One more tip: check out Envelopments. Buy a nice envelope, and you're halfway to a nice invitation at about 1/4 the price.

And another: If you live in a big city and need to get your invitations hand stamped because they won't go through the machine (because of wax stamps, or other funkiness), consider taking a short drive out of the city and taking them to a small town post office where they aren't so busy and might be friendlier about it.

MikeT

I handled the organizational side of our wedding planning, and used spreadsheets for everything under the sun. Except the invitations. I did those in Word.

I have two words of warning and two pieces of advice for Mike, and for anyone else planning a wedding.

Everything is more expensive for a wedding than it is for other events. When you call, tell them you're planning an event, not a wedding, and you'll get very different prices in many cases.

Avoid mission creep. There will be a lot of upselling from people who say, "When are you going to get married again?" Well, I've done it twice, and I can tell you that one year after the wedding you won't remember that you got the cheaper napkins, but you might still be paying for the expensive ones.

Now the advice: Consider keeping it small. I had one tenth the people at my second wedding than at my first, and had a much better time (and so much less stress).

When it comes to location, be creative. There's a great bed and breakfast in our town that's in a big, old house. We rented all the rooms for one night so we had the run of the place. We got married on the staircase, had the reception in the dining room, and our friends sat up until the wee hours catching up while my wife and I chilled out upstairs in our jacuzzi. It was perfect, and cost less than renting a hall.

And no one drove drunk.

MikeT

I used Excel to plan my wedding, you probably don't need special software. I found that most wedding sites like the knot were useless and horrifying. The best site with forums is Indiebride.com. Its not all DIY, but its got a lot of good, helpful advice from reasonable people. Congratulations!

parvax

I would say spreadsheets. I started out using a software program I bought and ended up having everything stored in Excel for me to use. Here's another piece of advice: be available to help her but she's likely going to want to take over most of the planning. Join a forum (like theknot.com or something similar) to get ideas from other brides on how to save money and good vendors to choose.

SabrinaFaire

I just got married in November, I used a lot of Google tools to keep everything organized. We used Google Calendar to keep track of all our appointments with vendors, and used Google Docs to keep track of invites list and vendor list. Google Docs was great because we were constantly traveling and I didn't always have my laptop with me so I could look stuff up from anywhere.

NICU

Best thing I did was a spreadsheet to do figure out how many people were coming. For each guest, I did a likelihood that they would actually come. For many, this was zero, but for some it was about 50%, for example. Then a bit of math told me to expect about 65.7 guests. Which turned out to be pretty accurate in the end.

Mapoosa

Spreadsheet (any flavor), with worksheets within to track each item, arranged in chronological order of when you need to get each done: Ceremony Venue, Reception Venue (both need to be arranged 8-12 months ahead of time), Wedding-day lodging for guests, Rehearsal Dinner venue, Reception DJ/Entertainment, Photographer, Invitations, Honeymoon arrangements, Bride's Dress (+stuff), Bridesmaid's dresses (+stuff), Flowers, Cake, wedding day transportation (limo, etc), Gifts, Groom's + Groomsmen stuff.

Good luck. Don't forget to eat.

savvy999

My fiance and I are keeping all of our lists in shared Google Docs, and it works fine. We also made sure to BCC all vendor communications to one another, so we can both know what's going on, or voice concerns early on. Invites and other paper goods are laid out in Adobe Illustrator; floor plan for the marquee will be done in Visio.

On a more emotional note, we opted to avoid vendors who bully us, even when they had the lowest price. We also asked recommendations for other services from vendors we already hired (eg: the venue lady recommended a very nice local rental company we wouldn't have found otherwise), and so far it's been a good thing.

