The Complete Wedding Planner: a printable A4 planner for Australian weddings

Somewhere around month three, most couples realise their wedding is living in six different places. A notes app. A spreadsheet somebody's sister started. Screenshots of a florist's quote. A text thread with Mum that is mostly about whether Uncle Pete is bringing a plus-one.

We've been helping couples with the paper side of weddings since 2011, and the pattern is the same every season. It's rarely the big decisions that cause the stress. It's the hundred small ones nobody wrote down. So we made a planner to write them down in.

What it is

The Complete Wedding Planner is a 73-page printable PDF. Download it, print it at home or at a print shop, and bind it however suits you. It's designed for A4 paper, with a wider margin down the left-hand side so you can spiral bind it, comb bind it or punch it for a ring binder without the holes going through anything you've written.

Why A4, and why Australian

Most printable planners online are made for US Letter paper. Print one on A4 and you end up with odd white strips at the top and bottom, or pages shrunk to fit with boxes too small to write in. They're also written for American weddings: officiants, bridal showers, vendors, and not a word about the paperwork you actually have to lodge here.

Ours is written for weddings in Australia. Celebrants, hens and bucks, bomboniere, and the legal steps in the order they happen. That includes the Notice of Intended Marriage, which has to reach your celebrant at least one month and one day before the wedding. It's the one deadline in the whole year with no wiggle room, so the planner flags it more than once.

What's inside

Eight sections, each with its own divider page.

 The Big Picture. Your details at a glance, the feel of the day, key contacts and the wedding party.

The Timeline. Checklists from twelve months out to the week after, with a short note on why each step matters.

The Budget. A category-by-category overview, three pages of line-by-line costs, a payment schedule and a page for family contributions.

 The Guests. Room for more than 200 households, a page to tally RSVPs and dietary requirements, and seating plans for twelve tables.

The Suppliers. Quote comparisons, a contact list for everyone you've booked, and pages for the venue, catering, photography, flowers, music and cake, each with the questions worth asking before you pay a             deposit.

The Details. Stationery quantities, an invitation checklist, attire and fittings, hair and makeup, flowers, music and favours.

The Day. A full run sheet, a what-goes-where list for setup and pack down, and an emergency kit checklist.

Afterwards. The legal steps, a name change checklist and tracker, a register of gifts and thank-you cards,   and the honeymoon.

Then a few notes pages at the back, because there's always something that doesn't fit anywhere else.

The bits most planners leave out

A few pages come straight from what we've learned packing wedding stationery for the last fifteen years.

The stationery page works out your quantities before you order. The most common regret we hear isn't the colour or the paper. It's ordering exactly enough invitations, then finding a smudged envelope, a forgotten great-aunt and no spares. Order around ten per cent more than your household count, and be generous with wax seals. They're the thing that breaks during assembly.

The after-the-day checklist covers something plenty of couples only find out when the bank asks: the decorative certificate your celebrant hands you on the day isn't legal proof of marriage. You'll need the official certificate from Births, Deaths and Marriages in your state before you can change your name anywhere.

And every supplier page lists the questions that are easy to ask at the first meeting and awkward to ask a month out. Is there a wet weather option, and when is the call made? Do you feed the photographer? What happens to the deposit if we postpone?

Printing and binding it

• Print single-sided on A4, set to Actual size or 100%. Choosing “Fit to page” shrinks the margins and the writing space.
• Standard 80gsm copy paper is fine. A 100 or 120gsm paper is nicer to write on and stops pen showing through.
• Officeworks and most local print shops can spiral or comb bind it, often while you wait.
• Prefer a ring binder? Hole punch it and you can slip quotes, receipts and fabric swatches in alongside the pages.
• Need more guest list pages? Print that page again. Only want the budget section? Print just those pages.

It makes a good engagement gift, too

If someone you love has just got engaged, print it, bind it and write their names on the first page. It'll get more use than the champagne.

Purchase The Complete Wedding Planner here. It's an instant download, so you could be filling in page one tonight.

Congratulations, and happy planning.