Save the Dates & Paper Source

Today Terry came home! He had a good trip to Buffalo for work, but I'm thrilled that he's home. Today was a great day to head to Paper Source to finally make some concrete decisions together about our invitations and save the dates! We bought all our envelopes for sending our save the dates, as well as a few extra decorative supplies for our stationary. We also checked out all the displays and ideas from the Paper Source experts, and we got some great ideas for our DIY invitations. Now we're finally starting to see what we can do to create a consistent theme in all our stationary.

We also finally ordered our save the dates! They should be here in a few weeks, during which time I'll be addressing all the newly purchased envelopes. On the other hand, today I ordered a custom rubber stamp (www.rubberstampchamp.com) to use on our reply card envelopes. It'll be far faster to stamp the return address on all the envelopes rather than handwriting or printing each one!

Can't wait to officially announce our wedding to our guests!

Binders and Spreadsheets

I did it. I finally got organized. Exactly one year, one month, two weeks, and four days after our engagement and exactly nine months before the wedding (today!), I did it. And thank goodness.

I had thought about it, even tried it a few times, but nothing really worked. I found millions (okay, about a dozen) of websites offering to help me get organized, but I really need everything in one place, and I need to be able to carry that one place with me, to access it from anywhere. I imagine that in a few years (or even now, for some more connected brides), a laptop/iPad/SmartPhone will be sufficient for wedding planning, but I need more. So I went old school, as teachers tend to do.

You may wonder how on earth I had time to spend almost three full days getting organized, but the answer is simple: My fiance is out of town. I'm surprisingly more productive when he isn't around. But it's so much more fun when he is around, so I guess that's the trade off.

Anyway, back to the organization. I wish someone had told me about all this stuff when I first got engaged, but maybe I wouldn't have taken it to heart until over 13 months later. I was saying that I went old school. Really old school. Like...paper. I already had my "wedding planning binder" that I had toted around from vendor meeting to vendor meeting, but today things got serious. I used my lovely green wedding planning binder (a gift from my amazing matron of honor) and created new tabs that make much more sense to me.

Aren't they lovely?

I also printed all of our invoices and contracts so far in order to have them in one place. I used sheet protectors for the especially important stuff. The tabs are organized by importance (biggest vendors first) and then in order that we'll need them. I finally have a working tool for the wedding planning that I can continue to use for the next nine months.

But that wasn't all. If you didn't know it already, you should learn now that I LOVE spreadsheets. Microsoft Excel didn't know it, but they really created their product specifically for me. I can spend hours upon hours lost in the wonders of Excel spreadsheets. So far, I have the following spreadsheets for the wedding:

• Wedding Budget (estimations, actual costs, amounts paid)
  
• Honeymoon Budget
  
• Master Guest List (including the main list with addresses, the rehearsal dinner guest list, the names to be written on escort cards, the response list, and the table numbers)
• Wedding To Do List (maybe my favorite - including the long-term to-do list from 12 months out, the wedding weekend itinerary, the ceremony schedule, and the reception schedule)
• Wedding Day Contact List

I felt inspired to be so productive because Terry and I have made a lot of wedding progress this week. We are thisclose to booking our honeymoon tickets, making some significant decor decisions, and ordering our save the dates, envelopes, and return address labels. Before we do all that, I needed to make sure we have a firm budget and track all of our spending. Weddings are expensive enough as it is - no need to spend money without at least planning it out!

And now, the fun can continue! Terry comes home tomorrow, and we're planning a field trip to Paper Source in Santa Monica. It might just be my new favorite store. Thanks to a gift card from Heidi and Ed, we can get started on our paper-buying extravaganza!

Scout was very helpful today.

9 months to go...

Bits of Progress

Sometimes I hate that Google forces me to come up with names for each blog post, because, let's be honest, most of these posts could have the same generic title: Most Recent Wedding Planning Process. And yet, I love Google so much for everything else it allows me to do that I can really only elaborate on my complaints for as much as a sentence. Listing the stuff I love about Google would take much, much longer.

One thing I love about Google is that they provided the template for our wedding website! The site hosts all pertinent information for our wedding guests, including hotel information, ceremony directions, and registries. Google has countless templates for personal websites, including the grape/vineyard one that we chose for our site. It's been surprisingly fun for me to build an entire website, and hopefully our guests will find it useful and informative.

Recently, we scheduled two more engagement sessions! One is with our great friend, Roxanne, who is generously taking us to UCLA for more pictures. The UCLA pictures are especially important to us, as we met and fell in love on campus and continue to cherish being UCLA alumni. The next session is with our wedding photographer, Rhee. The session with Rhee will allow us to get to know her better (and vice versa) and will also give us a chance to do a fun themed shoot. We are so excited to take more pictures to document this incredible time in our lives.

After the major vendors, the save the dates have felt like a huge decision. Before he could design the save the dates, Terry had to envision what our invitations will look like, because we want a consistent flow throughout all of our wedding stationary, right up to the day of the wedding. Terry did a beautiful job with the save the date design! I can't wait to post pictures after they have gone out to the guests. Over the last few days I have been researching the various companies that allow you to upload your own design for save the dates. Prices are surprisingly reasonable, and our friends provided the hint that you can find coupon codes online to get 50% off! We also need to order envelopes and return address labels, plus stamps. We don't need anything fancy; we just want an elegant, pulled-together look that minds our paper budget. Plus we have to double check our guest list to make sure we have it all sorted out. We are looking to order the save the dates this week, address the envelopes when they arrive, and send them out before November! A little progress at a time!

For now, enjoy a little sneak at another of Rox's amazing pictures from January!