Planning Your Wedding From Work

I won’t name and shame but there is a clear correlation between the engagement ring landing on the finger and declining productivity at work….well there was in my case when I was engaged. I am so proud at how well I managed to keep myself out of trouble. I ran a poll and the majority of you are spending over 2 hours per week planning your wedding. Thats an average of 104 hours per bride or groom per year and that equates to almost 3 weeks of holidays! Now lets call a spade a spade here….no doubt most of you were telling porkies when you answered that poll! For many, they are in high pressured jobs and just couldn’t get a single thing done even if they wanted to.

I was working for a hotel group when I was engaged so that meant that I had suppliers and in house expertise that I would talk to so it saved so much time. My boss and my bosses boss proof read my invitations! Zero shame. BUT I did a huge amount of extra hours and the most important part was, the job was still getting done. Never once did I drop the ball and I still credit those days to my strong multi-task abilities.

The key is to cover yourself at all times. NEVER get caught and if you do, stay later that night to balance it off! Also, don’t take the piss, you are being paid to be there and you certainly don’t want anyone to have concerns about your performance.

I recall reading a Forbes article back many years ago and found it again recently. It showed that roughly 2.6 hours are spent by brides planning their wedding in work and the busiest times are near lunch time but mainly ‘whenever they could grab time’.

Here are my tips to get you through your wedding planning whilst at work:

1. Get your squad involved: You will need a few allies (as we say in Dublin) to ‘Keep Sketch’. If someone is involved, you can talk through solutions, get opinions and maybe even delegate some tasks! You also want someone to let you know if someone is coming up behind your computer so that you can flip screens quick smart!
2. Devices: This will be your best friend! Downloaded the excel app on to your phone so that you can work off the same spreadsheet and plan from your laptop. I also saved all my files and quotes to Dropbox which was shared across my devices. Don’t leave a trail on your work devices. I had all of my reminders plugged in to the calendar on my phone too. Every week, I plotted small tasks for each lunch break on my phone. That gave me the alerts and prompts I needed.
3. Email: Whatever you do, never use work emails for your wedding planning. So many reasons, your employer has access, if you leave you can’t access… the list goes on. Set up a separate email for wedding planning.
4. On the road: If your role requires you to be in the road then you are laughing! Plan extra times around your journeys so that you can make your calls or appointments before or after appointments.
5. Lunch breaks: Use your lunch breaks wisely. This is the perfect time to get your calls and emails sent, build your Pinterest boards or nip out for appointments. I had many wedding working lunches but then left time to get out for a walk.
6. Deliveries: If like me, you have a lot of online shopping, you can get your deliveries sent to work so that you’re not wasting time going to post offices. If your job is sticky about deliveries, parcel motel is brilliant. If you are getting deliveries to work, make sure to not put all of your bits on display, keep them hidden and if you drive, send it straight to your car.
7. Desktop: This is the hardest one. My desktop used to be the first screen you saw as you walked in the door. I changed my settings to allow a different screen on my laptop versus desktop screen. I had files in front of my laptop so that a passerby couldn’t see my laptop screen. They would just see the desktop. I didn’t make this a habit but if I needed to look at something on a bigger screen than mobile then this was my strategy! In today’s age of hot-desking, working from home and working agile, you can also get away with a lot more. You can choose your seat wisely every morning. Now, very important, if you have a clean desktop / internet tab, your sites will be in clear view if only a few open so even jumping from tab to tab will have you in clear visibility. The key is to have a rake of tabs open on mainly work related sites and in the middle where it’s to cluttered to see, you can have your tabs well covered up.

Whatever you do, don’t get caught and keep on top of your job and don’t give anyone an excuse to say that you’re not working hard!

Make sure to share your tips with me!