As a wedding photographer I might have had a leg up on your average bride when it came time to start planning my own wedding. I’ve been to more weddings in a year than the average person in a lifetime so I’ve had more of an opportunity to identify what I did and did not want to do at my wedding. But I’m also a huge Pinterest addict, which means that I have 5 different boards about weddings alone and over 700 pins to consult before I make a decision.
So I decided early on that I needed to reign myself in and hold myself to the decisions I made about my wedding day so that the next time I saw a pretty idea online I wouldn’t change my course. As a solution I made what I call my “planning book” – it’s a place to keep all of my inspiration photos and detailed notes about decorations in one place.
I take a picture that I found either on Pinterest, Facebook, or Instagram and I put it in the book with notes about how I would tweak it or a detailed list of what I need to buy to make it happen down to the inch. I also use it to keep myself in check and make sure that I’m not getting too wild – does everything flow together, is everything on theme?
You can check out a few example pages from mine below…
On the day of the wedding my planning book will definitely come in handy. My venue has a wedding the night before, which means that all decorating needs to be done the morning of my wedding while myself and my bridesmaids will be getting ready. I’m going to recruit some helpful family members to decorate for me since I chose not to hire a wedding planner or coordinator. That’s where my planning book will come in. It has an overview picture of each detail of my wedding (centerpieces, aisle decorations, etc.) so that my helpers can see what the finished product should look like along with measurements and any instructions they might need.
If you’re not going to be able to help with the decorations of your own wedding and are, let’s be honest, a slight control freak, I would definitely recommend coming up with a one-stop-shop for people to reference for an overall vision of your day. It doesn’t have to be fancy – mine isn’t going to win any graphic design awards – it just needs to have everything in one place to take one more thing off of your plate so you can focus on being a bride.
Keep smiling!
Kaylina
Kaylina
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