Advice for the Newly Engaged {Wedding Wednesday}

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With about 50 "Wedding Wednesdays" left to go until our wedding, there's a lot of time to sometimes cover a lot of material. But, I feel like there's only so many things I can talk about here without completely ruining some of the fun things with which Josh and I want our guests to be surprised. So, the next few weeks will have some pretty steady Wedding Wednesday posts - about fitness, asking my bridesmaids, and probably more than one post about our August engagement photos with the fabulously talented Morgan Lee - but after that, and as I (fingers crossed) begin my first teaching job this fall, I will post fewer Wedding Wednesday features. But today it's still July, and Josh and I have been engaged for about 3 and a half months.

Wonderful Card from a Most Wonderful Lady
Wow. I feel like we've been engaged forever and these past few months have just flown by! In this time, I have a handful of friends who have gotten engaged and a few of them have been sweet enough to ask for my advice on wedding planning.

I'm certainly no expert at this, but I do love to plan and after 3 and a half months, I feel like I have a pretty solid grip for the what-to-do-right-away and the what-NOT-to-do-right-away, and I thought I'd share my number one piece of advice for what's made this time easier on us: Get Organized. And I've broken it down into 2 parts... 

1. The Wedding E-mail

After you get engaged, and you've called everyone you know and shared the news with all of your closest (and not so closest friends via Facebook), and it's time to start planning, the absolute first thing that you need to do is create a wedding e-mail address. 

Why? You might ask. Can't you just get everything sent to your regular e-mail? Yes, you can. But I promise that it will be so much easier if you create a separate e-mail. Every time I sign up for anything related to our wedding, I have it sent to our wedding email - that I easily created in about 30 seconds through Gmail. All of our wedding accounts - TheKnot, WeddingWire, our registries - are connected through it, as well as accounts that I've made with other various wedding vendors over the past few months. 

It's also helpful to know you have it all in one place - and not just one folder with subfolders. This helps keep you organized and on top of who is sending you what and when. It also means that once the wedding is over, you no longer have to get promotion e-mails from Papyrus or e-mails from Bed, Bath & Beyond about a 20% off discount (that everyone and their mothers already have). Next July, I'll archive all the e-mails and then not have to worry about residual spam after that. Easy peasy.

2. The Wedding Binder - And Assorted Papers

I blogged about my wedding binder at the beginning of May, and it has been a huge part of my organizational success. Since it's been a few months, I figured I'd give you an update. I'm still using it exactly as it was set up, and I love that I have a space for gift lists and registries, our guest list, and especially our vendor search. I can create spreadsheets and checklists and keep them all in one printed spot for easy access.

I do also have a folder on my computer desktop where I keep an electronic copy of everything, but the binder works for me in that it allows me to have a print copy of everything that I can mark up, and it allows me to include materials that I've received from vendors in a hard copy. It's easy to three-hole-punch a brochure and include it in the binder for safe keeping. 

I've also been using the wedding binder to keep my inspiration from magazines organized. I have a huge stack of magazines (okay, it's two huge stacks now) and I like to rip the pages out. These pages are kept in the binder in sheet protectors and organized by category - allowing me to sort through them as I need to. 

So, what about you? Are you planning a wedding or looking back at your own? How did you stay on top of everything and keep organized? 
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CONVERSATION

1 comments:

  1. AlissaJuly 17, 2013 at 9:54 AM

    I was like, I KNOW THAT CARD! I second the wedding email address. My friends got spammed like nothing else!

    ReplyDelete

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