In late 2003, I proposed to my then-girlfriend and she said "yes". We savored the joy that comes with being newly engaged during the holidays and then set about planning the wedding with the new year. The euphoria gradually gave way to a general sense of being overwhelmed as the big day began to take on a life of its own. If you've been through the process, you understand. And if you are just preparing to embark on your own journey, you will soon discover what we mean.
Planning a wedding is a full time job. At every turn there was an additional detail to consider, another vendor ready to help us part with our money. Like an onion, the complexity unfolds layer by layer until you wake up one day in a cold panic.
We tried a variety of strategies to stay organized, from buying a paper-based notebook planner to my wife's forray into theknot.com to stuffing our pockets and purse with sticky notes and business cards. Over time, we began to collect more and more of our information in one place: Excel.
Both being Excel-nuts, we had already created an Excel workbook for our guest list and invitations as well as another one to keep track of our wedding budget. Then we began to craft what would become known as the Wedding Master Event Plan.
It started small and simple: a high-level overview of the major parts of the event (bachelor/bachelorette parties), rehearsal dinner, ceremony and reception. Then by stepwise refinement, we refined it, adding details as they became known or determined.
Along the way, we added a To Do list so that we could both keep track of all the loose ends in one place.
After not having a key vendor's phone number one too many times, we also added a master list of contact information for our wedding party and key vendors.
As we got closer to the big day, additional tabs were added to keep track of our volunteers, stuff that needed to be brought to the ceremony or the reception (baby pictures, etc.), accomodations information for our out-of-town guests, and the table arrangements for our dinner.
We shared this resource with our key vendors, parents and wedding party.
Some months after our wedding, a friend of mine asked if he could get a copy of our wedding planner to help in planning their celebration this year. After putting it off for several weeks, I finally took a little time and stripped out the details of our own event and provided him with a copy earlier today. As I did so, it occurred to me that perhaps others could benefit from having access to our Excel Template as well.
So it is in this spirit that I offer you the opportunity to download a fully-functional version of our Excel Template.
Download wedding_master_event_plan_template.xls
This Template should work in any modern version of Excel (we used it on Windows 2000 XP). I offer this download "As Is" and no warranties are express or implied. Use at your own risk.
If you like this and it helps you in your wedding planning, we would love to hear about it. I am leaving comments open on this post so please comment on your experiences with this Excel Template below. And if you would like to support the continued development of this and related Excel Templates, you may do so via PayPal. Thank you!
Recent Comments