Wedding Planner

Vendors and tasks

The wedding date prints in the top-right. Below it, a vendor table with a cost column, and a checklist of tasks — six to sixteen vendors, eight to twenty tasks, sized to whatever kind of wedding you are having.

The vendor table is the money

Almost the whole budget sits in a handful of suppliers. So does almost every overrun.

Write the quoted figure against each one as you book, not the figure you hoped for. Then add the two things quotes routinely exclude: VAT, and travel or overnight costs for anyone coming from a distance. A photographer's day rate and a photographer's invoice are frequently different documents.

Note the deposit and the balance date beside each. Deposits are usually non-refundable, and the balances tend to cluster in the last fortnight, which is the point at which people discover the cashflow problem.

Book in the right order

Venue and date first, because everything else prices and schedules off them. Then whoever is in shortest supply for your date — typically photographer, then catering if the venue does not provide it, then music.

Everything else has more slack in it than the internet suggests. Flowers can wait. So can the cake, the stationery, the transport — and waiting sometimes improves the price.

The checklist wants deadlines

Not a list of jobs. A list of jobs with dates against them.

Legal notice periods are the ones that catch people: in England and Wales you must give notice at a register office and there is a statutory waiting period, and the rules differ in Scotland, Northern Ireland and everywhere else. Check yours early, because it is the one item on the sheet that cannot be hurried with money.

Others with real lead times: dress alterations, suit hire, invitations to be printed and posted, final numbers to the caterer, seating plan, and anything requiring a licence or a permission.

Print it and take it with you

Venue visits and supplier meetings are where details get agreed, and then forgotten. A sheet written on in the room is worth a great deal more than anybody's memory of the conversation, and it means the second visit picks up where the first one finished rather than going over the same ground.

One sheet, one couple

Fill it in together. A wedding planned by one person is a wedding one person is responsible for, and that is the commonest source of the arguments this is meant to prevent.

Related: the party and event planner for a smaller occasion, and the sinking funds tracker for saving towards it.