Project Tracking and You By Barefoot Couple Benny & Sherry

Feb 7

In the corporate world, a project manager is responsible for planning, organizing, and overseeing projects from start to finish to achieve specific goals within a set timeframe and budget. They coordinate tasks, resources, and communication among team members and stakeholders to ensure the project progresses smoothly and meets quality standards.

Sound familiar? Wedding planning is just one big exercise in project management, and one of the key tools in staying organized is a project tracker! If a wedding website is meant to be a centralized information hub for all your guests, your project tracker is the hub for just you and your partner to track all things wedding-related internally.

There is no one-size-fits-all, but I’ll give you a brief overview of how I managed my tracker via Airtable.

TO-DO LIST

Step 1 for me was to create a to-do list of every little task we needed to do, as well as the month I needed to (or should) do it. I started this list over a year and a half before my actual wedding date and continued to iterate as my vision came into fruition. Between “print XXX sign,” “start to brainstorm YYY,” “book ZZZ vendor,” and “follow up with AAA,” I left no stone unturned and put EVERYTHING onto this list.

This really helped me stay organized and feel less overwhelmed, because I knew I had a plan.

GUEST LIST

We put down every single person we could possibly envision coming to our wedding. Each was categorized by Relationship (ex: bride’s family, groom’s high school friends, bride’s coworkers), Priority for Inviting, and Likelihood of Attending. Don’t forget to note dietary restrictions, as well as meal choice if you’re having a plated dinner. I also linked their contact information.
We included columns to track actions for each guest, such as whether we sent them a Save the Date/Invitation/Thank You Card, whether they finished booking a room with our travel agent and how many nights they’re staying, and their RSVP response.
We assigned them to their table for reception.

BUDGET

Similar to the to-do list, I added every little thing I could think of into this tab. It served as a packing list, inventory tracker, and budget tracker all in one!
I tagged each item to a category (Grooming, AV, Photo/Video, Travel, Decor, etc) and vendor. I added the cost of every line item, even if it’s just an estimated cost, and this gave me visibility into my total budget. I was very diligent in updating this as planning progressed.

VENDORS

I tracked every vendor I looked into in this tab, whether or not they were my final vendors. Similar to the budget tab, I tagged every vendor to a category (Florals, Alterations, Photo/Video etc).
I included links to their website and their Instagram pages, noted their contact information, and attached all files such as catalogues and signed contracts. The “Items” and “Cost” cells were linked to my budget tab, so they populated automatically.

Some other tabs included:

Schedule: We had a summary schedule in our tracker, which had a list of events, their start/end times, and noted if any guests were assigned tasks during each event (ex: designating one person in charge of taking away the card box at the end of cocktail hour). This was shared and confirmed with our coordinator, vendors, family, and wedding party. We had a more detailed day-of timeline spelled out in a word document.
Guest Contact Info: Similar to Google Forms, we sent out an Airtable Form for guests to provide us with their contact information, including mailing address, phone number, email address.
Venue Research: we reviewed 30+ wedding venues throughout Mexico and left our notes in this tab. This included everything from the name of the venue, venue capacity, photos, links to websites/Facebook groups/reviews, location and links to Google Maps, anticipated cost per room night, cost of packages, contact information, and our ranking/feedback.
Travel Agent Research: we interviewed multiple travel agents and we left notes on their responses and our feedback in this tab.

Remember: Your spreadsheet should work for you, not create more stress! Keep it simple enough to maintain but detailed enough to be useful… and of course, don't forget to celebrate each time you get to change a status to "DONE"!