Wedding Planning

Bridezilla is a bride on a mission, stopping at nothing – not even laws that forbid you from dressing live swans in pearls and having them parade around the grounds, and no one – her husband-to-be (HTB), namely.

In her opinion, buying something new and blue (sapphires in Tiffany boxes specifically) is much more fun than something old and borrowed, and she’s already fired three wedding planners, in favour of her own unique mode of party organising – running around the city in four inch heels with her laptop and wedding journal in tow.

Stay tuned and watch how a perfectly sane woman, when proposed to, can turn into a fabric swatch-wielding, bouquet-throwing (at the florist, not the bridesmaids), Bridezilla.

I like to think I’m relatively organised. But when it comes to planning a wedding, a diary and a few post-its simply don’t cut it. No, when HTB got down on one knee, I practically logged onto my ready-made wedding excel spreadsheet before I told him yes. Well not quite, but true story: a mother of a friend had a wedding planning spreadsheet set up before her poor daughter had even met her future husband.

Sadly in this climate a wedding planner just isn’t an option, and besides, I figure I can do it better myself (control freak, me?). I’m not ruling out a little assistance altogether though – which is why I’ve got my mitts on a copy of Debrett’s Wedding Guide.

The only wedding planner I trust. And guaranteed to prepare an unwitting bride for all eventualities, such as both the mother of the bride and mother of the groom showing up in lilac (MOTB always gets first choice) or a better looking relative upstaging the bride (I’ve told my darling sister that low cut and white are firmly out of bounds).

Of course, I will need a notebook to jot down everything (eg. ‘Note to self: dress costs £3k but tell HTB £1k…men just don’t understand these things). My first choice? Smythson’s Panama Wedding Planner notebook, natch. It’s got dividers for everything – dress, invitations, honeymoon…the only thing it doesn’t have a section for is ‘lies I’ve told HTB that I need to keep track of post-wedding’. No, I’m using Noble Macmillan’s elegant ivory notebook for that.

The Smythson, being a slimline notebook, is great for brides whose wedding are going to be a simple affair – Vera Wang dress, lilies, registry office – but mine will require more, ahem volume. The wedding planner has come to my rescue – it’s a ring binder complete with dividers, ready to be stuffed with all manner of wedmin – dream dresses torn from Brides magazine, colour swatches, those dreaded receipts…

Alternatively, many of my girlfriends have opted for guide-notebook-and-planner-in-one – the Wedding Bible Planner – created by wedding planner extraordinaire Sarah Haywood (it’s the next best thing to the woman herself).

The description reads as follows: handy worksheets and detailed checklists with detachable versions for the best man and chief bridesmaid (they need as much guidance as they can get), zipper pouch, a business card holder, 2-year diary (for those dreadfully long engagements) and contacts book. Plus pullout 'Mood Board' and the Wedding Bible's unique countdown to the big day the '4-phase timeline'. 4-PHASE TIMELINE. Now she sounds like my kind of girl (the maid of honour had better watch out...).

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