Excel = Best Wedding Planning Tool

Yes, I believe excel is one of the best wedding planning tools.  It's dorky but I use it every day at work and if you know me I love to use excel to stay organize.   I soon found out that it was also handy for the first two wedding planning tasks we completed: 1. setting a budget and 2. drafting a guest list. 

So first things first, we set a budget using a handy-dandy budget template.  I have to be honest it was quite overwhelming all the things you have to think about when setting a wedding budget and then seeing how much money everything adds up to! From the wedding reception to flowers to invitations, weddings are not cheap.  With the budget set, Dan and I both agreed we want to have a budget savvy wedding that our guest will enjoy rather than spending a TON of money.  This means it will take probably take more of our time researching and price comparing but we're up for the challenge.

After we set our budget, we started task #2 drafting a guest list.  I took my wedding book's advice and had my parents draft a list, Dan's parents draft one, and then Dan and I would draft ours.  Since we both have pretty big families our guest list grew pretty quickly (it’s around 350 now).  We'll look at the list and finalize it over the next few months but it was nice to get this task out of the way.

Next task on the list: picking a ceremony and reception venue which I'll save for another post. :)

On another note, tomorrow is my fiancé’s birthday!  Hopefully all this snow that is supposed to come tonight doesn't so we can go to dinner tomorrow night.  More importantly I hope that my little birthday surprise on Friday works out.  Sorry I can't give away any details since he might actually read this before then. ;) I'll share after Friday.

My first post: Engagement and New job!

Greetings blog world! Since we're moving to Hawaii and starting to plan our wedding I figured I start a blog to document all of these exciting new things!

As for the engagement, Dan and I got engaged on Christmas day.  What a surprise!  After waking up at 5am, flying to CA to spend our first Christmas together, and arriving at his parent's house in Orange County, he proposed.  I was and still am the happiest girl in the world and sitting on cloud nine (hence the title of my blog).  Christmas 2010 will always be one of the best days of my life!

Best Christmas Ever!!!

In all of the excitement of getting engaged, I also had one more big decision to make...where I was going to work in Hawaii.  Yup, Dan and I are planning to move back to Hawaii in the fall.  We've been talking about this for awhile and we are finally taking the steps to make it happen.  So after interviewing, I received two offers to start next fall.  It took me a few weeks to decide and I took an offer from a small local accounting firm.  My tentative start date is in November so which means I have approximately 9 months left in Seattle!!! It seems so far away but I know its going to come quick especially since we have a wedding to plan! 

So over the course of the next 18 months (9 months till the move and 9 more to our wedding), this will help me share the details of what it takes to move across the ocean and plan a wedding.  :)