Fight the stress, stay organized!!

You are getting married! To the love of your life! To your best friend! That is amazing! And so very, very exciting! But it can sometimes be stressful. The who, what, where and how of the wedding planning process can sometimes make things over-the-top stressful. But if you can stay organized and control the things you can control the little things that come out of no where will not seem so bad. 

• As soon as you start to plan your wedding have the "come to Jesus" talk with you fiancé. How much can you afford? NO really, how much? After that put a rough guest list together BEFORE you go look at venues. Only go tour venues that you can afford. Do not see the ones that have a 200 person minimum if you only have a 100 person guest list. Do yourself a favor- do your homework ahead of time and save yourself the time and stress! 
  
• Start a folder on your computer right away and put all of your wedding documents in that one folder. This will make staying organized a piece of cake. 
  
• One of the first things I always do with my clients is make a budget and a cost estimate with them. I itemize EVERY SINGLE cost that will come up for their wedding and list them in an excel spread sheet. There are 6 columns in the basic version. 
  

                       1. Item & short description
                       2. Full cost of item
                       3. Deposit Due
                       4. Amount Paid to Date
                       5. Balance Due
                       6. Date must be paid in full

             This way you always have a running actual cost on your wedding. If your wedding is  
             12 months away you can look at that total cost due and figure out how much you  
             need to put aside each week or month to comfortably be able to pay for the wedding. 

• Make  document on each member of your bridal party. Sizes they wear, addresses, phone numbers, etc. This will make staying organized and things like bridal party gifts super easy by keeping you from having to search around to get info. 
  

Staying organized and staying ahead of things will keep your stress DOWN!! Unfortunately there will always be things that will come up and throw a little curve ball at you but the more you can organize yourself the better off you will be. Event planners and wedding coordinators like myself do this all the time. This is how we stay ahead of things and are able to work on many events at a time without missing a detail.  I did not name my business DETAILED Engagements by accident!! 

Hope this helps! 

Talk soon, 
~Tiffany

---