My first real venture into reading a blog consistently was WeddingBee. I started reading before the idea of marriage even was a topic of conversation. I found WeddingBee through my co-worker who was chosen as a bee last spring. She is now Mrs. Tomato. Since then I started casually reading the blog and then it became a routine in the morning. With so many different voices of all the bees, there were so many ideas and points of view. It was great!
However, the entire time that I was "secretly" reading WeddingBee, part of me felt like I shouldn't be. I wasn't a bride to be. I wasn't helping plan a wedding. I didn't have anything to do with the wedding world. But I enjoyed reading the blog, especially since I would in the future...someday.
After the engagement, I felt like I had a legitimate reason to be reading WeddingBee. I didn't feel embarrassed to be reading bridal things because now I had a reason. Now I use WeddingBee for all sorts of inspiration. The other bees have had so many great ideas and a lot of it was DIY. I'm looking to do as much (within reason) DIY. I'm going for a personalized look that is entirely us. Thanks WeddingBee for being such an inspiration!
12.22.2008
Favorite Blog: Wedding Bee
7.22.2008
New Fabulous-ness!
7.20.2008
How to keep your budget in check
I've been using a great online tool to keep track of my expenses wedding and non-wedding related. Back before we were engaged, I was really focused on beefing up my understanding of personal finances. I borrowed books from the library written by Suze Orman, Jean Chatzsky, and I read David Bach's Smart Women Finish Rich book cover-to-cover. I was almost hyper-vigilant about my finances after that. I wanted to make sure that I wasn't spending more than I had and saving all that I could.
Then one day, I was reading an issue of Money Magazine that had featured a new resource for tracking expenses and then analyzing your habits. It's called Mint. It's a free tool and still technically in it's beta phase, but so far, it has proven to be an amazing thing, to me at least. You can track all your accounts, even investment accounts and it will summarize your spending habits and suggest better alternatives for credit cards if applicable.
Later on, after we were engaged, I found this article about using Mint to track wedding expenses. Within Mint, you can tag your expenses (similar to blog tagging) and then sort to see where you are at with spending. It's great! Try it out!
6.23.2008
Where to Begin: Timing
With an engagement that is 16 months long, it can sometimes feel like an eternity, but for whatever reason, 2008 is quickly slipping through my fingers. I can't believe that July is literally around the corner and that we will soon be coming up on the one year marker. So this begs the question, how do I time what needs to get done when?
The Knot has a handy dandy checklist of when you "should" be completing items. One of my coworkers said that she used this as her wedding bible. She said she felt a great feeling of a accomplishment checking each task off. Of course there are other wedding planners and other resources online as well. It would seem that wedding "stuff" is abundant and easy to find. But unless you stick to one schedule or checklist, wedding planning can be a bear of a project.
So far, I've booked the church and the reception site. I'm in the midst of designing our Save the Dates and our invitations are on the horizon. I've done little else. I have started researching DJs and florists. I know that for myself, I'll really have to set deadlines for talking to some of these folks so that they don't get booked up. Also, with a year to go, I feel comfortable not rushing around trying to plan everything. In reality, I can't plan everything yet. But I must remind myself not to become complacent and lazy. I've got to keep the ball rolling.
How are you timing your planning?