Tips on Getting Organized

Our Experience
In this area, I was pretty practical -- I heeded the advice of other brides-to-be on the wedding newsgroups and bought myself a plain white 3-ring binder, lots of dividers (for each of the main categories such as flowers, apparel, music, photography, etc.), and one of those 3-ring punched business card-holder pages. At first, I kept clippings and ideas in the book, then I kept quotes, phone numbers, pictures, and fabric swatches. Some brides spoke like they couldn't have planned their weddings without their indispensable 3-ring binders, but I never ended up using my notebook to take notes, carry with me everywhere, and organize the way I'd thought I would (I guess I mostly used the computer for those purposes). Still, it was a very good reference tool for me -- I mainly used it as a glorified address book/file for all the wedding stuff. I would definitely recommend the 3-ring binder to anyone over the overpriced and considerably less flexible wedding planning notebooks sold in stores.

Probably my biggest organizational tool was my computer. At first, I used the various wedding software I'd bought, but by the end I used a big Microsoft Access database I'd created with all kinds of personalized information for tracking our guests, RSVPs, and gifts. I linked this into Word (and WordPerfect) to do mail merges, and I also created a budget in Excel.

Tips on Getting Organized

• Buy a plain 3-ring binder to organize all your wedding stuff.
• If you have good word processor and spreadsheet programs, don't waste your money on wedding planning software.