It’s already week 3 of our newest series and I can’t believe it! Today we’re also launching OUR FIRST VIDEO! It’s all happening so fast!

Let’s Cut the Cake is our newest series on AJ and I planning our own wedding as a pair of wedding photographers! Over the next year, we’ll be sharing our process and inviting you in on our decision making and witnessing trial + errors! It’s called Let’s Cut the Cake because that’s what AJ and I will be doing on May 16th, 2020!! Can’t wait to have you all along on this crazy long, messy path that is actually planning a wedding.

You probably know I am very obsessed with my planner. I’ve always been a pen to paper gal, almost to a fault. I love to plan more than I love to implement plans. Have you heard of shiny object syndrome? I definitely have that…

So obviously I’ve been really looking forward to finding a planning tool for our wedding! Even though we have Ashley from Much Ado Austin taking literally all of the guess work out of it for us, I wanted something for myself to keep me on track!

Now in terms of what I was looking for, it was 3 things.

01. I needed a wedding planner to supplement my regular Life Planner that has all my every day tasks, calendars, etc.

I was looking for an agenda that had tips and tricks, things to remember, and checklists. I wanted something I could physically use to keep track of everything and remind me of parts I might be overlooking.

Basically, I needed reminders about the basics of wedding planning, but not the whole enchilada.

02. I was really not interested in any advice that would be outdated or extraneous info.

I really just wanted the bare bones, because to be honest a lot of it I don’t need! One because of Ashley like I’ve mentioned and two because we’re already know a lot of the ins and outs of the industry!

I really didn’t want to hear about trends, gift ideas that are no longer relevant, advice for your vendors that doesn’t make sense. Most of the wedding books I looked at lost the race because they had too many trend ideas from 2012!

Also, my brain is already cluttered as is, so keeping tabs on things I don’t even care about (uhh, like trends from 2012) will ultimately help not hurt!

03. Finally I wanted something with a good bit of blank space.

This agenda needed to help me tackle both the checklist + keeping tabs bit and allow me to take lots of notes! When we have meetings with vendors I need to be able to take notes as wildly and messily as I usually do. So the more space, the better!

I’m hoping to start journaling again throughout this whole process too!

So here’s what I looked into!

Obviously I started with Erin Condren, because I do already have a Life Planner and I’m a loyalist for sure.

I looked into The Knot’s wedding planner, and a handful of generic ones on Amazon and Etsy.

Basically it came down to needing just the right amount of information and checklists, and going with a brand I already trusted.

Now Erin Condren does have a full wedding planner is basically a Life Planner with weddings tips built in. I seriously considered it, because it’s big and beautiful. And I could put a photo from our engagement session on the cover…or a dry erase countdown. I’m a sucker for those covers.

But, in my opinion, absolutely no one needs this. If you were looking for that much of a regular agenda, you would already have one. If there’s one built into your wedding planner, would you really copy down everything from your regular planner into this other one? No. If you don’t have a planner are you going to start using the weekly or hourly pages in this one? No.

I guess if you were wanting to get into agenda-ing and also planning a wedding at the same time? It just doesn’t make sense.

What did I end up getting?

Not one, not two, but three petite planners! Because I can’t say yes to just one! 🙂

First: I got a blank monthly agenda.

Second: The new Erin Condren petite wedding planner checklist. Bingo!

Third: A blank bullet journal for…you guessed it! Journaling!

And finally: the most beautiful champagne folio to house the perfect little trio!

Tune into the video below to watch me unbox all three planners! You can see all the details of each planner and the folio too! I’ll also tell you more of my why behind these petite planners and show you how I’ll use them!

Need to catch up? Head back to the Let’s Cut the Cake home page and see where we’re at right now!