Wedding Planner Book and Budget Spreadsheet

This is a wedding planner book with a budget and guest list spreadsheet, designed for couples planning their own wedding. You get the book to print or type into, in US Letter and A4, and one spreadsheet that adds up the budget and counts the guests for you.

Planning a wedding means keeping track of dozens of prices, dates, names and decisions for months, usually across notes, emails and a spreadsheet somebody made in a hurry. Things get missed: a balance that was due last week, a guest whose meal nobody wrote down, a table with eleven people and ten chairs. This book puts all of it in one place, in the order you need it, and tells you what to do next.

How it works

• First, once (30 minutes). Fill in a one-page worksheet with your five first decisions: the date, the size, the budget, how formal, and who is paying. Every later page depends on these.
• About once a week (20 minutes). Open the checklist at the page for how far away the wedding is, and do the next few jobs. Most jobs point to the page of the book where the work is done.
• Each time you get a price. Write it in the budget planner, or type it into the spreadsheet, which works out the balances and totals.
• Each time a reply comes in. Tick the guest list. When the replies are in, the same list gives you meal counts and the seating plan.
• In the last week. Fill in the timeline for the day and a phone list, and hand them to a helper.

Every kind of page is shown filled in by one example couple before you fill in your own, and the example numbers add up from page to page.

What is inside (87 pages)

• Start here: a one-page quick start, how to use the book and the spreadsheet together, and the whole plan on one page.
• First decisions: the five decisions explained, the worksheet, and a page for agreeing what matters most to each of you.
• The checklist: six pages of jobs from 12 months before to the last month, a two-page short version for a wedding planned in 3 to 6 months, and a page for your own jobs. It does not assume a civil or a religious ceremony.
• The budget: a budget planner with estimate, quote, actual, paid so far, balance due and due date; where the money is coming from; and a payments calendar.
• Suppliers (vendors): questions to ask and a side-by-side comparison sheet for eleven kinds of supplier, from venue to officiant or celebrant, plus a contacts list.
• Guests: a guest list with replies, meals, dietary needs and table numbers (room for 88 guests, print more as needed), a page for final counts, addresses, and where guests stay and how they travel.
• Seating: how to make a seating plan, worked examples for round and long tables, table sheets with a numbered line for every seat, and a room plan grid.
• Ceremony and reception: a page of questions to ask your own local office about the legal paperwork, wedding party and roles, ceremony order, reception running order, music lists and a photo list.
• The week and the day: week-before and day-before checklists, the day hour by hour, a phone list for your helper, and an emergency kit checklist.
• Afterwards: a gift and thank-you tracker, honeymoon notes, and an after-the-wedding checklist.

What you download

• The book in US Letter and A4, for reading on screen.
• A fillable edition in both sizes, with a box to type in on every line and a box to click for every tick.
• One ZIP with the white-paper print edition in both sizes (light on ink), the spreadsheet, and a one-page Start Here sheet.
• The spreadsheet is an .xlsx file with six tabs: Start here, Budget, Payments, Guests, Seating and Checklist. It opens in Excel, Google Sheets and Numbers, and works on a phone once it is in Google Sheets.

Good to know

• Written to work in the UK, the US and elsewhere. No currency symbols on the write-in pages, and both paper sizes are in the download.
• The wording is for any couple: "you and your partner", not bride and groom. It does not assume a church, a set of traditions, or that parents are paying.
• The spreadsheet uses only simple sums and counts. There are no macros and nothing to switch on, so it does not break between programs.
• The legal paperwork page gives no legal rules, because they differ by country and state. It tells you who to ask and gives you lines to write down the answers.
• The amounts in the examples are made up to show how the pages work. They are not a guide to what a wedding costs.
• Write-in lines are at least 8 mm apart and tick boxes are at least 5 mm.
• The fillable edition is made for a desktop PDF reader such as the free Adobe Acrobat Reader. The PDF does not add anything up; the spreadsheet does. Many phone and tablet apps do not keep typed entries, so use the print edition if you want to handwrite on a tablet.
• Print at 100% or "actual size", not "fit to page".

This book is a planning record. It does not give legal, tax, insurance or contract advice.