I've decided that I should have a scheduled wedding talk post once a week, so welcome to Wedding Wednesdays!
With all of the crazy things I have going on in my life right now, wedding planning is probably somewhere closer to the bottom of the list at this point, when it should be at the top. However, I am on schedule and have a lot of plans already in the works. My favorite friend throughout all of this is the Real Simple Weddings publication.
I know there are plenty of books and planners out there to assist with the wedding planning process. I've looked through all of them, but none of them have been as helpful as this little magazine. I'm not sure when Real Simple began this publication, but I bought the 2009 copy as soon as we got engaged. And when 2010 rolled around I bought that one too. They are pretty much the same as far as all the resources are concerned. All of the inspiration photos, real wedding features and everything else are updated in the new issue.
While you should definintely pay the $15 for this magazine (it's so much cheaper than many of the planners out there and comes with some really great inspiration as well) most of the best resources in the magazine are free! All of the great checklists and lots of other great information are on the Real Simple website. The ultimate wedding planning checklist is perfect for me because it has about 10 things you should be doing at certain times throughout the months before the wedding. I do those, I check them off the list and I'm golden. I love it. :)
We also found the registry essentials checklist to be very helpful while we were registering at Target on Saturday. We were able to decide what we could get at Target and what we wanted to get at Macy's or other online stores through myregistry.com. There were a few things we could check off because we already had them, and didn't need an upgrade. It really helped keep Sheldon from getting trigger happy, although we did get a little over excited in the electronics section.
This publication is my bible right now. And did I mention that if you buy the magazine all of the checklists are in a little tear out booklet that you can keep on your person at all times?! The 2009 version was smaller than the 2010 so I have it taped into my little inspiration notebook I keep in my purse. I love being able to have everything at hand and not having to lug around a big notebook.
So wedding graduates, what were your favorite tools for wedding planning when you had to go through the process?
