Wedmin

This week has been about the not-so-fun, not-so-pretty side of wedding planning. I've been busy with lists, spreadsheets and website building - it's all about the wedmin.

Those of you planning a wedding or recently married will know exactly what I mean. Those of you who've just stumbled across this, or are slightly further removed from the planning process may well be wondering what I'm talking about.

Brides up north describes it as "the admin side of wedding planning that no one warned you about." It includes things like proof reading stationery, making sure you have all your guests addresses, filing important receipts and chasing RSVPs.

I spent almost an entire day last week creating our wedsite - that's wedding website, obviously. There is so much information people need relating to your big day, and it makes sense to display this information in a format that most of your guests are used to. You could choose the fancy option of including inserts with your invites - but by the time you've added hotel details, maps, RSVP cards, gift list information and taxi numbers you've cut down a forest and trebled the price. And that's before you consider postage...

As we're sending evites, I could just create a document with this information on and attach it to the email. But it wouldn't look anywhere near as good - the wedsite allows me to be creative and continue the "fun" vibe of the day.

Following a comment on a rock my wedding post, I've decided to go with moonfruit.com for our wedsite. It has more flexibility than many of the arranged wedding websites, allowing me to ignore the "our story" and "lift sharing" pages, and focus on more interesting things - like our unique RSVP page. We haven't finalised the wording for this yet, but there's going to be more than two options and we're hoping to make our guests laugh! I've also created google maps for the ceremony and reception venues, added a mini-slideshow of photos and instructions on how to book a hotel room at our venue. It's almost finished - and I'm going to come right out and say it looks AWESOME!

I've also had both sets of parents involved with the guest list - again not quite finished but almost there. I'm still missing a couple of addresses - and Gadget's evening guests - but the bulk of the work is done.

The guest list forms part of our giant shared google spreadsheet, and includes names, emails, and addresses, with additional columns for RSVPs, menus and table numbers. I also use the spreadsheet to keep track of wedding costs - everything that gets spent is entered into it, with a note of who paid (us or my parents) and any further payments due. It's also the to-do list, and boxes turn red if a task is overdue.

We have a separate system for receipts, which get scanned into dropbox (very useful for all kinds of things) before being filed. Hopefully this means we won't loose them when we change countries!

I'm very aware that nothing will get organised between mid December and mid January when we're travelling (very slowly) back to the UK, and that lots of things have to be done quite soon after we get back. I'm trying to remember this as I plough through the boring wedmin tasks - although I have to say the website building was fun once I got to grips with it! I may have got a bit carried away...