So today marks the big 1-0-0 for the Star household. I can't believe how quickly everything's coming up!
I thought I'd make a quick list of the major things we have left to accomplish before the big day, if only to make you mid-October ladies feel better. Don't judge me because I've been engaged for almost two years and still have so much left to do ;)
- Officiant paperwork (more on this later)
- Book plane tickets to Greece
- Sign contract with rentals company
- Something old!
- Parent gifts
- Book rehearsal dinner (we already have the restaurant picked out)
- Book a cake baker (one more tasting left to go)
- First dance lessons
- Ceremony. I'm going to leave it at that.
- Finish 2nd veil
- Schedule hair trial and appointments
- Guestbook assembled
- Pick wholesale flowers
- Dress fittings
- Programs
- Seating chart
- Event insurance
- Pay final balances with vendors
- Finish bridesmaid gifts and Mister Star's gift
These are just the large things. There are at least a dozen small tasks and crafts that I'm not even listing here. I'm beginning to feel a little frazzled and like I need another month or two! Luckily for me, I've seen many a Bee get stressed and feel like she couldn't possibly get everything done, but totally pull it off with time to spare! I know we can do it.
What's helping me to stay sane is a little organization. At the beginning of our engagement, I started out with one long list of things to do. Talk about overwhelming. On top of that, I was getting email reminders from The Knot every few weeks nagging me about all the "unfinished to-do list items" that I had piling up. No bueno. Then I stumbled across Mrs. Cheese's post about how she was keeping her last minute to-do list from terrifying her by putting items into either a "sooner" or "later" category, according to the urgency of the task. It sounded like an awesome idea to me and so I created a Google Document with my to-do's organized in this format and spread the word to immediate families and the bridal party that they could take a look at it, too, if they were wondering how they might be able to help.
Unfortunately, this method of organization still wasn't enough for my frazzled self and I still found myself staring at this impossibly long list and wondering where to start. And my bridal party, as awesomely helpful as they've been throughout this process, was having trouble looking at it, remembering that it existed, etc.
Enter: Fairy Bridesmaid, the most organized woman on the face of the planet. She created an Excel spreadsheet for me that is saving my life. She created deadlines of every two weeks and organized my to-do's so that I know exactly what I should be working on next and when it has to be finished by. For instance, there were four items to finish by July 1st, five by July 15, and it continues that way until October.
Old method on the left, Fairy Bridesmaid's schedule on the right
This has been really helping me to not stress out because I have manageable chunks of things to do and always know what the next project should be. At the same time, I don't have everything scheduled to the day because that would probably just make me more tense if I had a busy day and got behind!
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