We also identified the three or four things that we really cared about and are splurging on that, and we're either DIYing (and getting lots of help from family) or just plain skipping the rest.

bossykena

We used excel for all of our guest lists and file folders for paperwork, but got creative with much of the other planning. We had a vintage wedding and purchased all of our table linens/napkins from ebay, flea markets and craigslist. We also purchased vintage tins and mason jars for the centerpieces. To keep all of our guests filled in on important dates and places, I set up a blog using wordpress. ([wedding.shakerdesigns.com]) The blog really helped with hotel information and gift registries too. It also allowed us to give props to all our vendors in a public forum. Use "The Google" to search out vendors in your area. It make take some time, but it's well worth the process to find people you'll both trust with your day and enjoy working with. Good luck and congrats!

Shaker Designs

I used "iDo" by Elm Software to track all the details of my wedding - it's simply a nice front end to a simple database, but the features are well thought out, and it allows you to keep track of "contacts" (a universal address book for invitees, vendors, etc.), invitees, respondents, guests of the Groom/Bride, table assignments, table arrangements, etc. Definitely recommended.
Plus, when you're done, the data file can be renamed to a microsoft access database file, and opened (if you use a database password recovery program to unlock it).

joshlawless

One possibility could be Wedding Wire. [weddingwire.com] It's a free online service pretty much designed to help with the whole process. Not a bad service, and continually evolving.

phe

Elope, elope, elope.

Emsaidso

My wife and I used a company called The Pros (www.thepros.com) Don't know if they service your area but.. If they do I recommend looking into them. They did our Photos, Video, and DJ. They have showcases where you can kinda get a feel for there reps you know kick the tires and see how they interact and can show off previous works. The more services you use the more you save.

One other thing I can recommend is to get married on a Sunday before a holiday Monday. You can and will save at least 10% on everything. Plus your out of town guests will have the holiday to travel back home.

BigDASH

My wife and I used Simple Seating [www.simpleseating.com] to build all our seating charts. It was really easy.

LaptopHeaven

I wholeheartedly endorse the Google Docs for collaboration idea. That made several facets of our planning worlds easier. Most notably drafting the guest list in its myriad revisions, and then filling in all the addresses as it became finalized. It was equally useful for tracking gifts and status of thank you cards. It also helped us collaborate with the parents/in-laws on those same fronts.

We didn't use it for tracking vendors and quotes, though, but I'm sure that could work just as well.

trygve

Reader Mike, listen to responder MikeT.

I'm going to give you one piece of advice, half from being a groom and half from being a wedding photographer.

In the grand scheme of things the wedding itself is almost entirely meaningless. I've attended and photographed everything from $2,000 to $80,000 weddings and in the end it doesn't really matter if you have a single rose on each table or a $1200 arrangement. My wife and I opted for a small wedding on her family's estate in Georgia and can hardly remember half the details of the day, if that. Didn't exactly require a huge amount of planning =) We spent the money we would have spent on a crazy wedding which would have been forgotten, on a house we're still living in and raising a daughter (who I'm sure much prefers having a big dutch colonial to romp around in over an album of really expensive flowers to look at hehe)

JFitzpatrick

I second excel. Another great tool is Backpack (www.backpackit.com)- you can email pictures, add links, to do lists, just about anything you need to organize a wedding. You can also share the backpack pages with other users.

Another tool I used was a simple 3 ring binder with dividers. I took pictures of the ceremony & reception venues to show my florist. Had a swatch of the bridesmaid dress, kept my contracts - everything in one spot.

pamusc93

I used a giant excel workbook with tons of worksheets, covering everything from vendor contacts, to timelines, to invite lists, to budget.

That was the only format I found that was widely convertible to various other tools. For example, I was able to import my invite list to AmazingMail, to generate my Save-the-Dates. I used a Microsoft template for my budget. I modified it alot, but it was a good starting point.

Do a find in the MS Office templates for "wedding planning." There's a ton of them there. Even if you don't use office, get their free viewer, take a look, and dupe it over to your program of choice.

TsuKata

In the process now...

So far, we've used:

Google Document for rough figuring, initial guest list calculations, quotes from vendors, etc. We shared this with each other and my soon-to-be-in-laws, since they're covering some of the expense.

