Elopement Planner Spreadsheet Micro Wedding Planner Marriage License Rules All 50 States Budget Tracker Day Timeline Excel Google Sheets

ELOPEMENT & MICRO-WEDDING PLANNER — the one subtraction that decides whether you are legally married at the end of the day.

Every elopement planner on Etsy hands you a checklist. Not one of them does the date math. Your state makes you wait a fixed number of days after the marriage license is issued, and that license dies a fixed number of days later. Between them there is a window, and you have to be standing in that state, inside that window, on a day the clerk's office is open. This file works out both ends of that window from a table of all fifty states and the District of Columbia, then checks it against the days you are actually there.

WHAT IT DOES THAT THE OTHERS DO NOT

1. IT TELLS YOU WHETHER YOUR TRIP IS LONG ENOUGH. Type the state, the wedding date, the day you fly in and the day you fly out. The file returns the last day you may apply, pulls that deadline back to a day the counter is actually open, and gives you your margin in days. In the shipped sample a couple fly into Washington on Thursday June 10 for a Saturday June 12 wedding. Washington makes you wait three days after issuance and that wait cannot be waived by anybody. Their last day to apply was Wednesday June 9. Their margin is minus one day. Two flights, a cabin and a photographer already booked, and nothing about that trip looks wrong until you do the subtraction.

2. IT CARRIES ALL FIFTY STATES AND DC, WITH THE SOURCE ON EVERY ROW. The wait after issuance, how long the license stays valid, how many witnesses must sign, whether you may marry yourselves, the fee, whether both of you must appear, and where you have to apply. Every row carries the official state or county-clerk address the figures were read from. Three states hide a trap the wedding blogs get wrong: Kansas, South Carolina and Wisconsin all have a famous waiting period that runs between applying and collecting, not between collecting and marrying.

3. THE STATE TABLE IS LIVE, SO YOU CAN COMPARE. Three columns answer the question you actually have: if we married there instead, when would we have to apply, and does the trip we already booked still work? Change your wedding date or either travel date and all fifty-one rows re-answer it. The sample's exact trip is legal in 42 jurisdictions and fails in 9.

THE 12 TABS
Start Here · Setup · Dashboard · License Window · State Rules · Budget · Payments · Travel · Permits · Who's Coming · Countdown · Day Plan

- START HERE: the four things to type first, and the two honest warnings
- SETUP: your names, your state, your four dates, and your money assumptions
- DASHBOARD: days to go, all-in cost, what is owed, and the license verdict in one line
- LICENSE WINDOW: your state's rule, your window, and whether your trip fits inside it
- STATE RULES: all fifty states and DC, every row with the address its figures came from
- BUDGET: planned, paid and owed, with due dates hung off your wedding date
- PAYMENTS: the same balances in due-date order, with a standing that turns over
- TRAVEL: flights, nights, the car, and a who-pays column
- PERMITS: public land, lead times, apply-by dates, and the weather call
- WHO'S COMING: a short list, their travel, and a witness count checked against your state
- COUNTDOWN: fifteen tasks hung off days before the wedding, not fixed dates
- DAY PLAN: the hours around the ceremony, driven by the ceremony time

ONE THING THIS FILE WILL NOT DO
It will not pretend to know what it does not. Fifteen fields across the fifty-one rows say "Verify" instead of a number, because no state or county government page confirmed them. A planner that invents those figures is worse than one that admits the gap. Nothing here is legal advice, and your county clerk is the only authority that settles any of it. Where a state's clock runs from the end of the waiting period rather than from issuance, the earliest-apply date is computed a few days later than the law strictly allows — that error is deliberate and it only ever points one way: it can tell you to apply later than you had to, never earlier than you may.

WHAT YOU GET
- The workbook in four color editions (Colorful, Light, Dark and an Editorial edition)
- A .zip of the three color editions
- A full narrated video walkthrough (link in the file and below)
- Free updates

WORKS IN
Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets and Apple Numbers. Portable formulas only — no macros, no add-ons, no account, nothing to log into, nothing to cancel.

THE SAMPLE
The file ships with a worked sample so every tab has something in it: a couple marrying at a viewpoint in the North Cascades with eight people watching, a $15,230 all-in budget against the $41,500 they were quoted for a 140-guest wedding, four permits, fifteen dated tasks and an hour-by-hour day plan. Countdowns are measured from an as-of date you type, so the sample stays readable whenever you open it — or put your spreadsheet's current-date function in that one cell and every countdown starts moving on its own. Delete the sample rows and type your own.

HONESTY
Every figure in the listing images and in the video was recalculated in LibreOffice and then recomputed independently before publishing: 4,265 formulas across the four editions, 19,115 workbook checks, 513 number assertions that re-derive the license window for all fifty-one jurisdictions in a second language, and 26 negative controls proving each gate actually fires. Zero failures. The state rules were read on September 2, 2026 and every row carries its source; fees and waiting periods change, so call the clerk before you book anything.

INSTANT DOWNLOAD — nothing is shipped.

🎥 WATCH THE FULL VIDEO TUTORIAL
A narrated walkthrough of every tab, with every figure recalculated before filming:
https://youtu.be/wEb8nfxmod0