Wow how time flies!

In the next couple of months I will decide where to get married and officially lock in the date. As promised, here are some sites I’ve used to help me pick a location.

The Knot

http://www.theknot.com/

The Knot continues to be a priceless resource. In addition to tips on what to consider when picking a venue, I get a quick overview of local wedding sites, contact information to follow up on my own, and I have the ability to save my favorites alongside all the other services I’m considering.

Here Comes the Guide

http://www.herecomestheguide.com/

Here Comes the Guide offers much more detail about the different wedding venues, so you can narrow down your options before you contact the location or arrange an in person visit. As with The Knot, Here Comes the Guide also includes lots of sound advice on deciding what will be the perfect location for me.

Wedding Wire

http://www.weddingwire.com/

I haven’t looked around Wedding Wire all that much. In fact, I only just stumbled upon it while writing this blog, but it looks like it offers yet another way to evaluate wedding sites. It’s definitely worth looking into (I’ll let you know what I find).

Of course, none of these sites actually give me a place to make in-depth side-by-side ratings the venues my fiance and I are considering. Since scouring the internet didn’t provide any results, I decided to build my own in Excel.

The Vendorator

“A highly customizable tool that helps you track your vendors and rate them at the same time”

Download the Tool

I came up with nine key factors and set a rating scale based on how important each piece is in my evaluation.

My Rating System*

Cost( Numbers are not sequential because this rating makes a bigger pull in making my decision)

6= Minimal to no fee

3= Within Budget

1= Doable, but slightly over budget

0= Out of budget

Location Aesthetics

4= Stunning!

3= Beautiful

2= Could work, but needs some improvement

1= Needs major improvement

Wedding Photography Backdrop (y=1 or n=0)

Liquor (y=1 or n=0)

Wine and beer (y=1 or n=0)

Ceremony / Reception Combo Site (y=1 or n=0)

Kid Friendly

3= Playground or something similar

2= Space available for kids to play (could set up an area with minimal effort)

1= Small space available for kids, but would need lots of work

0= No kid space available

Extras Needed (linens, table settings, chair covers, etc.)

3= Three or less items need to be rented

2= Four or less items need to be rented

1= Five or more items to be rented

Catering Options

4= Can bring own caterer in with no extra fee

3= Preferred Caterer list with several options no extra cost

2= Only one catering option available

1= Can Bring Own caterer in with extra fee

*Clearly you might be looking for something different. Feel free to adjust the scores to what you’re looking for. And please let me know how you’d change it! This spreadsheet is still a work in progress, I welcome any suggestions that will make it better!

I recently had the opportunity to go to a fancy wedding boutique and try on some amazing dresses. While the experience was spectacular and having found (as of right now) “the dress”, the price tag was a bit of a shocker… a $9000.00 shocker! Being on a tight budget, $9000.00 is just not doable. Now, I have read on several blogs, websites, etc that it is pretty much a bad idea to go try on dresses that are out of your budget, so I mentally prepared myself. I will say that once that perfect wedding dress is on it is really hard to go back and to not think about it day in and day out. So I decided to head to the internet with the thought “I must be able to find my dream dress at a lower cost”.

Google here I come.

Conducting a search for the dress name and style, that I tried on at the boutique, didn’t really yield what I was looking for, but I did stumble upon a site called www.preownedweddingdresses.com. What a great site! It is a site where brides and bridal stores can buy and sell their lightly used wedding gowns and samples.

• Several search options (by designer, size, style, etc.)
• You can save dresses that you are interested in purchasing to your favorites
• You can sign up as a seller. Once the big day is over and you don’t need your dress anymore, it gives you a chance to recuperate some of the cost.
• Bridal accessories are also available to buy and sell
• The site also has many tips bout buying and selling, sizing, and general tips

Many of the dresses are about 50-65% off the original price! I even found my dream dress on there for only $3100, which unfortunately is still out of my budget, but as you can see there is light at the end of the tunnel. Even though the dress is currently out of my budget I did decide to at least contact the seller and they were very willing to negotiate the price. (Cross your fingers for me!!)

Below are a few more sites that may help with your dress hunt and feel free to suggest anymore that you may find out there.
http://www.recycledbride.com/
http://www.oncewed.com/

Stay tuned for another post with resources about finding your venue and tracking your options using online tools.

In a year-and-a-half I will marry my best friend of over six years (Rashad), and I am planning the majority of my wedding online.

By doing so I take advantage of new internet tools and “go green” at the same time - and I will share what I find with you.

Right now I am using The Knot (www.theknot.com) for the core of my planning. The site was founded in 1996 as a modern answer to the “white-gloved, outdated” etiquette experts favored by previous generations. And according to their website they are “the Internet’s most-trafficked one-stop wedding planning solution.”

And it’s not just boasting. The Knot really has many of the elements needed for planning.

• Articles on budgeting my wedding
• Tips on selecting dresses & accessories (my favorite part!)
• A “Knottie” profile that lets me track of all my guests and manage my communications with them.

The Knot even offers a budgeting tool. However, with the help of a quick Google search, I found one which I find much better.

Wedding Budget (www.weddingplanningonabudget.com) gives me an interactive spreadsheet through Google docs that I can use to plan and estimate costs. With it I can:

• See all my likely wedding needs
• Split my overall budget into percentages that let me meet my needs
• Let me see how my costs change when I play with those percentages
• Add in actual costs and see how that shifts everything

And since the spreadsheet is on Google docs, I can access it from any computer that can reach the internet while remaining secure in the knowledge that nobody else can get at it unless I let them.

So far I have not needed to use one piece of paper!

Mind you there is still a ways to go until the big day, so I’m definitely looking for more ways to keep it up. If you know of any online resources to help plan a wedding (or really any paperless tools for planning a big event), I’d love to hear about it!