TheKnot.com for the budget software and as a backend to an online RSVP system. I made my own wedding website and will only have a link to TheKnot's online system.

Related: We created a wedding@mydomain address using my Google Apps account. I set that up so anything that the two of us send to it, stays in the wedding account. If anyone else e-mails that address, it is auto-forwarded to both of us. This is so that vendors, quotes, etc can be sent to one address and we both see it, while at the same time having a place we can forward anything wedding related to keep it in one place. Additionally, once the wedding is over and done with, we can shut off the address and not worry about being on a ton of spam lists from bridal events, etc.

Kraft

Spreadsheets. Also Google Calendar reminders for when things have to be done. So if the church says, "Oh, we only book X months in advance," then you can set the reminder so you get it done right away. Or you can have a reminder sent for when you need to get final numbers to the caterer.

I'd also say that building a simple wedding website can be a good idea. Include directions, maps, and addresses (so people can do their own maps). Have an e-mail address set up for RSVPing.

And as other people have said, OpenOffice works pretty well for programs.

TheKnot.com also has various things like budgeting charts and suggestions for when to plan different parts (reservations, caterer, etc). I didn't find it useful, but someone might.

MrsMicah

My wife and I found a software package that helped layout the overall timeline and keep track of some basics ([www.weddingsoft.com]), but after that is was spreadsheets all the way.

kdwalter

Oh yea, and also created invitations and wedding programs in OpenOffice. Nice fonts available at dafont.com and you can go to any hobbie/craft store for the cardstock

cmhdave

Just got married last November and I used FloorPlanner.com to create the reception table arrangements. Our wedding coordinator was very pleased with the results and it took very little time.

Used Google Docs for invite lists, thank you notes, etc.

We shared the invite list with mom-in-law so she could fill in the addresses we didn't know about.

cmhdave

There's a nice tool called "Perfect Table Plan," it's great for doing your seating charts for the reception. You can even have the software determine a seating chart for you based on rules you give it; it can import from spreadsheets, etc. (I'm not affiliated with this product or company)

[www.perfecttableplan.com]

Shadowman615

Second the recommendations for spreadsheets, for IndieBride, and for avoiding the "wedding tax" by simply calling it a family event when talking with vendors. We left the catering planning till way too late, then had surprising luck with a website that solicited bids from multiple caterers - we got a number of good responses, and used one of them. We also used Google Maps and its line drawing features to figure out a long walk that was part of the day-before festivities.

As to priorities: we took the perspective of our guests to figure out what would make a difference to their enjoyment, such as slack time for napping, sightseeing, and visiting with other wedding guests, and good food, and a dance lesson, and what would not, such as fancy photography.

mypod

My wife and I had 5 months to plan a wedding from scratch. We did it all with one spreadsheet. And it turned out wonderfully.

mrosedal

No software is necessary.

Just make sure you get a prenup, and a good divorce lawyer.

balls187

We used OmniOutline to keep track of all the stuff we had to do and pay for. It's got many of the features of a basic spreadsheet (can add money columns, etc.) but also allows hierarchical organization of to-do items. It also stores documents as XML so they're easy to manage with a revision control system.

For the guest list we used a database (AppleWorks), because we could define our own fields better than with a spreadsheet: # of adults/children invited/attending, guest of whom, whether they replied yet, table number, gift received, thank-you sent, and so on. It was handy to define various report formats to use for mailing labels, to give to various relatives so they could look at their slices of the guest list, etc. etc.

I haven't looked at Bento yet ([www.filemaker.com]) but it might be a good choice too.

kwilliams

My advice? Do as little as possible. Let go of the details. Make other people do the work for you, because honestly? There's so much else going on, anything you can offload will be a relief. And as a previous commenter said, it doesn't make a damn bit of difference in the grand scheme of things whether you got the white roses or the white peonies.

