Back in the day (almost ten years ago) when I was planning my wedding, I used Microsoft Excel as my wedding checklist. Spoiler alert: I'm a bit of a spreadsheet geek and efficiency fanatic. Luckily, technology has evolved. There are even better tools today to organize all your wedding planning tasks. You might be thinking, “Desirée, what could possibly be better than Excel?” Today, I'm giving you a BTS look at the number one tool that I use to organize my clients' wedding checklist.
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Weddings Take a Long Time to Plan
According to Martha Stewart Weddings, engaged couples spend hundreds of hours on wedding planning. Couples who don't hire a wedding planner will take even longer to plan their wedding. With so many tasks to do, couples get overwhelmed by their ever-growing list. The key to avoiding wedding planning overwhelm is to organize your wedding checklist from the beginning. This will make efficient use of your time. The more efficient you are, the more time you'll have to enjoy things like dinner dates and pilates. (Activities you actually enjoy).
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What Happens When the President Comes
I began planning events in 2007 in Washington, DC. I learned from the beginning how important it is to have a detailed planning checklist. Having guests like the President or royalty magnified potential mistakes. Long story short: I learned early how to be crazy precise and took attention to detail to an extreme! All that experience helped me refine the tools I use today to support my wedding planning clients.
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The One Tool My Clients and I Love
So you might be asking, “What do I need to organize a wedding?” or “How do I keep my wedding plan organized?” The one tool my clients and I love to keep our wedding checklist on track is Trello. Trello is a tool that helps users organize information into columns on boards. There's a desktop and mobile app version so you can access it wherever you are.
Using Trello, I organize our tasks starting at 12 months out from the wedding. Each card within each column is a separate task. You can also subdivide tasks or cards into sub-tasks. I assign tasks to myself and to my clients so we know who is working on what and when. We can also make comments on the status of a task. When I complete a task, I archive it or move it to a “Done” column. This way, my clients never have to wonder what I'm doing or what we need to do next.
You can do something very similar if it's just you and your fiancé planning your wedding. Don't get overwhelmed with learning how to use Trello. Use it as a depository and brain dump everything in your head on your Trello board. Once it's out of your head, then you can organize the tasks into columns based on when you want to complete everything.
Below is a brief video (4 mins.) where I walk you through the highlights of my planning checklist and how I have it organized.
Trello is an amazing tool for collaboration and project management. It's also pretty intuitive. If my clients need extra help understanding their wedding checklist, they have a video tutorial in my private video library that drills down further how to use it. I want to make sure they maximize the benefits of working with me and all the tools I provide.
If you're still unsure how to use Trello, don't be a stranger and reach out! Send me a DM or submit your question via #AskaPlanner! I would love to alleviate any stress you have regarding your wedding planning.
Planning a wedding for 2021 or 2022? Grab my wedding planning checklist here so you know EXACTLY what to do every step of the way.
Conclusion
I hope this post helps you organize your wedding planning checklist. Life is too short to waste it stressing about things that don't give you joy. If you need more help, let's talk! I would love to chat with you and see how I can help you plan the modern, artful wedding you've always pictured. And have time for, you know, #allthethings. CLICK HERE to schedule your call when it's convenient for you.
If you scrolled to the bottom . . .
My clients and I use Trello to organize our wedding checklist. Each column represents a time frame and the tasks underneath are what we want to accomplish when. If you love efficiency, you will love what happens when you CLICK THIS LINK!
Happy planning!
Disclosure: This page may contain affiliate links. That means I get a small commission if you purchase through this link. However, I only link to tools and products I truly love and use for myself or my clients. Thanks for contributing to my macaron fund!
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