Now That You Have a Budget, Let’s Get Organized to Begin Planning Your Wedding!

The next step is to get yourself some type of wedding planner/organizer (notebook) – you will be collecting so much information from this point forward that if you don’t write it all down or have a central place to keep everything, you will definitely be lost! Also, it’s a good place to keep all of the estimates, contracts, etc., that you’ll be collecting. Amazon has about the best selection I’ve seen at pretty good prices.

Make sure that the organizer has labeled dividers/sections for every aspect of your wedding plan. Keep extra dividers for any area that is not covered or to break an existing section down into sub-categories. Also make sure that you have pockets in each section for filing all the loose things that you need to keep. You will also need to keep at least one zippered pocket for things like pens/extra pens, markers, paper punch, paper clips, stapler, scotch tape, measuring tape, calculator, etc. Just trust me that you will use all of them and it makes it so much easier to have them with you.

Also, get a box (nothing fancy – maybe a filing box at any office supply store) and a supply of manila envelopes. Periodically go through your binder – possibly whenever you make a decision and commit on any aspect of your wedding – and remove all of your samples, pictures, etc., that you collected for consideration and put all of that in one of the manila envelopes and keep it in the filing box. You want to get everything that you won’t be using out of your wedding planner simply because after a time you won’t be able to find anything in it and it will become too heavy and junky. BUT you do not want to throw all of that information away yet; keep it just in case you want to refer back to it or something falls through and you need to have a backup replacement for anything.

It is also a good idea to get one of those large desk calendars that you can hang on the wall – this is a very visual way to see your plan dates and keep track of all of your schedules.

You will be surprised at how easy this process is if you just take a bit of time up front and gather these things. You’ll then have convenient places to automatically put all of the paper you will be collecting and a place to put all of your dates – it will end so much confusion along the way.

Ok – getting this done is a great start. Now the fun begins….