Weddingbee Blog

Growing up, I never really fantasized all that much about my wedding. Sure, I did a little bit… but I never dreamed about poofy white dresses, gorgeous flowers, or a giant wedding cake. I’ve always known that I wanted to get married, and I’ve always been excited about it…but I just never did much daydreaming about it.

…except for one tiny little aspect. The wedding binder.

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Yes, I really just said that. What can I say – I’m a sucker for organization! I always fantasized about having a big, beautiful binder that would house everything and I would carry with me to all of my appointments. I have no idea why this was the one aspect of my wedding that I always focused on, but I just couldn’t wait to get to buy one of those amazing wedding binders of my own.

Once I actually got engaged, I have to admit that I took a while to get around to following through with my dreams of owning a wedding binder.

The practical side of me kept saying “You don’t need to buy a $30 binder to hold your wedding stuff. Use a binder you already have and just make it into a wedding binder! Why spend the extra money when you don’t need to?” I told myself over and over that it was just silly. I even went as far as turning one of the many binders floating around my apartment into a wedding binder.

The only problem? I never used it. I threw all my stuff in there and never took another look at it. It just wasn’t any... fun! But, I still couldn’t justify spending the extra money on something I didn’t really need.

UNTIL, I was randomly given a Barnes & Noble gift card one day. I couldn’t find any books that jumped out at me (I mean, I’m sure I could have, but if I get started in that store I won’t leave for a good three hours, and Mr. Cardigan was waiting on me!) I decided to wander over to the wedding section, just to see if there was anything that jumped out at me.

And oh, Lord, did it ever. Have you ever been to the wedding section of Barnes & Noble? Because, seriously, it’s like heaven. I plopped myself on the floor and began excitedly flipping through all of the organizers, trying to decide which one I wanted. It was SO hard to decide with so many choices! I narrowed it down to three pretty quickly based on my criteria.

• I wanted to be able to add to it. No spiral bound book for me. I need to be able to hole punch stuff and throw it in!
• I wanted it to have plenty of tabs, and I wanted the tabs to make sense. Some of the books have one tab for Cake and Photography. How do those two go together?
• I wanted it to be pretty. Duh.

What were my top three contenders, you ask?

1- The Ultimate Wedding Planning Guide

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It’s HUGE and has a ton of great stuff in it. I loved that it came with a hole punch (Mr. C kept saying that I could just go to Office Max and buy one just like it, but that’s not the point!!!) and it was just pure organizational heaven. The super amazing Miss Scissors goes into more detail about this one here, if you’re interested.

2 – Martha Stewart’s Keepsake Wedding Planner

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I have to admit, I was drawn to this one mainly just because it’s by Martha Stewart. She’s kind of my hero. For some reason, I seem to think that by buying her products I’ll be able to channel her a little bit better. Am I alone on this one?

I wasn’t too impressed with this binder from what I was able to see at the store – the binder comes shrink-wrapped, and the one that they had out for everyone to flip through was all sorts of busted up. It was missing pages, and it was broken, and you could just tell that the poor binder had been through hell. But, it was MARTHA, and I just couldn’t let go of it. Oh, and please know that the ugly brown part with a giant photo of Martha comes off – it’s just a plain green binder once you actually open it.

3- I’ll be honest, I can’t find the third on on B&N’s website, and I don’t remember what it was called. So I’ll just ruin the suspense here and let you know that I didn’t end up with that one.

So, which one did I choose? Well, I have to tell you that it was almost impossible for me to make a decision. Mr. Cardigan was next door at Best Buy while I was searching for a binder, and I got so stressed out that I had to call him and make him come help me.  After I showed him the three books he made a quick decision for me – the Martha one! He argued that even though the sample looked ridiculous, the binder would be in much better condition and wouldn’t be missing pages. Plus, this one is much simpler on the outside, and I think I would feel a little ridiculous carrying a giant pink binder to appointments with me.

So, I grabbed my binder and out the door we went! Don’t worry, I paid first.

Now, for anyone out there looking for a wedding binder, I have to tell you something in the interest of full disclosure. I absolutely adore my Martha binder, but there is definitely a flaw to it – it’s constructed very poorly. Within seconds of getting it opened, this happened:

Lame! I seriously considered returning it, and even went as far as to go back into the store (I had opened it in the car before we even left the parking lot because I’m impatient like that), but I realized that the sample was broken in the exact same way and it was likely that it was just poor construction. I was too excited about my Martha binder to return it for the other one (plus, the other one was $5 more and I’m cheap), so I decided to see what we could do about fixing it.

We brought it home and plugged in the hot glue gun, and Mr. Cardigan glued it back together for me. For some reason, I was too distressed about my binder to take care of it myself. Luckily, Mr. C is a saint and calmly glued the binder together while I had a panic attack in the kitchen. 5 minutes later, it was good as new! …Well, at least until the glue came un-stuck and it broke again. This time it broke all the way off! I was really upset about it, but Mr. Cardigan is (luckily) an incredibly handy man, and he ran off to Home Depot and bought some stuff to fix it.

I’d love to tell you exactly how he fixed it, but I really have no idea. All I know is that it’s attached VERY well now, and it’s not going anywhere!

I am SO excited to finally have a wedding binder, and I’ve already spent way too much time putting it all together.

Do you have any (really random) aspect of the wedding that you got a little too obsessive over, like I did?