Wedding planning can be a crazy, crazy experience. There is inspiration coming in from a million different directions, 100 different things to remember at a time, and so, so, so much to execute all in one DAY. It’s easy to feel like this sometimes:
(source) I’ve learned that the more organized I am, the less scatter-brained I become. Well, obviously. 
But staying organized as a bride can be difficult! Photos, contracts, pages from countless wedding magazines, color and fabric swatches, business cards, websites, bookmarks, wedding blogs, Knottie bios, photography blogs, and on and on and on!
In order to maintain bridal sanity, you’ve got to avoid this situation like the plague:
(source)
Most brides have at least a binder with contracts, magazine pages, and other physical evidence that planning a wedding leaves in its tracks. I am no exception. My binder is (purposefully) quite small, though – only 1 inch wide. I regularly sort through it, keeping only what is absolutely pertinent to the wedding at that point in time. For example, in the early stages of planning, I had all of my inspiration photos neatly ordered. Now that I have my dress, my veils, my flowers, and other decor elements picked out, I get rid of those inspiration photos.
But what is SO much more important to me than my planning binder is the “Wedding” folder on my desktop. 50 megabytes filled with years of wedding planning (yes years, because I was saving inspiration photos long before we were engaged).
Inside the Wedding folder are multiple other folders which often house even more folders. Here, take a peek inside my world:
The folders include basically every aspect of planning:
- Accessories - including jewelry, veils, bags for the big day
- Centerpieces – reception decor including florals and candles
- Church – with pictures of our church and any information downloaded or saved including marriage preparation
- Cookies, Cake, Candy – includes inspiration for our cake and our cookie table/candy buffet combination as well as our cake topper!
- Flowers – as in personal flowers like bouquets, corsages, and bouts
- Hair – including hair and make up inspiration
- Hotel Info & Menus – includes pictures of our reception, floor plans and seating charts, details on the reception cost, and information on our hotel blocks
- Invitations – including the details on our awesome invites
- Lighting – with inspiration pictures
- Miscellaneous – with information on the trolley rental, hair salons, our DJ, and linen rentals
- Logistics – an important folder: it contains all of our guest lists (ours and our parents’), our mailing labels, and our wedding weekend schedule (under construction, obviously)
- Music – with our song database to choose from, our DJ information as well as other brides’ playlists I’ve saved over the years (couldn’t risk forgetting an awesome song!)
- Photographs – with inspiration pictures from all over the web of both engagement and wedding pictures
- The Dress – self explanatory
- The Men – tuxedo information and gift ideas
- The Women – pictures of the different dresses my girls chose, as well as some remaining inspiration pictures I went off of initially
and last but certainly not least, my baby:
- DIY Stuff:
With folders for each of my pet projects, this is my favorite folder You’ve seen a lot of my projects so far, but there are many more to come – as well as lots of complete tutorials for the projects you’ve already seen.
And THAT’S how I stay organized! Oh, and of course I back this bad boy up about once every month or two, especially if I’ve been extra busy lately!
How do you keep sane during wedding planning?
This article was originally posted onWeddingbee.
