Massive To Do List

Alternative title: Getting our Sh*t Together. I mentioned earlier that apart from booking the venue and photographer, I've largely been a "deadbeat bride. " A few things have contributed to my deadbeat attitude.

1) I'm frikin' busy! I teach a 4:4 load, I'm trying to be successful at what I do, we're house hunting, and I'm making more of an effort (compared to when I was in grad school) to have an actual life. Fitting wedding planning into all of that has been difficult.

2) I'm trying to adopt a pretty laid back attitude about the whole wedding and focus more on the meaning of our marriage. I don't want to obsess over centerpieces, dresses, etc. Sure I want everything to be awesome, and fun, and I want a pretty dress and pretty centerpieces. But…have you been on the internet lately?...there are like a bajillion wedding sites out there with a bajillion ideas. It's easy to obsess over all of the options if you let yourself.

But…as laidback as I may want to be…and as busy as I am…a wedding still requires planning. Sigh.

My (silly) hope was that we could book some vendors and then wait until the summer (when I'm not teaching) to work out all of the details. But then I started realizing how much one decision is dependent on the other. For example, I wanted to start contacting florists for quotes. But then I realized I have no idea what kind of flowers I want. What colors? What style? Do I even want flowers? Then I turned to the internet for answers…probably lost 4 hours of my day…still had no idea what kind of flowers I wanted…and decided to just stop thinking about it.

That was probably not the best approach. Usually, when I'm overwhelmed by a big project, I make a to-do-list, and that helps to reduce my stress. So finally…I made one for the wedding.

This is the biggest to-do-list in the history of me.

First I organized everything by month, and filled in all of the major stuff that I knew had to get done by a certain time. Then I was able to work backwards to figure out when I needed to start on a certain task (i.e., invitations should go out in July…so designing should start in June…ideas should be bounced around in May). It took me a whole night to write it all out. But it was well worth it. I feel like I have a much better plan to tackle this wedding.

This list is really a master plan for the whole process. It's not very pretty. So the next night, I made a pretty one for the month of March…broken down by week. Not really necessary, but fun. I'm trying to figure out a good place to hang it so we see it everyday.

Finally, I made the list for this month. I find it helpful to write out all of the steps in accomplishing a task. If I just write down "launch website" … it's too vauge, and probably won't get done. So every little step in accomplishing all of our monthly tasks has been put on this page.

I know it may seem like list making overkill…if you're counting, I have 3 lists. But as long as it's keeping us on track (which it is at the moment), I plan to keep it up.

Are you a list maker? What works for you? Any tips for me?