Weddingbee Blog

Edit:  Wow - I’m so glad that so many of you find that this would be a helpful tool!  It’s very encouraging to me, not to mention that it reassures me that I am not completely crazy . Due to the level of responses, Mrs. Bee informed me that she could actually upload this so that you all could download it directly.  So w/o further ado, here it is.  Happy planning!

miss_daffodil_-_wedding_workplan_sample.ppt
 
PS - It’s a Powerpoint file, so hopefully most of you have the application already installed on your computers.

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When I think back to the beginning of the wedding planning process, I fondly remember how the engagement was a wonderfully surreal blur (the full engagement story to come!). However, the day immediately after the engagement, I recall how I began feeling overwhelmed! Everyone left and right started asking when the wedding was, where it was going to be…in fact, since everyone knew about the engagement way before I did, they’d all already begun talking about the wedding without me! I’m one of those ppl who are most comfortable when I am on top of everything, so being the least in the know was definitely out of my comfort zone .

Looking at magazines and wedding planning books didn’t help. They came with tons of endless to-do lists that seemed to be a jumble of little tasks…it seemed like a mess to me, and only added to my anxiety!

Enter the wedding workplan . What is a wedding workplan you say? So I am a consultant by trade, and one of the early steps for every case we take on is to identify what the problem/key questions are, what we think the solution would be, and what steps are involved in testing that. We lay out a timeline with specific modules of work, so that we can get a holistic picture of the process. What better way to handle the wedding planning process!

I thought of the big categories of activities that would need to take place, i.e. searching for venues, vendors, attire, stationery, media (aka photography/videography), etc. And worked from there to itemize what would fall into each of those buckets. Here is a picture of the overview…

Mr. D thinks that this makes things look more confusing, but for me, this was a sigh of relief!! I love how on one page, I can see all the distinct types of activities that need to take place simultaneously and at what stage.

From this, it was easy to create a month-by-month to-do list that made more sense to me (sample below).

I also have a more detailed daily timeline for the  wedding month, that has more specific tasks like getting my manicure/pedicure, getting hair done, etc.

I’m guessing many of you may be past this stage in your planning or, as my sister says, that I am just crazy, but if any of you brides-to-be think this is helpful, just leave a comment and I would be happy to email it to you!