jotting jennifer

I just went through how I digitally keep track of items and files through Google but there are just some things that are best kept on paper.

There are plenty of wedding binders and folders and such out there but they just weren’t for me. I’ve never really liked binders because you never have a hole punch when you need it and they’re hard to write in. A folder didn’t have enough pockets for me and an expandable file holds everything nicely but you can’t see it as easily as I’d like.

Let me introduce you to one of my favorite recent Target purchases.

Amazing and it was only $4! // Personal Photo

I can’t find this online but it was at my local Target in the office supply section near the expandable files. I believe it was called an Up and Up File Tab Divider but I could be making that up.

Why do I love this? First of all, it’s gray and has pops of bright colors with the tabs. It’s like it was meant for my wedding! (It does come in other colors as well) It’s plastic and durable and the pockets are on each side of the tabs. It has eight tabs (four front and four back) and I labeled them the following: To Do/Budget, Purchases, Friday Vendors, Saturday Vendors, Ceremony, Reception Vendors, Honeymoon, Registries/Misc.

Flipping through the pages of awesome. // Personal Photo

To Do/Budget – With this being the front pocket, I am able to slip quick notes or ideas into it. I also can keep a to do list right on top to jot other ideas down. I also have a printout of my budget spreadsheets there as well.

Purchases – I keep printouts of any online and pre-wedding purchases I made here. I can check when I placed orders, when I am expected to receive them and I can use these files to update my budget spreadsheets when I get a moment.

Friday Vendors – Rehearsal information and hotel accommodations can be found in this pocket. I have the information for our blocked rooms here seeing most out-of-town guests will check in Friday, as will I. I’ve also put menus from potential rehearsal dinner locations here.

Saturday Vendors – Most of our vendors can be considered Saturday vendors seeing that is the day of the wedding, but only the ones that aren’t specific to the ceremony or reception go in here. This includes our florist, hair/makeup and photography.

Ceremony – I have the contract with the chapel in this pocket but I also have potential ceremony readings and vows here.

Reception Vendors – Just like the name says, this is where the files for our reception vendors live – venue, DJ/lighting, baker.

Honeymoon – This pocket makes me smile. Not that the other pockets don’t have awesome and exciting things in them, but this one has a vacation in it. What’s not to love about that!

Registries/Misc – Registries are self explanatory but the miscellaneous thus far has equated to a proof sheet of our engagement photos and a receipt for Mr. PB’s suit.

In order to figure out these categories, I came up with the ideas, scribbled them onto Post-It notes and put them on the pockets. Once I was sure the categories were what I wanted, I officially put them on the tabs. I highly recommend doing this if you go this route. It’s a great way to narrow down exactly what you need the categories to be.

How do you keep your files organized? Do you use a binder, expandable file or similar system? Did you find something to work particularly well?

No, I didn’t try to type MTV; I intended to say that Google is my MVT – Most Valuable Tool. We all love Google to look things up and find vendors, ideas or answers to strange questions (like what does a fox really say?). But I have found Gmail, Google Voice and Google Drive to be AMAZEBALLS during planning.

Other bloggers before me have sung the praises of Google and I am here to join the sweet symphony. Well, not really because none of you would want to hear me sing. If I could, my love for Google would sound something like Ariel around the 15 second mark. (Ignore Ursula, she scared me as a child)

Let’s start with Gmail. I created a Gmail specific to the wedding right after we were engaged. While I love Gmail’s filters for spam and promotions, I wanted to keep wedding emails separate from my personal account. I have found it super helpful to have less items to wade through if I’m trying to find a wedding email or an email to give to vendors.

Along with having my Gmail account, I set up a Google Voice number. If you aren’t familiar with Google Voice, familiarize yourself here. By creating a Google Voice number, I basically created a mask for my phone. I can still receive calls from vendors to my cell phone, along with texts, but once the wedding is over, I can remove the Google Voice number from my account and boom, no more calls from vendors or any solicitors. Perf McGerf.

