Tips to stay organized

I couldn't plan this wedding without being super organized. Here is the way I have been doing this.

FOR EMAIL COMMUNICATION:

1. Get a Gmail account if you don't have one already. Some people recommend creating a new separate address just for weddding stuff and I can now see why that would be a great idea. But I didn't. What I did was rely on Gmail's awesome tagging feature. I keep all my email from my vendors in "folders" (Gmail doesn't really have folders, it uses tags instead).

This is my simple system:

- All emails that I want to keep which are wedding related get the "wedding" tag and I turned the tag red. No mistaking those emails!

- Each vendor gets their own tag too so I have "wedding - venue", "wedding - DOC", "wedding - photos", "wedding - DJ", etc. I have also used this to keep track of online order information, conversations with my bridesmaids, and wedding retail offers because I get a lot of email from Vistaprint, Shutterfly, Joanns and Michaels. I put "wedding" in front of the all the categories because when you are tagging an email, you can just type "w" and all of your wedding tags will pop up to choose from. It's just faster.

Your tags will show up in a list on the left side of your screen. Just click on one and the emails associated with that tag will show up.

You can even tell Gmail to automatically tag email from a specific email address or with a specific subject line before it hits your inbox. Just look under "More actions" and then "filter messages like these". That's a major time saver.

Let me tell you how fast I can find ANY email I need. I can find it by tag or search in about 10 seconds.

I hope you already know how awesome Gmail's search feature is. But in case you don't, I will tell you now! The "Search Mail" at the top of the page is magical. You can type any word into it and it will find all of the emails with that word in it. Looking for your Vistaprint offers? Type "Vistaprint". Tada! There are all of your emails from Vistaprint. I try to delete the emails from expired offers but sometimes I forget.

• Bridal show - use separate email address and have them deliver into your default gmail account

• Priority Inbox .......

FOR EVERYTHING ELSE:

I'm not a fan of paper. I love to keep everything electronically. I have a "Wedding" folder on the PC (with a shortcut on the desktop) and it has many, many sub folders in it. I keep my inspiration photos there, all of my DIY design projects, receipts from online orders, the guest list with addresses, everything you can think of. The trick is to put things in folders so that you can find them again.