Step 1: Gather Addresses
12 to 7 months prior to your wedding
You might think that the first step is to dive in and start adding names to your contact list, but it isn't. First and foremost, you must bring together every source of data for the people you would like to contact about your wedding. The goal of this step is to get all the information you need into one area so you can begin reviewing, verifying, sorting and compiling it into your contact list.
Get your Palm Pilot, your E-mail address book, your phone directory, your Rolodex, the business cards shoved in your desk drawer, all those random scraps of paper with addresses and all the other sources that you have that contain information about your contacts. Additionally, the contact list for your wedding will include people you may know of, but not know personally. For example, your father's business partner, your future mother-in-law's best friend and your future spouse's high school friends are all possible contacts who will need to be on your wedding contact list.
Therefore, it is essential to this step that you consult your families and friends to determine who should be included. Let them help you in obtaining contact's and information. The cooperation needed in laying the foundation for managing your wedding's contact list is what makes this step so integral and complex.
Because of the reliance on others for information, this first step can often take weeks or months. Further, this step is not complete until you have an address to go with every name. This may mean researching phone books, getting on the Internet and tracking down the correct information, but it is essential that you have actual contact information for your contacts.
Reconcile Addresses
7 months prior to your wedding
Yes, the word most associated and feared with checkbooks is an important part of creating your contact list. You must reconcile all that information to ensure it is accurate, not duplicated and up to date.
After obtaining all the information for your contact list, you should have, maybe even literally, a pile of data. Not all of it will be current, not all of it unique and, most likely, not in any order. You must now sort and verify that information.
The contact data for some people in the pile of data will be duplicated. They might be in your address book at one address, but on the list your mother provided at another. When you find a person who is listed two or more times with different, conflicting contact data, you must determine which is the correct address.
Just as bad are the people for whom you do not have complete contacting information. Some people will just have a name and street address. Some will have a name and Zip code. In these instances, be sure to immediately get the correct information. Friends and relatives are probably the best resource to use to fix these incomplete addresses. Also useful are phonebooks and the Internet. So when doing this step, be sure to have a phone, phone directory, Internet access and a knowledgeable friend available.
Sort Contacts
As addresses are reconciled, or immediately afterward
There are three items sent to contacts concerning the wedding. A "Save The Date" notice gives distant invitees advanced notification of the wedding, an invitation formally invites people to the wedding and an announcement notifies people who are not attending the wedding about it. You must decide in which of those three categories each of your contacts belongs.
As you reconcile your addresses, try to group your contacts into groups along those lines. Put people who will receive a "Save The Date" notice in one pile, people who will receive just an invitation and no "Save The Date" notice in another and the third pile will be for people receiving announcements. This will make inputting your contacts into your list easier, quicker and help you start thinking about your contact list in the right manner.
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