Monica is a wonderful wedding planner (and will be a wonderful day-of coordinator for us, we hope!), but we decided to plan our wedding ourselves because we’re cheap and we like adventures. This list of resources is by no means exhaustive - in fact, I find exhaustive pretty overwhelming - but are just some of the things we’re using to make the process easier!
Online Resources
Google Drive
B. and I are both fans of lists and spreadsheets (him more so than me - I still have nightmares of that one time when he wanted to buy a TV), and we like Google Drive because it’s easy, free and gives us the ability to collaborate. We already plan our weekly meals and shopping list on Google Drive, so it was natural that one of the first things we did after getting engaged was start a wedding spreadsheet. Not sure where to start? Google actually has a wedding planning page that includes a spreadsheet that you can download and fill in. I also like the ones from A Practical Wedding. To avoid feeling overwhelmed, what we’ve done is started our own spreadsheet and just copied in the individual sheets from the pre-made ones that we found most useful.
Aside from spreadsheets, what we’ve also been doing is saving all PDF contracts we get from vendors (ugggh look at all this wedding lingo) right into our Google Drive.
I’d prided myself on resisting the pressure to join Pinterest for a long time, but finally caved when it came to wedding planning, because it is very visual. At first, I just shyly pinned a few blog posts from wedding planning blogs and wedding photographer blogs, but now it’s gone through phases of pinning random photos of food that match my wedding colours, feeding my obsession with DIYing the flowers (at least the bouquets), and other random ideas, plus I now have all these non-wedding, food-related boards as well (naturally). If you’re into it, you can invite your fiancé, bridesmaids, and/or mom to pin on your board, but I thought that would get overwhelming.
Honourable Mention - Facebook, Blogs
This is not a tool that I’ve actively sought out, but apparently once you start putting wedding-related words in your status updates, Facebook will start giving you wedding-related ads! Those jerks! Through the ads I did find a brand new company based out of Vancouver called The Borrowed Collection, which rents out snazzy bridal jewellery. (Pinned.)
I’ve tried to stay away from blogs like The Knot (not hyperlinked so you can save yourself from clicking on it) because they feature weddings that are way out of my budget and way overwhelming. I do like the occasional A Practical Wedding blog post though, and I also wanted to give a shoutout to WTF We’re Engaged! The writing is not the best, and the blog itself has not been updated for a few years, but she does have a few helpful posts for people planning a Chinese wedding (or at least quasi-Chinese) to help navigate through some of the customs.
Books
Apparently B. has had a hand in helping some of his buddies planning their weddings in the past, and he found buying wedding planning books helpful. So, one day he went to the bookstore and came back with two books. At first I could barely get past the first few pages - What is this “wedding vision” bullshit?!? How can an essay-style book help me plan my wedding??? Eventually I calmed down and must admit that I have been actively using both books in the wedding planning process.
A Practical Wedding by Meg Keene
OK, OK, I know I have already mentioned A Practical Wedding twice in this blog post, but just bear with me for a little bit. This book is the pep talk that I think every bride needs. The premise behind the book is that the people who are going to attend your wedding are there for you, so it doesn’t matter wtf the wedding looks like or what food you serve or how much it costs - do what feels right for you! From the book (paraphrase): “No one will remember what your wedding will look like, they will just remember what it felt like.”
The book still takes you through some of the major steps of planning a wedding, including a “You’re engaged!” section that takes you through some serious pre-wedding questions that you should talk through with your spouse, like religion and goals and kids (B. learned that I believe in fate.), as well as chapters that talk about some rarely broached topics, like planning a wedding when there’s death or illness in the family, or tips on if you think you want to DIY the flowers, music or even the food! While I found that the “picking a venue” chapter made me feel a little guilty that I chose a very mainstream summer-wedding-on-a-Saturday-night-in-a-hotel, I found that all the chapters are like, “Here’s some stuff that works for some people, but… if that’s not you, don’t feel like you have to do it!” I wouldn’t say this book is a must-buy, but if in your wedding planning process you are feeling overwhelmed or stressed, run to the bookstore and read the intro to this book to calm you down a bit.
The Knot Ultimate Wedding Planner by Carley Roney & the Editors of TheKnot.com
I’m still not sure I can say I like this book. Already on the first page, it instructs me to “envision your wedding day style” and “create a vision for each and every detail”. I cannot think of a phrase that does not include bodily fluids or vermin as vomit-inducing as “wedding vision”. Books like this are probably what cause brides to pull their hair out and decide to elope - by dedicating a whole worksheet to every minute detail in a wedding, it makes it seem like everything is high priority, which we know is not true. Apparently there is a binder version of this book that includes colour swatches so you can pick your wedding colours *puke*
While I’ve had fun crossing out and writing “NO” next to things that I don’t want to be in my wedding (I haven’t quite reached the point where I’m ripping out entire sections of the book just yet), the book has been good for a couple of things, like helping me come up with some questions for potential vendors, and the checklist makes me look WAY ahead of the game on some fronts.
Plus, we came up with a wedding vision after all.
Vincci Tsui is a food writer/lover/eater by day, and a raging bridezilla by night. She is marrying B. on July 25, 2015.
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