Five Tools That Helped Me Plan Our Wedding

Planning a wedding is a big project and a bride-to-be needs all the tools she can get to assist her during the process. Cody was very involved, which I absolutely loved. I wanted it to be just as much what he wanted and what he wanted to spend as what I wanted and wanted to spend. But besides Cody, I’ve collected my top five most helpful tools that I used during the planning process. Check them out below and let me know in the comments what your favorite tools are or if you’ve found any of these helpful as well. I’d love to hear from you!

My mom
How can anything beat a mother’s advice? Especially my mom who went to school for interior design, threw themed birthday parties for me for the first 18 years of my life, and goes above and beyond with decor and gifts. My mom was the one I went to for most of the advice I needed, and I wanted her opinion on everything. There is no way I could have planned our wedding and had it come out as beautiful as it did without her. For you this person may be different – it may be your aunt, or cousin, or your best friend. But I can attest that having someone in your corner will make this process just a little bit easier and a tiny bit less overwhelming.
The Knot
This site is super helpful for finding vendors, organizing your budget, building a wedding website, creating a checklist, planning seating charts, and creating your guest list. I used The Knot the most to build and manage our wedding website and to look up vendors in our area and look at their reviews. You can also search on the site for any wedding etiquette questions that come up (I had to do that a few times) and I’m even currently using it to help me with the process of Changing my last name step-by-step. And they even have an app!
The Knot Ultimate Wedding Planner & Organizer [binder edition]
My mom gave me this book as an engagement gift – and boy did it come in handy. it’s huge, so we didn’t use every page but when it came time to make some lists and choices, and meet with different vendors, we relied on it a lot. This book has amazing timelines, guidance for where you’re at and what to do, as well as awesome questions to ask each vendor you may be meeting with. This helped us to weed through all of our choices, learn more about each one, and ultimately pick the perfect team for us.
Wedding Wire
This site is similar to The Knot, it just depends on your preference. I mainly used this site to search for vendors and compare ratings that I found on The Knot, Yelp, and Wedding Wire.
Pinterest
Ahh, a bride’s best friend. I was constantly on Pinterest searching and pinning ideas to my hidden wedding board. A great deal of inspiration for our wedding came from Pinterest and I couldn’t be happier with how the whole thing turned out. And the option to keep your board secret so only you can see it is great – that way none of the surprises can be ruined for your guests!