Instead of figuring out what kind of software to use to plan you seating chart, learning how to use it, teaching your fiancee how to use it, and dealing with the inevitability of it failing in some way, DON'T TELL PEOPLE WHERE TO SIT. Your friends and family are probably of average to above-average intelligence. They can figure out where to seat their meat.

Wedding favors? F*ck 'em. No one keeps them, they're almost uniformly junk made in China that'll end up in a landfill anyway. Also, you or your fiancee will end up spending a harried hour or two either the day of or before your wedding futzing with the crap.

Just say no to wedding creep. Have a good time, and don't sweat the small stuff. Small stuff being everything besides your new spouse and maybe your family.

That said, I used Excel to stay on budget and folder for quotes, contacts, etc. That's pretty much it.

TWSS

I am currently planning my wedding as well. March 22nd is the big day! I have used only 2 tools for the entire duration of my planning. Google Docs to hold my research docs as well as notes I write to myself coupled with the planning tools over at The Knot([www.theknot.com]) have been perfect for every aspect of my planning as well as a great resource for starting any research and answering tough questions ie: How to deal with the mother of the Bride. Even if you decide not to use The Knot's planning tools, I highly recommend checking out their articles and advice.

MindHacker

We used iDO from Elmsoft as well, I would HIGHLY recommend it. Try the free demo (Windows Only)

[www.elmsoftware.com]

gardenlevel

My wife-to-be and I are getting hitched in March and we used Wedding Magic from Frogware. [www.frogwaresoftware.com]
I am a huge user of Google Docs so it was great to use the spreadsheets and sharing abilities to get our planning together between us and the bridal party. How ever once we got down to crunch time 4 months out, it was so nice to use the software, and just plug and play our info in. We did our labels through it, RSVP tracking, Wedding Budget, Table Planning, Gift Tracking, and guest management. Some great import options and a few other things we didn't need, but it was definitely one of the better pieces of wedding software out there.
Helped decrease stress immensely. Sandals resorts recommended it, if your wondering where I found it.

bohn002

For a gift registry, I used www.whattogive.com. I took a notepad and paper to my favorite stores, wrote down items, model numbers and prices, and then input them to the wishlist. My guests were great about checking off what they'd bought. The few aunts and uncles who weren't web savvy got my mom to do it for them. The advantage to this site is that your guests can buy the item wherever they want, instead of having to go to the store you're registered at. And you don't have to confine yourself to only department stores, kitchen stores, etc. We put a printer on our registry. I tried several wishlist sites before settling on this one, and I found it to be the simplest and most reliable.

dewey_decimal

My wife and I used Google Docs Spreadsheets.
Why?
1. Automatic collaboration. We could even both edit at the same time.
2. Access anywhere. This was a big bonus when things started to get crazy close to the big day.
3. Safety. This information is too important to have on a local file. I trusted Google not to lose my wedding plans.

Two spreadsheets I suggest creating:
1. Budget planning Spreadsheet (later becomes expense tracking spreadsheet)
2. Guest Invitation Spreadsheet (becomes Thank You Note Sent spreadsheet afterwards) (eventually became our permanent address book)

I can't stress strongly enough how much instant collaboration from anywhere can bless your relationship. Google Docs made me responsive, considerate, and good at remembering details.
- Edward

uiucedward

You dont need the web for this. Its simple.

Get a notebook.
Write everything down.
Put money budgeted for events in envelopes.
The end.

Quit trying to Web 2.0 it.

holymogwai

I wasn't as fully involved in the planning as my wife (woohoO!), but she primarily used Excel for everything for our wedding. There were a handful of tools on theknot.com, but she found them limited.

edmicman

I've been rather old fashioned at the planning, using a 5 subject notebook and an expanding file folder. I have had good luck with theknot.com as far as what to do when, but I've been less than impressed with their guestlist tools. My fiancee and I created our own on our wedding web page that more accurately tracks what we want to track.

