10 Tips for Working Brides

Make a plan for your lunch hour the night before or even better -- plan them out a week in advance. Schedule in phone calls to vendors, errands, short shopping trips, work on your "to-do lists", reply/send emails to vendors, wedding attendants or family members.

Bring your lunch to work. This will save you at least 20 minutes as you won't be standing in line to buy your lunch. And, an extra benefit -- it will save you money as well.

Delegate as much as you can. You've got two full-time jobs now, so enlist the help of everyone you can. However, keep in mind that delegating tasks requires management. Even the most trusted friend can forget to perform an assigned task. Be sure to check in with all of your helpers frequently and find out what progress they have made.

Keep the "wedding planning updates" with co-workers to a minimum. You don't want your manager to think you're spending more time talking about the wedding and less time working. If your co-workers are involved in the wedding (as attendants or just planning helpers) plann a weekly gathering -- either after work or at a away-from-the-office lunch -- to update everyone on the planning progress.

Save up those vacation days. You'll need them for your honeymoon and a few days before the wedding. If you can schedule mettings, fittings and shoping outside of your regular work day, you will have more time to enjoy and adjust to married life.

If you need a vendor to call you back at work, ask them to return your call at a designated time, like between 1:00-2:00pm. This will help you better separate work and wedding planning.

Use email as much as possible. This greatly reduces phone tag AND reduces the chance that your caterer will call you about menu choices when your boss is in your office. Many vendors recognize email as a valuable business tool, but be sure that your vendor regularly checks email and knows that it is your preferred method of communication. Also, you may want to request a read reciept on any email that you send to a vendor. This will allow you to not only keep a record of the time that you sent the message and the message itself, but a reciept that includes the time that the message was retrieved by the vendor.

When work gets busy and wedding planning kicks into high gear, your biggest defense is to stay organized. Find a system that works for you (index cards, notebooks, software program, etc.) and stick with it. It is very easy to get disorganized and let things slide when you are pressed for time, but you could end up paying for the mistake later.

If you begin to fall behind in your work load, try coming into work an hour earlier (before most people arrive). Many times you can accomplish more in one hour of "quiet time" than you can all day.

A demanding job and full scale wedding are two things that alone can easily lead to stress. You need to find something that relaxes you and reduces your stress level. Exercise is often the best weapon against stress. Plan your lunch hour to go to the gym or take a brisk walk.

If you don't think you have time to exercise or do something to take care of yourself, then you definitely need to make the time. There have been many brides that think they can "do it all" and by the time the wedding comes, they have run themselves so ragged that they are sick on their wedding day. Don't let that happen to you.