And last but definitely not least, Google Drive. Out of the three, this is probably the top advantage to Google.  I love that Google Drive is not only a free way to create documents, spreadsheets and forms, but it’s compatible across many platforms and is constantly up to date. Whether I am on my phone, iPad or computer, I can access my guest list, timeline or idea list virtually anywhere. Gone are the days where I need to worry about a file being on my home computer if I need to access it in a pinch at work. Adios to needing to constantly email myself the most recent version of something. Plus, I can easily share the documents with Mr. PB or anyone else who needs to access them.

Shortly after we were engaged, I created a tentative guest list on Google Drive to give me an idea of how many people we were looking at. I then used the same spreadsheet to compute potential food and drink costs for any venue we were interested in. This helped me realize immediately if a venue was out of our price range or if it was worth scheduling a meeting with.

Screenshot of my Google Drive // Personal Photo

A quick breakdown of the spreadsheet and formulas:
Column A – Package Name
Column B – Base Price (before tax and gratuity)
Column C – Tax and Gratuity: SUM((Column B times .2), (Column B times .09), Column B)
For example, C5=SUM((B5*.2),(B5*.09),B5)
.2 is for 20% gratuity – 18% is pretty standard here but I again wanted to slightly overestimate
.09 is for 9% tax – it’s only 8% here but I wanted to slightly overestimate
*Note – I recommend separating them rather than just doing B5*1.29 so you can easily adjust if a venue doesn’t charge gratuity or tax changes.

Now that the spreadsheet is calculating the total price per person including tax and gratuity, I use that number to calculate the total overall cost. I already had the first tab of this specific spreadsheet calculating my total number of guests so I decided to have the two lists “talk” to keep the data accurate. For my guest count at 100%, cell D3=Lists!C1 (C1 in my first tab spreadsheet is the cell that holds my overall total). Then for each cell in row 3, I used =Lists!C1*.9, =Lists!C1*.8, =Lists!C1*.7 and =Lists!C1*.6 for 90, 80, 70 and 60 percent of guests.

So, now I have my per person cost and the number of guests and all that needs to be done is to multiply the two. For example, D12=SUM((C12*D3)). I just fill out the rest of the fields using the same idea, E12=SUM((C12*E3)), F12=SUM((C12*F3)), G12=SUM((C12*G3)) and H12=SUM((C12*H3)).

If I haven’t lost you yet, kudos to both of us! You may have noticed that I used double parentheses in the last step and they didn’t seem necessary. Well, I did that because some places there were extra things to pay for, like the Armory would have meant an extra $585 in appetizers. So, my formula for D5=SUM((C5*D3),585), which calculates the overall total plus $585.

While it takes some time to set up and get the formulas correct, this little spreadsheet was so helpful is comparing venues and making sure I was staying on track with my budget.

Do you love Google and its applications as much as I do? Anyone else out there going to take a stab at the spreadsheet I just explained?

When I posted about our wedding bands, you may have sensed some hesitancy on my part about my wedding band. The pair of matching diamond bands were pretty and sparkly and Mr. PB liked them a lot, but they just didn’t sit right with me. Maybe it’s my stubbornness, maybe I’m crazy, maybe I’m just a PITA about things. But I had such a vision in my head from the time we bought the engagement ring and I just couldn’t shake it.

After some hemming and hawing, I asked Mr. PB if it was okay if I looked into exchanging my band. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, and it was his money that bought the band, but luckily for me, he was on board for whatever I wanted. He said that he was able to convince me to get an engagement ring that was out of my comfort zone so I could go with my gut about the wedding band.

I looked at Kay’s website and they didn’t have many options for a ring with gemstones and diamonds but they did have a wide selection of mother’s rings. In my mind, a mother’s ring and a wedding band are pretty much the same concept: a metal with stones put into it. Why not find a mother’s ring that I could customize with the gemstones and call that my wedding band?

