We’ve met the fact that I’m “minorly” obsessed with Erin Condren planners.  I’m pretty sure this is not new information, especially if you’ve been around here for awhile.

This year Erin Condren is doing an earlier pre-sale of the new 2017-2018 Life Planners than usual.  Typically, they go on sale around the middle of May – beginning of June (if memory serves) this way if you ordered a planner to start in July, you’ll have it by July 1st.

This year, they made the order date a bit earlier and you can start pre-ordering the new planners on May 4th.  This was a great idea because it will give them more time to make sure every handmade planner is perfect and in the customer’s hands by July 1st.

I signed up for their special #PlannerPeeks newsletter awhile back so that I could see sneak peeks of the new Life Planner (which always made me excited) and from that I got the special PRE-pre-sale access and was actually able to order my new planner for 2017/2018 yesterday morning, and I’m SUPER EXCITED!

At any given point in the past couple of years, I have two planners: one for personal stuff and one for work stuff.  Being an educator, I always like for my planners to follow an academic year (July-June) since that’s the calendar I follow most.  My personal one, I don’t really care when it starts/ends; so I typically order my school planner during the Erin Condren summer launch so that it starts in July and I order my personal planner around November since it starts in January.

In years past, the only way to get an Erin Condren planner to start in July was to order an 18 month planner, so it would go from say July 2016- December 2017, and considering I only use the academic year, the last four months of the planner would either go unused, or not used to it’s greatest potential.

BUT!  They finally have an academic year planner!!  I’m so excited!  So you don’t have to do 18 months anymore, you can now get a 12 month July-June planner, which is utterly fantastic.  So, of course, that’s what I got yesterday!

I got a 12 academic month hourly colorful (they also have a neutral page option) coiled planner with a rose gold coil and their new Painted Petals cover which I customized the color (it’s stock option is a rainbow/watercolor background with white petals) to be…..my wedding colors.  Yes! This is my work planner, BUT I did that because this is the first actual planner I’m going to have my actual wedding day/date in it, so I got really excited and decided I wanted my wedding colors to be the cover of the planner.

Here is the preview of it:

So our colors are navy and coral (with a little white in there) so this is as close as I could tell from a computer screen.  And I thought the rose gold coil went with the design the best out of the options.  So, I’m excited to get this guy in person.

I’m also getting a couple of other fun things with my order, but I’ll talk more about those when I get them.

Along with the new academic option for planners, the Erin Condren team also really listened to a lot of people wanting different binding and size options, as well.  Prior to this year, all planners were the same size and same binding.  If you’ve never held an EC Planner before, they’re about 7.5″ x 9.5″, so a little smaller than a regular sheet of paper, and pretty thick, especially if you have an 18 month version.  And if you’re left handed, the coil can trip you up and on and on.

So, in addition to academic layouts, they are also releasing HARDBOUND planners….so no coil.  AND they are releasing the hardbound planners in two different sizes.  So you can still get the more standard size in an 8×10 book or you can get a smaller 5×7 version, which is great if you are someone who likes to be able to throw a small planner into your purse or work bag with you.

Now you can see if you do the hardbound versions, they are only doing their vertical layout in the large version and their horizontal layout in the smaller version.  I don’t know if they’re planning on ever branching out into the other layouts for these, I guess it would depend on the sales for these as they are, but from the planner community I’m in, I get the feeling these are going to sell out fast.  The hardbound comes in four different colors: black, linen (an ivory color), cherry blossom, and turquoise.  And while I haven’t had one of these in my hand, I’ve seen sneak peek videos of this planner and can say that it lays completely flat when it’s open because the spine is stitched to keep it flat and to keep the spine from breaking.

Erin Condren is also releasing a ton of new accessories in this launch.  I didn’t get a ton with this order (because I’m trying to be good with the budget because…ya know…planning a wedding and all) but I have a feeling I’ll get more later on because some of the new sticky notes and sticker books are BEAUTIFUL:

And there’s a ton more being released, I’m just really into sticky notes and stickers in my planner, so if you are too, you might want to check some of this stuff out.

General Pre-Sale opens on May 4th, so if you’re an Erin Condren fan like I am or looking for a new planner, you definitely want to check out the sale.  You can check out my other Erin Condren posts here on my blog if you want to get an idea of what the insides of the planners look like (I use a vertical planner for personal planning as well as an hourly planner for work planning) and see if it’s something you would like.

If you do decide you want to make a purchase, you are welcome to go ahead and shop through this link that will give you $10 off your purchase, which could easily pay for a couple of cute accessories!  There is also free standard shipping on any order over $100.

If you do make any purchases, feel free to come back and show me what you got!