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I’m known for capturing those didn’t-know-you-were-there shots and busting a move on the dance floor just to get those perfect candids. I also work with you to ensure we incorporate your style and story into your engagement and wedding photos!
We got engaged in July of 2016 and married in August 2017, but we had everything planned by December of 2016. Yup! Planned it all right away and kept everything organized so by the time our wedding was a few months away, we were just waiting. Not stressed, not scrambling, just waiting for our big day.
Now, if you’re a bride right now planning your wedding and are super disorganized, then I’m talking directly to you! This week’s Bridal Banter is all about how to keep your wedding planning organized.
I actually had 3 different planners when organizing our wedding. One for my wedding photography business, one for social life/ corporate job stuff, and one for wedding planning only. You have to meet with your caterer, your photographer, your venue coordinator, and everything in between, so having a separate planner that is strictly just for wedding stuff is a MUST. It makes it all look less scary, less cluttered, and organized. Even when you get your venue contract or photography contract, most vendors allow you to pay in payments, so you can write down when things are due. Heck, even put things in your phone calendar so there is an alarm to let you know when things are due. Easy things like that can help save time, stress, and tears.
I recommend heading over to Target, grab a binder, some dividers, and folders. Print out your contracts and everything you send to your vendors. Even though you are hiring trustworthy vendors, you never know what could happen. I’m not saying something bad will happen, but just in case your computer crashes, you lost that email, or anything, you’ll always have the physical copy of everything. I can’t stress this enough!
For our wedding, I printed everything out. Even the receipt for our marriage licence. EVERYTHING! Doing this not only keeps things nearby if you need to reference something, but it also covers you just in case anything happens. Having things printed out and organized in a pretty Target binder will save time and a headache when planning. Trust me!
Have you heard of TheKnot? Oh it’s awesome! It’s this huge wedding vendor database where you can find the vendors you want within your area and price range. They even have this Wedding Planning App that allows you to plug in your wedding date, and it tells you when certain things need to be done by! BAM! It’s super amazing! Depending on your wedding date, it tells you when to look into certain details, when to book things, what to get for your bridesmaids and groomsmen, it’s truly a wonderful creation. It’s a Free app and you should totally use it, ladies!
Google Sheets seriously saved our booties! We put our wedding schedule, our to-do lists, our shot list for our photographer, everything into one big google sheet. You can then download the Google Drive and Google Sheets apps to access them wherever you go. They are super easy to use, organize, color coordinate, and even share with your vendors. You can grant access to anyone who needs to see your wedding timeline, your shot list, everything. We kept all our to-do lists on there and sorted it all by category. We even wrote out how to use our wedding day Spotify playlist for a friend who was helping us press play during the ceremony.
Google sheets is truly amazing and I would highly recommend keeping everything on there! I am probably on Google Sheets every day whether it’s for my business, or a to-do list, they are so great and are just stored on your Gmail account, in your drive. So if you made a Word doc, those can easily be lost; but with Google, it saves it automatically so you don’t have to keep pressing save all the time. Woohoo!
Overall, these are just a few things we used to stay organized in our wedding planning process. Now, to you, it might seem a little weird that I had 3 separate planners, but for me, that worked! They even have digital planner apps on our phones now that you can download so you can get alerts, too. I am just a super organized person and wanted to share how we were just waiting for our wedding day and not stressing at the last minute. Don’t get me wrong, things got a little hectic towards the end with last minute details, but it all came together because we were organized and had a plan.
I hope this helps anyone who is currently planning their wedding day! It’s seriously like a second job planning it so I just wanted to provide any help I can!
If you have any questions about our planning process, shoot me an email and we can chat!
Happy SJ’s Bridal Banter day, friends!
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