Matt and I are on our wedding day. Thank goodness for Wedding Under Control so we could enjoy the fun and festivities!
Creating Wedding Under Control has been so much fun for me! I never thought I would be an entrepreneur, but here I am and I am loving it! Yes, it is stressful and a lot of work, but it’s a great way to do something fun and help brides plan the day of their dreams!
When I got married in August of 2012 (to my awesome hubby, Matt!), I needed a way to stay organized. And I am so glad that I did! I was not stressed out AT ALL on my wedding day! I had everything accounted for, had stayed within budget, and was able to focus on marrying my best friend and having fun.
Matt proposed on New Year’s Eve of 2011. Right away, we wanted our wedding to be around August. I wanted at least 6 months to plan the wedding, but I did not want to interfere with football season. Luckily, my top venue pick was available on August 18! So, the wedding date was set!! Oh, and all of this happened 4 days after we were engaged!! Ok, so we had the venue but we needed everything else. To make things more complicated, the wedding was going to be in Knoxville, I was living in Memphis, and Matt was living in Kansas! YIKES! So, I had no choice but to stay organized!
Thankfully, I was a financial analyst at the time after just receiving my MBA in Finance and Logistics from UTK (go Vols!). So I lived in Excel at work. I took the knowledge I gained from my MBA and my job and created what is now Wedding Under Control. I had so much information to keep track of and kept it in 1 workbook. That way, I could easily see how much I was budgeting for each category, who was invited and who had RSVP’ed to everything wedding related, what all I had to do, and where everyone needed to be on my wedding day.
I could easily open my workbook and know how many guests had RSVP’ed, who was staying at our hotel block, who gave me what gifts from the bridal showers, how much left I could spend on decorations, and so much more! It was truly a life saver!
We booked all of our vendors within the first couple of months and had a solid guest list. Then, I could focus on the fun stuff! I found my dress, picked my wedding colors, finalized our invitations, and enjoyed my bridal showers! It was so much fun being a bride! I honestly don’t think I would have had that much fun at everything had I not been so organized!
Ok, so enough about my wonderful wedding. After I got married, I had several friends who were engaged. I gave them my wedding workbook (after I cleared out my info, of course). They all said the same thing, “This is awesome!! You should sell this!” At the time, I worked full time, joined a church, volunteered for my local sorority chapter, sang in the KC Symphony Choir, and traveled at least once a month with Matt. The last thing I had time to do was to start a company!
Flash forward to 2015. Our son, Collin, was born in February, and I became a stay-at-home-mom. I still volunteer for my sorority and am still a member of a local church, but I found the time to really sit down a create a workbook that would be a template for me but versatile enough for each bride. If you know me well, you know that I love to plan and to stay organized! I make lists for everything, I love itineraries, and I even manage our home budget with a pretty “souped up” spreadsheet. Needless to say, I enjoy staying organized! So, now, I am blessed to be able to share my organizational tool with other brides with Wedding Under Control.