Newly engaged?  Before you head out to your first wedding venue or vendor meeting, consider preparing yourself with the 5 items listed below —

1. A Bottle of Quick Dry Top Coat. Showing off that gorgeous engagement ring is fun! Showing it off when your polished nails are chipped is a little embarrassing. The beauty experts say that you should try to apply top coat onto your polished nails once every three days or so to avoid polish chips. If you get a chip, touch up that spot with a little polish, then finish it off with the top coat!

2. A Picture of Your Wedding Gown. During your consultation, your florist, your stationery designer, your calligrapher your baker, and your wedding planner will want to see a picture of your wedding gown. The look and feel of your wedding gown is a key ingredient when determining the design for each element of your wedding.  If you can’t make up your mind about your wedding gown, bring some inspiration pictures until you do.

3. Fabric Swatches and/or Color Swatches. Even if you cannot leave a piece of the swatch behind, bring it with you to all of your wedding meetings. You will find it useful when shopping for tuxedos and dresses for your attendants and mothers, and your vendors will find it extremely helpful during the design process.

4. A Notebook and Pen (or some method for taking notes). You don’t ever want to find yourself in a meeting or at a consultation without an ability to take notes. I am a big fan of the purse size Moleskine notebooks. I have a different book in my bag for every major topic in my life. In addition to writing them down, I try to keep room dimensions, dinner table sizes, and dress size notes on Evernote because it syncs my notes to my iPhone, iPad and MacBookPro.

5. A Method for Taking Pictures. Always have a method (a small camera or smart phone) for capturing inspiration because you never know where you will be when something inspires you.  And, for photographing ballrooms and foyers during your venue site visits.

Once you have all of these pieces in your purse, consider placing them in some sort of large envelope or pouch, like a soft pencil case to keep everything together.  You want to look (and feel) prepared when you face the wedding planning world!

Love & Soul Always, Kawania