I'm doing almost all of the planning and running around with my fiancee being "executive decision maker", so there hasn't been a real need to share documents. I give him a set of options that I've already "cleared" through the BBB, Angie's List, and references that meets our wants, and then he decides.

Elwing

Wedding favours: donation to the equivalent of the SPCA. Who doesn't like animals?

My significant other likes [theknot.com]

engtech

One single collaborative spreadsheet from Google Docs with tabs for everything from the guest list, general ideas, songs, to prospective honeymoon locations, and more. I tried using the guest list tool from theKnot.com but it was crap from a technical standpoint. I had issues importing my contacts from Outlook and updating guests was very cumbersome.

Another Google product that is quite handy is Google Notebooks. We have created a notebook for our honeymoon to keep track of plans and attractions but it could be very handy when comparing vendors.

While I'm on the Google train, we can't overlook Google Maps, especially the custom My Maps tool. You can map out potential ceremony and reception sites and begin to narrow them down geographically. Also when you have your rehearsal dinner site, hotel block, ceremony site, reception site, and whatever other locations, you can embed that map in your wedding Web site. Which brings me to my next point.

You got to have a site these days, its a must. Set yourself up a Wordpress or Blogger site for free, shoot the address out in the invites and via email and keep your invitees up to date. I did a custom install on my own servers using Wordpress @ www.jamesandcelia.info.

barrettjf

I have to agree with JOSHLAWLESS. The IDO program is great software. You can even track your gifts. Believe it or not, my wife and I needed to review this info several times after the Wedding.

Alboski

I was married 6 mos. ago, am an avid planner also, and planned the 200 person wedding myself. I have been using Excel spreadsheets for 15 years, and I say "don't create spreadsheets from scratch for your wedding planning!" - it's very labor intensive and requires constant maintenance. I used wedding planning software called 'I Do' software and thought it was just great. Easy interface, it covers all aspects of wedding planning, I used it almost every day.
Link: [www.elmsoftware.com]
I called customer service once (had a quick question), and the founder picked up the phone! He was extremely helpful, very responsive.

kingfish36

I used three main tools to plan a 250-guest, $10,000 wedding: excel, outlook, and delegation.

Excel: one spreadsheet had names, addresses, number of people in the family, what gifts they gave us, thank-you note status, and RSVP status (which was a color-coded highlight to the row). One spreadsheet had the budget breakdown (how much we alloted to each area, what money was paid to whom when, etc).

Outlook: to remind me of meetings, appointments, dealines, and parties.

Delegation: the most helpful tool we had. I gave several trusted family and friends areas of responsibilities (music, church decoration, bouquets, etc) and a handful of cash and let them make it happen. I was not disappointed in the least, and my family and friends enjoyed being such a part of things.

~Q

blogmotron

I'm just starting on the planning thing, but am finding Google Notebook really helpfull. You can clip sections of articles, the whole article or even pictures and organize them in the notebook. My fiance and I are set up to share the notebook so we can see what ideas/pictures the other one has found. It also allows you to organize tabs and make comments (ie: I like the colors of this cake, but not the shape...)

IntheATX

I would recommend using www.abeautifulaffairoftheheart.com to find your minister or whoever to marry you. They are very nicely priced and will find someone if your area. Also they can give you other recommendations on other things to get and/or do. Our guy was great and dealt with all our questions perfectly.

JCHarpo

Because it was a second marriage for both of us, C and I had a very clear idea of exactly how many times you'll open that big, dusty wedding album: Zero.

Among our friends and family with their many digital cameras, we ended up with over a thousand pictures, mostly candids, and I was able to pull out almost a hundred pretty good pictures and a few dozen really great ones.

It cost us nothing, and I own all the rights if I want to do something else with them. That won't be the case with most wedding photographers.

