Organized Wedding Planning Essentials

Your insider's guide to making wedding planning feel easy! By now, it’s probably no surprise to you that there are A LOT of details to coordinate during your wedding planning. Considering you have a full-time life and other things to manage from day-to-day, it can get overwhelming to not only plan but stay organized through the thick of it! We’ll let you in on a little secret: the more organized you are, the less stressed you’ll be.

If you’ve booked with Wedgewood Weddings, your planning is already going to be easier, thanks to your all-inclusive package and wedding concierge team! Along with that, you can use our insider guide to help you stay organized.

“I’ve been planning weddings since 2013 and must have helped over 600 couples by now. The same pitfalls always come up: guest lists and table planning - I definitely advise tackling these early. Even better, hand the seating chart over to someone in your wedding party to work on. It’s always easier to see what has to change if someone else has started you off.”

-Dominique, Wedding Planning Expert, Brittany Hill

Create a Wedding Email

First, create a wedding-specific email address. Something like this will be perfect:
'your name + fiancé name + wedding + year@          .com’

For example, RossAndRachel1995@Gmail.com. You can expect to receive a lot of emails throughout your planning, so it helps to have them piling up somewhere other than your standard inbox.

The Ultimate Wedding Checklist & Budget Spreadsheet

Lucky for you, we’ve formatted our very own ultimate checklist and ultimate budget spreadsheet! These babies will quickly become your best friend throughout the duration of your wedding planning. You may as well make them Maid of Honor.

The key to staying organized is to have everything in written format. If you try to store every tiny detail in your head, you'll overwhelm yourself and be forgetful. Dedicate yourself to using the checklist regularly, and you’ll find that this whole wedding-planning thing isn’t as bad as it seems!

Use Google Docs & Sheets

It’s extremely useful to keep all your most important documents in Google Docs and Google Sheets - from your guest list to your to-do-list, to your budget spreadsheet. The ability to edit these documents from anywhere will be your ultimate superpower in staying organized. And share them with the other important people in your planning process too (fiancé, mom, maid of honor) to keep everyone up-to-date and on the same page!

We recommend downloading the Google Docs and Google Sheets apps on your phone so that you can access your documents from anywhere and make changes on the fly!

Use Your Wedding Guide

At Wedgewood Weddings, we give you a detailed wedding planning binder when you book! We’ve worked hard to make it incredibly helpful so that you and your wedding planning team are on the same page. It’s packed with everything you need and breaks everything down so you can tackle it step by step.

 “It’s amazing to meet couples who are eager and excited with their Wedgewood Weddings Guide. You can tell they find it really satisfying to check off the boxes. It’s also fun meeting the chilled-out couples who feel that everything will get done … sometime. In the end, they’re always right - it all comes together on the day.

-Rosemary, General Manager, Secret Garden

Break Down Wedding Planning Into Manageable Steps

The best thing you can do to prevent yourself from getting overwhelmed is to break down the entire planning process. Rather than looking at a giant to-do list every day, remind yourself to only focus on a few things at a time. Maybe one month your goals can be to select bridesmaid dresses, decide on a wedding favor, and nail down a cake flavor. Then the next month, you can move on to different tasks. Take a look at our Wedding Timeline for more guidance about when to tackle each step.

“It’s so satisfying to boil down what seems to be an overwhelming task list into manageable chunks for busy couples. So often, one of the couples will feel completely stressed out which, in turn, is stressing out their fiancé; and it makes me feel amazing to be able to alleviate their stress. My top tip is to ask for help before you start to feel frazzled. We’re all here to help!”

Courtney, Expert Wedding Planner, Ken Caryl Vista