How to Make a Wedding Planning Binder

You can customize your own wedding planner to fit your needs.

Planning for a wedding without a professional wedding planner can be a very chaotic and stressful process unless you are organized and can handle multitasking without going insane. To save your sanity, create a wedding planning binder to keep everything in one place. By making it yourself, you'll be able to customize it to fit your needs for your wedding.

Things You'll Need

• 3-inch thick binder with clear inserts on front and back cover
• 2 packages of pastel dividers
• 2 pastel pre-punched pocket folders
• 1 package pastel copier paper
• 1 package pastel filler paper
• Color printer
• Wedding planning magazines
• Wedding themed scrapbook materials
• Scissors
• Multi-colored gel pens

Instructions

1. Create a front and back cover for your wedding planner using the pastel copier paper, your computer and your printer. Create a catchy title in your word processor using decorative fonts and colors, add some clip art found on the Internet, and print it out. Further decorate the paper using cutouts from wedding planning magazines and wedding themed scrapbook materials.

2. Add the dividers. You are going to need several sections in your wedding planning binder. For example, you might need sections for the guest list, budget, ceremony, music, cake, reception, flowers and fashion. Using the multicolored gel pens and your best handwriting, label each divider with what you intend to fill the binder with.

3. Add two pocket folders in the back of the binder. In these folders, you'll place magazine clippings, menus, estimates from vendors, maps to venue locations, and samples of invitations and other necessary samples for your wedding planning. It might also be a good idea to place an envelope in your wedding planner for business cards and fabric swatches.

4. Add the filler paper. You are going to be taking a lot of notes as you plan your wedding. In addition, you are going to be conducting a lot of interviews with vendors. Place the filler paper in the front of the binder for easy access while you're on the run, or on the phone.

5. Add printouts. Using the pastel copier paper, print out checklists and worksheets found online or copied from wedding planning magazines. Some checklists and worksheets you are going to need in your binder include guest lists, budgets, ceremony sites, officiant interview worksheets, rental company worksheets, stationery, wedding gown worksheet, and so on. You can also purchase packages of worksheets. Find a link in the Resources section.

Tips & Warnings

• Use a thick binder so there is plenty of room to add things as you make plans.

• Don't forget to add pages for contact lists.

• Keep your binder with you at all times in case something comes up while you're running errands.

• Your pages are going to become tattered or the hole punches are going to rip as you use the binder, so be sure to purchase some hole-punch reinforcement stickers.

• If your handwriting isn't as neat as you'd like, print out the labels for your dividers.

• Fill your binder with what you need, not what others are convincing you that you need.

Resources

• Read this Article in Spanish
• OnlineOrganizing: Wedding Planner Tabs Kit