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A very simple tip but sanity saving tip for you brides planning your wedding, and especially to those brides having a budget and needing to plan a wedding on a budget. The idea here is not money saving, but to keep you organized and sane.

Along with my free wedding checklist which you can get from my website, you’ll also need a day planner, a wall calendar, and the “swap space” notebook.

I really recommend using Google Docs and Google Calendar for online sharing and storage of documents. Offline a pin-up wall calendar will be very helpful.

For the day planner, I’ve now started using Google docs. The reason is simple. I can share it with my bride and groom whom I am planning a wedding for. In your case if you are doing it yourself, you can share it with your groom. Set up a schedule on Google calendar so you can schedule appointments to see vendors and what not and it will show up on his calendar. This works even better if both of you have mobile phones with Google calendar capabilities. (There is an app for that). Having a pin-up wall calendar offline is also helpful because you can glance at it without booting up and logging in. And you can visually see the days and months progress.

Now you’re ready for my tip about the swap space notebook. This came from one of my friends who’s really into computers.

Swap space refers to a computer’s inactive memory. It’s sometimes called “virtual memory” and can be thought of as a temporary holding area. Computers also have a primary memory space, called memory or RAM. They load the information for the particular task they’re working on into memory and work off of that. Despite appearances, computers only do one thing at a time. This means that all the information aside from the small bit they’re actively using is temporarily moved into swap space. As soon as the computer changes tasks, it recalls the information it now needs from swap space back into memory.

People are like computers in some ways.

Even though we may think we’re multi-tasking, we’re actually skipping around doing one thing at a time. Whatever we’re directly focused on stays in our conscious memory, just like a computer’s memory. Whatever we’re not directly focused on moves to our subconscious memory, like a computer’s swap space.

But in other ways, people are not like computers.

Unfortunately for humans bringing back information from virtual memory is NOT a perfect skill. How often have you ever had something on the tip of your tongue? How often have you heard a tune but the name of the song escaped you? And then how often would it be that maybe two hours after the relevant conversation it comes back to you? Unfortunately for people we are not so perfect at bringing things back from our “swap space”

This is where the Swap Space Notebook comes in.

Take a notebook EVERYWHERE! And a pen! Just like the old days. Anytime you have something you need to remember jot it down. There does not need to be any organization or order to the notebook. Just jot it down. The idea is to not spend any time on this task. That’s why my friend doesn’t use any type of “notes” option on a cell phone. Paper and Pen are quicker.

At any time you can flip back to your notebook. It may not be in order, but you have the security knowing it’s in there somewhere so you can freely forget about it and not worry about it

Planning a wedding, you will find your brain will function in many the same way. These kinds of things are guaranteed to happen: You will all of the sudden think of the VERY BEST idea for a wedding favor. You will think all of the sudden the VERY BEST first dance song. You will think all of the sudden the MOST FUN reception game to play. You will all of the sudden remember THREE KEY QUESTIONS to ask your reception venue. And so forth. JOT IT DOWN AND DON’T FORGET IT!

That will help you stay sane. Congratulations and good luck with the wedding planning!

Check out Kennly Yakamoto’s HubPages Hubs: Inexpensive Wedding Dresses and Planning A Cheap Wedding Reception for more great wedding planning tips!