MikeT

It's sort of off topic, but don't pay for a DJ. We used my MacBook + iTunes and it was perfect (I'm sure a PC/Winamp would have done just fine too). We asked for song requests in the initial RSVPs and I downloaded them through iTunes, worked perfectly. I set up separate playlists depending on the event, but it just took one person to click play. One DJ we saw cost the same as another MacBook, so that was our motivation right there.

zoso

Oh, btw, we ended up having ours at a yacht club in a large urban island municipal park. I insisted we have windows instead of being in yet another windowless suburban hall. The guests really enjoyed being outside, strolling the piers and looking at the boats and city skyline. It was considerably cheaper than other hotels & halls we checked.

Equis

My wife and I planned our whole wedding in about six months, though we had about 8 to start with.

First, elope. It takes the pressure off of everything having to go perfectly on the big day and you'll have much more fun.

Use theknot.com for their calendar (when to do what), tips, tricks and advice, but do your own homework with regard to vendors.

Use spreadsheets to keep track of everything.

Have the wedding somewhere interesting... museum, conservatory, park, etc. I looked at having it at the public library, abandoned floor of a local skyscraper, a local on-stage theater, the zoo and a couple other places. Some will welcome the idea and others won't.

Get creative with everything and spend money only where you think it's important.

G'luck. ;-)

Equis

I want to second Perfect Table Plan (www.perfecttableplan.com) although we had hefty use of Google Docs and Google Spreadsheet. We wrote our own vows collaboratively for awhile, and task management was easy (although it would've been great if there was an actual task management tool in Google).

That said, I wrote my own PHP RSVP system - it was pretty awesome. Every invitation had a "postcard" that had the return address already printed on the back - the invitee just had to check off "not attending" "chicken marsala" "roast beef" or "vegetarian". Easy as pie, but even easier was that each RSVP card had a number in the top right-hand corner. All they had to do was go to our website, put that number in, and they could RSVP online, or even change meals until we locked it.

Same backend exported CSV files and I used it to track who gave us what gift.

Come to think of it, I should probably try to market it.

razordu30

Re: Lost Invitations in Google Docs

Click the "Revisions" tab and click the drop-down box and you should see every revision ever made to your spreadsheet! Your information should still be there. :)

bjhanifin

We are getting married in 3 weeks and have found Basecamp from 37Signals.com to be really good. Being able to assign tasks to people and also have the Writeboards for freeform text is great.

barnacle

For tasks, I just have a little notebook that fills up with stuff and gets crossed out. It's durable enough to bring to all of our vendors for planning.

The early budget was done in google docs so that my fiancee and I could rough things out during spare minutes of the day.

The guest list was done in excel, for easy mail merge when printing outer invitations. We weren't about to have anyone lose an invitation in the mail to bad handwriting, and only the inner invitation "has" to be handwritten. It has since been expanded to include RSVPs and gift information for the thank you cards.

Most importantly, we had an initial date for the wedding 6 months out. We decided to push this back to 12 months once we started to plan things, and were very happy we did. This last week is proving to be hectic, even with the extra time.

msde

We used the free version of Basecamp to plan our wedding. It was very helpful!

monsur

My wife and I used Smart Wedding for planning our wedding. It'll track all the things you asked for, plus print table cards, invites, etc. if you wish to go that way. It's a commercial product, but not really expensive. If nothing else, take a look and maybe get some ideas on how/what to track that you might not have thought of.

Oh, and congratulations! :)

chubba27

Give mother-in-law a simple task (any task) to keep her away from the rest of the planning.

When we got married my future mother-in-law got the task of arranging glasses and champagne for a post-ceremonial toast. That kept her from interfering with the rest of our planning.

My recommendation is to give every pushy relative a task and let them focus on it.

/Per

per9000

You could use WeddingControl to plan your wedding. It can help manage your guest list, tasks, budget, rsvp, and even create mailing labels.

cmichel

One thing: Do not. Do NOT. DO NOT GO CHEAP ON YOUR PHOTOGRAPHER. A great number of brides never see their pictures... Definitely worthwhile to go with a pro.

joiedevie