Erica and I are heading home soon for Christmas… but it’s also the only time we’ll be home before the wedding.

Yikes!

There’s a ton that has to get done and this is the only shot we’ve got at it before it’s too late.

I’m hoping to be able to post a bit more while I’m home for the holidays — it’ll be just as hectic as a work-week, but I’m going to try nonetheless.

Nothing like a little public pressure to get the job done — things I need to blog about soon:

• Going home
• Post photos of all the sites we looked at — Google image search is great, but not great enough for long-distance wedding planning.
• Why planning a wedding is like an airborne operation.
• Post photos from our trip home for the sites we decided on.
• Get my fiancee to post a word or two.
• What we actually did while we were home — aside from being fed 10 Christmas dinners in 2 days by 4 families (there goes our pre-wedding weight loss plan).

Organization will set you free… or so I’m told.

And as I’ve quickly discovered there’s a ton o’ organizin’ to be had for a wedding.

The first think that helped was Emily Post’s Wedding Planner, which has a really good listing of just what steps you have to take and when they have to be took.

The second, and most important thing, is Basecamp — a online project management app. It’s really built for the collaboration needed between a freelancer/firm (of any sort) and their various clients on various projects.

But it’s also really great for planning a wedding — especially when the bride and groom are in Atlanta, the family is in St. Louis and the best man is in Columbus, Ohio.

Pretty much every step from Peggy’s book is set as a “milestone” — which is Basecamp-speak for a todo item that has a date attached.

You can attach multiple todo lists to milestones — so you can set a general milestone like “Book location” with a date and then attach a bunch of todo items like “Research yet another location,” “Send your parents, with camera, to yet another spot,” and “Force feed your parents another meal at yet another reception location.” As you watch the todos click done, you know that you’re on course for the milestone.

It’s got all the usual accoutrements — messages, access controls, etc. Plus it has handy integration with Writeboards, for when you need a little wiki in your life.

I had heard a lot about Basecamp for a while, but I had never had reson to use it, so I was always just playing around with it. Now that I have real work to get done, and a lot of it, I can’t live without it.