Organizing the Wedding

This advice just came to me in an e-mail from Susan, a library student at UIUC where I teach.

Just a thought I had the week before my wedding:  all the hoopla and organization is specifically planned to keep you from thinking about what you’re doing!  Don’t worry — next year will be twenty years for me and my husband.

The best thing I did was have one of those 6″x10″ spiral notebooks.  Each page was a separate topic with notes, phone #s, etc. (like dress, flowers, music).  It really helped.  Of course that was twenty years ago — now you can do it on your laptop or PDA.  I just liked being able to hold it in my hand.

Seems like simple advice, but boy what a difference. And that kind of organizing is just what you’d expect from a librarian!

In our relationship, Terry is the planner often joking that he might need to go to Planners Anonymous. But for the wedding, I’m on top of the planning process. (I think.)

Being the geek that I am, of course I am using a technological notebook. I’m using Notetaker by Aquaminds, a very inexpensive a cool way to organize information into electronic notebooks. Even though we are only having a small family wedding plus two close couple friends (total = 12 people including us!) I still want it to be lovely but casual, contemporary with tradition and ritual, and light but memorable. All of that takes planning and whether you use a spiral binder, post-it notes, carved tablets or a computer system, take Susan’s advice. I am!