Planning your wedding is great fun, but it’s also pretty stressful. It takes a lot of time, and there’s so many things you’ve got to stay on top of! Keeping all the plates spinning isn’t all plain sailing and it can get overwhelming. When I planned my wedding, there was one free tool that kept me sane and that was Google Drive & the Google Suite – the only wedding planning tool you need! Here’s why…
We planned our wedding in 16 weeks, and Brad said, “Well that was easy why doesn’t everyone do it that quick” – I guess that makes it obvious who did most of the work! Whether your engagement is 2 months or 2 years there’ll be so many lists to keep track of: Budgets, timings for when you need what booked, guest lists, table plans, along with all the suppliers details, let alone the on the day plan!
It may not have a pretty cover, like the wedding planning folders you can buy but I promise Google Drive & the Google Suite is the tool you need. It’ll ensure you keep everything in one place, help you keep on track, and make sure everyone knows what’s going on! (It includes Google Spreadsheets, Google Docs, Google Forms and more!)
Here’s three reasons I love G Suite, I use it every day and why it’s the perfect wedding planning tool you’ll need:
1. It’s all online!
This means you can access it from anywhere on any device, all you need is your google login. There’s apps for your phone/tablet which also allow you to download the documents for offline access (which makes it easier if your venue is in the countryside without any signal!) Also because it is online you won’t have the worry of losing any of it, it saves as you go, in fact it even backs up previous versions!
2. It’s shareable!
All you have to do is share the link and voila: whether it’s your bridal squad, groomsmen, wedding planner, venue or suppliers they’ll all have all the details they need! You can even give people different levels of access: you can allow them to make live edits that’ll appear on your screen as they do them, or you can limit it so they can’t make changes but they can still add comments (that’s what I did!)
3. It’s free!
Honestly, since discovering Google Docs it has changed how I organise my life completely. And it is genuinely the tool that got me through wedding planning in one piece, but what’s really amazing is it’s totally free!
So how can you use Google Suite to help you plan your wedding?
It works a lot like Microsoft Office (Google Docs is the equivalent of Word, Google Sheets is the equivalent of Excel etc.) but the key difference is it’s all online and it’s shareable. Here’s some practical ways I used G Suite to help me plan my wedding:
– RSVP
I set up a Google Form that I linked to from our wedding website, the entries from a Google Form get automatically sent to a spreadsheet which meant I had all the guests’ information in one place. Making it easy to keep track of and share any info (dietary requirements!) with our venue.
– Guest List
We wrote our guest list on a spreadsheet, which (whilst highlighting just how huge my family is) helped us keep to the right numbers. It also made it easy to send a link to our parents so they could check we hadn’t missed anyone important!
– Budget
There’s loads of free wedding budget spreadsheets (Google it!) you can download online, so I did that. When you add a spreadsheet to your Google Drive it’ll convert it so you can use it on Google Sheets! Brilliant! And yes we still went over the budget a couple of times, but I knew exactly how much, and in the end we were £4 under budget!
– To do list
I have a habit of storing my to do list in my head, and funnily enough it makes it pretty easy for me to get overwhelmed. I set up a Google Doc with my running to do list, which helped me keep track of where I was up to.
– On the day plan
Everyone laughed at my minute by minute plan with every detail anyone could possibly need, but it worked so well! I emailed it round to all my suppliers and a couple of people who were helping organise the day beforehand, they added their comments and everyone had all the details they needed.
– Last Minute changes
As I was looking through all my wedding planning documents I saw that I also added a ‘last minute band ughhh’ tab on our spreadsheet. Our band dropped out last minute due to illness. Thankfully our maids of honour got hunting and popped all the details on a spreadsheet! It was sorted so quickly, and I’m forever grateful to Soul to Soul Acoustic who were amazing!
Not sure where to start? I didn’t know either! I googled it and found a free downloadable budget planner and a plan for what I needed to book first. (It actually gave the steps of how to organise a wedding in 12 months, so I condensed it into 4!) You can create your Google Docs, Spreadsheets and more at drive.google.com all you need is a free Google account!
Happy Wedding Planning and don’t stress! If you want any help at all my inbox is open, and I honestly love chatting wedding planning!
