The Knot Ultimate Wedding Planner & Organizer [binder edition]: Worksheets, Checklists, Etiquette, Calendars, and Answers to Frequently Asked Questions

This is a great informative binder for anyone trying to organize their own wedding. Mine arrived in perfect condition. It came with the shrink wrap still on it. The binder rings were protected by a piece of cardboard. When I started flipping through some of the pages I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the paper.

We are on a budget (and I assume most people are). So incorporating a wedding planner into it isn't in our best interest. Besides the fact it would mean more to me to plan my own wedding. But let's be real, I don't know everything there is to know about planning a wedding (as much as I'd like to believe that) and I don't have a bottomless budget. So of course I'd love to have a little bit of direction.

So let's get to some of the reasons I really enjoy and some that I wish were a little better about this organizer:

• (POSITIVE) I really have to give a huge credit to the author for going into detail about what to ask the people you are hiring! This is so important. I do photography as a hobby, but I do network with a lot of people who do (specifically) wedding photography as their main source of income. All these questions are really important to ask up front. But the author has given you the tools to ask the right questions that can tell you if you're hiring the right person (I'm not just talking about the photographers). Things I honestly wouldn't even think to ask and are definitely things I wouldn't want to be worrying about on the day of. Example (questions about the venue); Will the manager be present to oversee your reception to the end? Or... Does the room have adequate outlets (and power) for food, lighting, and audio needs? Like, seriously... I would have sat there like a lump on a log and took in whatever information they gave me and left it at that.

• (NEGATIVE) So, this is more of a suggestion than anything. Those question pages for the people you hire have such a small space to write extra notes down. My writing is not that small. I'm thinking when it comes time to meet with certain vendors I will end up numbering each question then adding a lined page and if I have something extra to note about a specific question I can number it there and write down what I need. Which brings me to my next positive...

• It's a binder! Guys. You can add things and remove things easily. Not having a big wedding (like myself)? We're not going to have a lot of the "traditional" pre-wedding parties. Not even a rehearsal dinner. So that entire section can pretty much go bye-bye. So I can just take them out. And, if I decide to have one later on, I can just pop it back in. Want to add in photos of your dream gown? You absolutely can. It's extremely customizable.

• This binder is super flexible. What I mean by that is it doesn't make you feel like you have to do your wedding one way or another. The author has gone to great lengths to make sure your wedding is done the way you want to do it. Want a big wedding to match your big sparkly princess ballgown? This binder has it all. Want a small intimate wedding with a 30 person guest list (ME!)? This binder is for you too.

• Easy and interactive! I must be the definition of a simple-minded-neanderthal when it comes to planning big things. I don't like pages filled with wall of text it gets me disinterested and this binder would find itself in a dusty corner very quickly. It's got plenty of useful diagrams and pictures to guide you along. It also includes a ton of neat little checklists.

Overall, I'm really happy I got this. My wedding isn't for another year and a half but I'm already coming up with ideas to make it easier on myself. I'll give an update after everything is said and done. Happy planning!

Update March 22, 2020: Wow! I can't believe how popular this review has become thank you! I just wanted to give a really quick update. We still haven't had our ceremony as of yet because we have decided to delay it. I ended up getting braces so on the big day I could smile for the camera. Our wedding is now going to probably not be until 2022. I'm just really happy and humbled that people thought this review helped them to make a decision. Once again I will definately update when we finally have our ceremony.

This wedding planner was an absolute lifesaver! There is so much room to put down your plans, thoughts, ideas, etc I highly recommend getting this to plan your wedding! It is a great place to also put your memories and things you want to remember such as the cost of things, guests, gifts, locations, etc. Even bought one for our friend who is getting married soon! Great gift idea as well!

This planner is pretty much my Bible. Once we got engaged, I knew that we would be planning this wedding primarily on our own. We can't afford a planners services and I'm all about DIY - which is actually going really well for us with 8 months to go! This breaks everything down and gives insight into vendors and what you should be asking or looking for. While a good portion of sections don't apply to us, I still think this is a great thing to have if you're on a budget and not hiring a planner.

I take it to work everyday and I love that it includes checklists and samples of budget breakdowns and all that fun stuff. I don't know about you, but I love making lists just so I can check things off but this makes me feel like I'm taking no prisoners! Anytime I come to a decision or hire a vendor or whatever, I open this up and check it off the timeline list. If I haven't made any progress in a couple weeks, I still look back at it to see where we are in terms of available time and final decisions.

I ordered this like 2 weeks after we got engaged and when this showed up in the mail and I opened it; my fiancé literally shook his head and told me I was insane. Little does HE know that this thing has made planning a wedding (mostly on my own as he is extremely hands off and works swing shifts) as stress-free for me as it can get right now. I've added some sections and taken out sections that aren't applicable and I hole punch every vendor quote or email I get and place them in the correlating section. I've also made copies of the provided floor plans and made several layouts to determine which works best with our venue, and I've gleaned some pretty neat information from this. You can really use this binder to your advantage even if you aren't planning a big budget wedding, or you're having a more intimate wedding, or even if you're still using a wedding planner! You can tweak this to fit your needs and I honestly would not know what to do without this, this has helped keep me on track and even ahead of schedule.

I will say this: planning a wedding can become all-consuming. For example, if you're like me and say : you and your honey decide to take a long weekend trip to the mountains in October and it's August, and then you obsess over planning EVERY.SINGLE.DETAIL until you actually leave - you're going to be exhausted. You're going to be so burnt out from planning what time you leave, what time you get back, triple checking your Airbnb reservations, making dinner plans for at least one night, what you're going to pack and "is the weather going to cold?" and all that crap, that you're not actually going to enjoy yourself. That's how I am; once a decision has been made to do something, I have to see the plans through to the very end to give myself peace of mind. I started off planning this wedding that way and realized that I wasn't doing myself any favors by constantly looking at this planner and following its timeline checklist. I eventually put the planner away for about a month and then went back to it with some clarity. Make sure you give yourself a break from planning every so often :)