Mother’s Ring Customized. This could work… // Screenshot of Kay.com

I called Kay’s to make sure that the person that Mr. PB and I worked with for my engagement ring and the wedding bands was working that day. He was so I went after work. I mentally prepared myself to stick my grounds and get what I had my heart set on.

I brought the mother’s ring idea with me to Kay’s and to say the jeweler didn’t like it would probably be a big understatement. He basically looked at me like I was crazy. He kept trying to convince me the double bands were the way to go. I kept pushing back and trying to suggest other rings, maybe ones with a twist or a design. He told me I couldn’t go for those rings because they didn’t go with my ring. He then pulled out an analogy: “It’s like buying a suit. If you buy a suit jacket, you have to buy the pants to match. But if you get a sport coat, you have more flexibility with the pants.” ***insert cricket noises here*** I don’t know why he thought I knew about buying suits but his analogy didn’t really do anything for me. Basically he was trying to tell me that had I picked a solitaire engagement ring, I’d have more wedding band options but because I picked the ring I did, my options were few. Maybe if the pants that I had my heart set on didn’t get discontinued like he told me they wouldn’t, I wouldn’t have been in the predicament that I was: in search of pants, err… a wedding band.

My hard-headedness continued on and I went back to wanting colored stones. He told me that the reason diamonds were in most wedding bands and rings is because they are the hardest stone, therefore last the longest. He said that the sapphires (both blue and pink) were only one step down from the diamonds so they should be okay, but the amethysts could get cloudy in about 10 years. I asked him how much it could cost to replace the stones, thinking hundreds of dollars. He said about $15 a stone, so $45. If I have to pay $45 every 10 years to upgrade my dream wedding band, I’ll count that as money well spent.

He then showed me an 15-stone ring and suggested the stones be three diamonds, pink sapphire, sapphire, amethyst, three diamonds, pink sapphire, sapphire, amethyst, three diamonds. With his suggestion, I would end up with six small loose diamonds and was back in the same boat of my center diamond lining up with diamonds in the wedding band. I pushed back once again and said that I wanted it pink sapphire, sapphire, amethyst, three diamonds, pink sapphire, sapphire, amethyst, three diamonds, pink sapphire, sapphire, amethyst. That decision was met with hesitancy from him, he warned me we’d have nine loose diamonds and then he said the thing that really made me dig my heels in the ground: “Are you sure you don’t want a second opinion? Are you sure you don’t want to come back with Mr. PB another time?” Calming the fury that was bubbling up inside of me, I told him no, that it was what I wanted, we’d find something to do with the nine loose diamonds and I was sure about it. His reaction: “Well, I guess you will have a one-of-a-kind wedding band then.” Thanks?

He took the time to write the order up and even used markers to color code the stones in the order that I wanted. I left feeling aggravated with the last 90 minutes of my life but confident in the decision I made.

A few weeks later, I received a call that the ring was in and I quickly scampered off to get it. As I was heading to the jewelry store, I had a sinking feeling in my stomach that something would be wrong, that the stones wouldn’t be in the right order. I get there, he opens the box and wouldn’t you know, the colors were in the wrong order. Epic failure. The jeweler apologized and said he would have it fixed. I was sad to have to leave my ring again but after all the hassle, I wanted it the way I wanted it, dang it! I left the store and began to walk out of the mall. I barely got out of the exit doors before I turned around. There was nothing wrong with the ring itself other than the stones being in the “wrong” order. Who would ever call me out if the stones weren’t in the same order as my bridesmaids? It’s still the same stones, it’s still the right color and it’s still the ring that I want. I went back in, took the ring back and quickly snapped off  a photo to Mr. PB.

WHABAM! Love it! (I still have to get it resized) // Personal Photo

In the end, I am super happy with how the wedding band turned out and will look forward to wearing it for many, many years to come. Even if I have to replace a few amethysts

Did you go against a professional’s advice and follow your heart to get what you wanted? Did you realize a minor mishap didn’t really make too much of a difference and left it be?