Weddingbee

Mr. Canary finds some sick sadistic pleasure in reminding me how many months, weeks, and days we have left until the wedding because he likes to watch my face drop and contort with horror when I think I have so much more to do, and I’ve only got X number of days to do it. Here’s where it gets all better… Mr. Canary was a Gmail convert eons ago. I only started using it when we began making wedding plans… and now the benefits are totally evident.

First, I’m sure everyone who reads blogs or blogs themselves is already a big fan of Google Reader. I am! Unfortunately, with all that’s been going on, my reader is backlogged with 1,000+ items. Scary, huh? It’ll make for good reading after the wedding. If you don’t use Google Reader and read lots of blogs, you should check it out. Before Google Reader, I used to bookmark all my favorite blogs and then go back and check every day for updates. This is by far much more efficient, especially if you get all geeked out like me and meticulously add tags to each blog you subscribe to.

My next favorite Google application? Google Docs. Mr. Canary and I literally use it every day now that planning is in full swing. This is where I keep the master of all documents… our To Do list. It used to have about 150 items on it… now we’re down to about 95. Not bad with two months to go. Mr. Canary and I share the document and update it every time we finish a task. We also assign priorities and ownership so that we’re not doubling our efforts. It’s also a great passive aggressive tool when I start to highlight things that I want Mr. Canary to do ASAP… but have probably already nagged him in person about 100 times. I was getting frustrated with hand writing and rewriting everything I needed to complete every week and then emailing Mr. Canary about certain items that needed following up. This way, we can both log in and see in real time what needs to be done in a certain week. Really meticulous… I know, but it works! I don’t have panic attacks because it’s like I can see into the future and know that, “Oh, we only have four things we need to do next week… no sweat!”

I’ve also used Google Docs with the bridesmaids to plan the bachelorette events… I loaded an Excel sheet with names, phone numbers, and emails making it really easy for them to track a guest list and book reservations.

Another thing Mr. Canary and I use Google Docs for is as a repository for all the little projects we’re working on, i.e. our wedding announcement (Mr. Canary will start the document and I can go in and make edits), text for our programs and menus, our music play list (so if either of us hears a song we’d like played, we can immediately go in and add it to the list), and our honeymoon matrix (yes, it’s a matrix! we plotted out all the cities we’ll visit and compare rates of hotels in a sick spreadsheet).

I am a bridesmaid in a close friend’s wedding and we use Google Notebook to trade ideas that we find on gowns, favors, venues, and all other wedding stuff. Notebooks is great because it’s grab and go and basically mindless. I get really excited to go through some of my notebook items and find things I had forgotten about! Yes… the simple pleasures.

And what bride can be without a good calendar. I love my Google Calendar… which is another thing Mr. Canary and I share. We have a master calendar that we meticulously update. We have everything from personal appointments, friends’ birthdays to all the miscellaneous wedding items from our To Do list. And for all you Outlook users… now there is a sync function! My life is now complete.

And for the organized obsessed, here is a screenshot of our To Do list.

What are some tools or programs that you and your significant other use to stay organized during wedding planning? Any other Google addicts out there?

• Mission Impossible
• Words, Words, Everywhere&...