouse thing again. Really get the image in your head. Today you’re engaged. Tomorrow you and your man go to the courthouse and come out married. You’re married forever. That’s the end.

How do you feel about that? What doesn’t feel right to you? What elements of that image make you feel disappointed? Are you saying, “But I won’t have any wedding photos to show my children” or what?

We wanted things and details to be appropriate for us, not everyone else in our families who seemed to have very different needs and expectations of what our wedding should be like. — Coleen

Identify those elements of a wedding that it would really break your heart to live without.

Ask yourself: "Why do I need a wedding in addition to a marriage?"

"If I couldn’t have a wedding, what would I miss most?"

"What does that suggest is most important to me in my wedding?"

"What area of my wedding does that suggest I should spend the most money/effort on?"

Copy that list a few times and post it in strategic places around your home. By your phone and taped to your fiancé’s head are a couple particularly good posting spots because those are likely things for you to be looking at when the wedding frustration rises too high, and you have to remind yourself why you started this extravaganza in the first place.

Just as an aside, if thinking about the courthouse wedding raises no negative feelings in you whatsoever, maybe you should consider it. There’s nothing wrong with getting married the cheap and easy way. You can always throw a party or an anniversary “wedding” celebration some time in the future when your circumstances warrant it and your heart desires it.

This is your wedding. Now that you know what you want, you can go out and get it.

Tags: 2. Figure Out What Matters by Debbie
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The first thing to do when you plan your wedding is to figure out what it is about a wedding that matters to you. What’s really important?

If I thought there was only one right kind of wedding, if I believed that it’s wrong to have a lavish wedding or a Halloween-themed wedding or any other particular kind of wedding, then I’d write a site to help you listen to every word your wedding vendors (and other wedding "controllers") say.

If I believed that there was only one right kind of wedding, then I’d praise wedding vendors when they feel compelled to point out that YOU are not a wedding professional. THEY are wedding professionals. THEY plan weddings all the time. What can YOU possibly know about planning a wedding?

BUT I DON’T BELIEVE THAT. I created this site because I believe that you know something crucial, that no wedding vendor on Earth can know better than you.

You know YOUR dreams.

You know what YOU want, and whether it’s a very typical thing to want from a wedding or a very unusual thing to want doesn’t matter to me at all. What I care about is that you come to the end of your wedding and think, "I made my dreams a reality," not "I sure am glad I didn’t make my vendors do anything unusual!"

I don’t care if what you want is average. Average is fine with me. Not average is fine with me. I care that you want it. No matter what "it" is (as long it’s not harmful to yourself or others, of course).

By “Figure out what matters,” I don’t mean, “Forget about all those fanciful details that you should be mature enough to know aren’t important." Not at all. If what matters to you is having swan-shaped ice sculptures twice the size of the ones your sister-in-law had, more power to you. There’s nothing wrong with what’s important to you about your wedding. It’s just that you need to know what it is. Then you need to convey that to others.

The process to getting the wedding of your dreams is as follows:

1. Know what’s important to you in your wedding.
2. Make it easy for others to know/remember what’s important to you in your wedding.
3. Watch others like a hawk to ensure that they create what’s important to you in your wedding.

For our next topic, we’ll start with step 1, and your first exercise on the road to planning your dream wedding.

Tags: 2. Figure Out What Matters by Debbie
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