Welcome back!
It’s been a long time – life has been very, very busy!
So, I’d like to start off again by sharing a post about wedding planning.
My husband and I planned a wedding for nearly 400 people on our own, without a wedding planner (other than a paper one, that is!). While it didn’t exactly go off completely without a hitch, it was generally a successful day, and we had a lot of fun! So, how did we plan it?
First and foremost, it helps that my husband works at a lot of weddings, so he already had a number of contacts that he could reach out to in terms of vendors. For my part, I was in charge of organizing the guest list, confirmations, day-of timeline, and other such details.
You may remember me mentioning that I had bought a nice Erin Condren wedding planner. Well, I used it approximately three times. Turns out it was much easier and kept me much more sane to have nearly everything electronic, and to-do lists in my everyday, normal Filofax Malden (which I always had with me).
On my computer is where I kept my guest lists. I initially created a list with all the people I wanted to invite, including their addresses, and whether I had sent the Save the Date and invitation:
I created a wedding website where people could RSVP. As these RSVPs started to come in, I created a new Excel document. I grouped people into categories (my family, high school friends, my husband’s family, etc.) and sorted them as follows:
You can see that I’ve divided people into women/men/children to be able to easily count these numbers, than I’ve put a total at the end of each row for how many people in that row had confirmed. That made counting totals and also checking to see who hadn’t yet confirmed quite easy.
The main advantage of doing it this way was that it made making the tables quite easy as well. I added another column and started assigning table numbers. When I had the easy tables done, I copied and pasted into a separate document (to not mess up the first!) and sorted by table. This allowed me to see the tables and the people yet to be assigned to one. Once that was done, I sent all the information to the wedding venue to print the lists!
Nearly all of my other planning took place in my Filofax Malden. Rather than separating things into different planners where some things could get easily lost, I used note paper and my usual lists to keep track of wedding to-dos. In the end, some things got left until the last minute, but I think that’s to be expected with anything like this!
More updates to follow soon!
Organizedly yours,
L.
PS – A compulsory wedding photo!
The Organizeaholic 
Congratulations! What a beautiful dress! You must have been stunning 🙂
My wedding is in three weeks and my Malden has also been my saviour these past months. But as I shared all the info with my parents and boyfriend, a shared excel doc was also needed and has proven time and again very useful. The best of both worlds, right?
(oops! could you change my username to Suzanne please? the field for name was completed automatically and that’s actually my workplace…thanks a lot !)
Thanks Suzanne!! 🙂 Good luck with your wedding – and yes, mixing tech and paper was definitely the best way to go for me as well! Enjoy your special day!
What a marvelous post. Congratulations. I’ve been happily single for many years and can’t imagine myself marrying now!! But it is utterly lovely to share in your big day a little bit here and go dewey eyed!! I love the train and veil on your dress, how very elegant you looked. Have you got any more photos? I’d love to see more of your ‘Big Day’ and see another post on how it all went. Best wishes and congrats to you both. The beginning of a new life together. xxxx
Thank you, Jane!! And yes, more posts on (and photos of) the big day to follow! 🙂