We are all busy these days, it seems everyone I speak to is drained at the end of each day and the constant struggle to find balance is something we all deal with. And boom, now you are adding planning a huge, monumental, expensive, and complicated event to your long to do list! Yikes. Farewell work/life balance, hello stress —– wait, not so fast.

Here are a couple things I love and utilize in my own business. Whether you are a bride or a groom or another wedding professional I hope maybe these tools work for you too!

RocketBook

I LOVE MY ROCKETBOOK, not even exaggerating a bit. This small reusable notebook is the smartest thing I think I own (sorry iPhone).

Okay, so maybe it ain’t that “smart” but seriously as someone that still values writing with a pen instead of typing into my phone I love this little notebook. The RocketBook is a reusable notebook that you can erase and also via the rocketbook app you can automatically send it to different apps/folders (dropbox for instance) that you use to keep those notes digitally (like a filing cabinet)  and then erase the pages and start over. Not only do I love the green aspect of this (I went through a lot of paper notebooks) but its really wonderful to have a place to write it all down, file it digitally and revisit if you need to. The app works really smoothly and I am super impressed with the ease.

I love taking notes during all my calls and I also love a long to do list, the erasable pages allow me to take a ton of notes but also keep it all super organized.

AllSeated(dot)Com

I have noticed that a number of my clients love to have floorplans to visualize early in the process. I love that AllSeated makes it really easy to give client agency and power over their floorplans. While some venues really love to keep control over floorplans, the beauty of visual planning is amazing. Since some of us are super visual (myself included) with AllSeated you can play with spacing, table numbers, placement and even keep track of your guests RSVPs within the program. My clients that choose to use it rave about it, and I love a good visual tool.

Google Drive

I don’t know what we did before Google gave us a suite of powerful online tools. Google Drive is particularly great for collaborations, keeping track of vendor quotes, and the thing I love best about it is sometimes I have clients that don’t want to take on another app or systems (such as Aisle Planner) and they are comfortable using google docs and drive to collaborate so why not. It is a consistent and reliable tool that everyone is comfortable using so let’s use it!

Trello

To me Trello is the ultimate to do list, imagine that Trello was a giant white board with updated on who is doing what. This is especially powerful for collaboration, I tend to use this when I am working on corporate events or full planning where there are multiple parties involved in the process (meaning family). I also love that it’s a smart phone app that you can update anytime inspiration hits you. Oh and its super organized and breaks down into categories and actions – this is an organizational mavens dream app.

Don’t know where to start? Do some googling to find helpful trello board inspiration.

As a little bonus I am going to share something I get asked a lot – what is the least helpful app for wedding planning – PINTEREST

Don’t get me wrong, I use pinterest too. But I find that pinterest is one of the leading reasons couples have unrealistic wedding dreams. Yes, pinterest can help you create a dream and theme and style for your wedding day but it can also give you goals that are way beyond your budget, give you anxiety and clutter your mind with too many images that are cute instead of fitting of the wedding you want thus causing you to lose focus. So use pinterest wisely.

 

I really hope that some of these organizational tools are enjoyed by you as much as I enjoy them. Now get out there and plan, plan, plan!