To Buy a Wedding Planner or Not...

I would like to start by saying that if you can afford to hire a professional wedding planner or you dont want to do the labour work of planning a wedding, by all means, save yourself the stress and annoyance and hire one.

They are expensive though, so we have opted not to hire one and to do it ourselves. Apart from the expense i'm the type of person who likes the gratification of going to an event and knowing I made it happen. The next question I had after we made that decision was; is it worth buying a wedding planning book/ organizer? So naturally I put it out to facebook (best way to get quick answers) and I got mixed reviews. Most people said they barely used theirs and that it was too much to fill in, others suggested I use websites like theknot.com or mywedding.com (both are excellent) and most just told me to start my own binder. I decided to go searching anyway, I am signed up with both of those websites and while they are useful, I am the type of person who needs hardcopies of everything.

So Josh and I trekked out to Chapters one afternoon and spent about a half hour looking at the numerous options that they had for us. Immediately I eliminated all of them that didn't allow me to add things either via a binder or file folder. I also eliminated all the ones that had mostly U.S. content. Then I started looking for particular things, I wanted one that had a place to write in how the proposal happened so that in my most stressful days I could look at that and feel happiness again. I also wanted one that had a detailed budget outline. We decided on the Ultimate Wedding Planner and Organizer, it can be found here http://www.amazon.com/The-Ultimate-Wedding-Planning-Kit/dp/1887169733/ref=sr_1_14?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1332369905&sr=1-14
I chose it because it came with a planning book with ideas and a budget creator. It had the proposal section and it had a labeled file folder included, not to mention a pocket planning book I can keep in my purse.

I have found it useful so far, it could be because i'm in the "honeymoon" phase of engaged life. Its a lot of filling in but at the same time I want to be over prepared since I am doing this whole shin dig by myself. So I say YAY for wedding planning books.