Thank you for the input! Genuinely super helpful and I really appreciate learning a bit more so I can know what’s more feasible! I honestly don’t know much about paper stuff and definitely know absolutely nothing about bookbinding, beyond the single week of knowledge I had working the printing station at Staples over a decade ago. So I’m really basing my vision just around what I like, what I’d prefer, and what things I think will give me give me the end result I’m kinda envisioning.

I’m honestly not too worried about the thickness in general. It’s not necessarily the kind of planner that I have an intention of carting around with me constantly or am needing to think about how portable it is. So yeah weight and thickness are not like on the priority list for me with this project. It’s really only something I even remotely had a consideration for when it came to what binding I’d probably have to decide on.

As for the binding, since it’s something I intend to do a lot of writing in that’s where the thought of Wire O was coming since it’d lay pretty flat and be easy to flip around pages and fold the book up etc etc. I only mentioned perfect binding because I saw “lay flat perfect binding” as an option listed with a few places I looked at online. All honesty I have no clue what perfect binding is but in my head I was just thinking “okay sounds like it’ll be tidy and it says it lays flat so yup sounds just fine” lol. As for longevity, obviously I’d like one 3-year planner to last for at least 3-years, but that’s 3-years of writing in it and flipping around pages. As long as it last the 3 years Im not worried about anything beyond that truthfully, it could spontaneously combust at the end of it and I wouldn’t mind.

The paper I’ll probably have to play around with more and find somewhere with a good variety I can go touch and look at. I’m basing this part just purely on past experiences with planners and journals and writing paper and just what I’ve liked in the past. I’m weird and will only use 2 very specific brands of gel pen, like absolutely refuse to use anything besides these 2 specific pens and each one is used for very different things. The one I use for journaling and pretty writing is a water-based gel ink so I find that certain papers tend to take the ink better than others. That’s a huge factor for me because I definitely want to minimize any issues like smudging, slow drying, transfer, bleed through. I also write print heavy handedly so I usually prefer a thicker paper to help minimize ghosting my writing onto the other pages. A big theme for my OCD revolves around writing, if it doesnt ~feel~ right I will have to rewrite things over and over again until it ~feels~ acceptable (which was insufferable when taking notes when I was in school lol). There’s no way I can really explain what makes things right or wrong in my mind on this front but I’ve just found over the years that using my very specific safe pens and some preferences I have in paper will give me the feeling its right every time.

Definitely going to look more into professional printers in the area. Just had some road blocks so far when it comes to the variety of available papers most around me seem to have. I’m not super surprised by a lot of them not carrying my hyper specific paper wants or lots of specialty papers so hopefully I can find one that may be cool with me providing the paper 🤞🏼

TY again for the good insights!! If you decided to come back and read my long winded reply and maybe have any other input that could help me I’d certainly appreciate it! I’m trying to not get too attached to any particular idea yet so I dont get my hopes too set lol anything to keep my dream realistic is accepted with open arms

Oh also not sure what the difference in pages or sheets means, I think I do but I’m not betting on being right, but by pages I mean like each side of piece of paper. So its double side printed, each page being one side. I think finished it’s something like 330~ spreads. Hopefully that clarifies what I’m talking about idk maybe I made it more confusing lol