Best Tools to Simplify Wedding Planning
Wedding planning is tedious, even if your wedding is relatively modest, between choosing a venue, finding a caterer, and sending out invitations. Fortunately, there are many tools, apps, and websites that make tracking easy and help you do your research at home or on the go.
Find a venue and create a seating chart
When my fiance and I first thought about our wedding, we searched on Google for “Los Angeles wedding venues,” and of course we had a variety of options. Expensive options. It took us a lot of effort to narrow down the available space in the area, and we could save time with a place finder tool like Wedding Spot . The site allows you to filter your search results by price, location and style. It will also provide you with a price range for each location depending on the number of guests you plan to invite.
Knot’s Venue Finder is another option, and it seems to include a broader list of locations. However, it doesn’t offer a price range for each location, but gives you an idea of how economical a vendor is using a dollar pricing system like what you see on Yelp.
With both tools, you can compare places and schedule appointments to see the ones you like. Airbnb also offers wedding options, and you can view their locations here.
Once you’ve decided on the location, you can determine the seating positions, and a tool called AllSeated can help you with that. It allows you to create 3D plans for your event, and you can import contacts from your email or social media to create a guest list. As soon as you add your location to the tool, it will automatically import the floor plan if that location is in the system (mine was included and it’s not exactly a popular location). If not included, you can also draw the floor plan yourself. From there, you can add tables and guests and keep track of who got the RSVP, which party each guest is at, and so on.
Create invitations and save dates
It’s easy to create invitations, but you need to be careful with the tools you use. We created one round of save dates using a combination of Canva and a print site and they looked pretty bad. The image quality sucks and we’re not designers so we had no idea what looked good.
A website with a design and print like VistaPrint is a decent compromise between doing it yourself and paying for a service dedicated to this kind of thing. They have a variety of wedding options to choose from (from invitations to card placement to dinner menus), and you can tweak the designs a bit to make them look a little more personal. Plus, there’s a better chance the image quality won’t be bad because they created the design themselves. And if you upload a photo and its resolution is poor, VistaPrint will warn you.
Our save dates with VistaPrint looked much better than the ones we designed ourselves (and they were cheaper!), But before I chose them, I checked out reviews on a site called WeddingWire . You can search for a company or service by name to see what other customers think of it. This way you know what you are getting yourself into. (Of course, this is still a budget option, and it probably won’t look as good as hiring a professional designer.)
Both WeddingWire and TheKnot are also great for finding invitation services and tools in general. And if you want to switch to a digital format , in Paperless Post is a set of options that you can just send an e-mail. Most of them are free and you can also upload your own designs and they will send emails and track your guests.
Select Suppliers
The meeting place can be the biggest part of your planning, but the little things add up too. You need to choose a wide variety of suppliers and service providers, from caterers to bartenders and photographers.
However, once you choose a venue, you can narrow down your options. Most establishments require you to use their providers, or they at least assume that a few people have already used them and are familiar with their location. Of course, you can also use wedding sites like TheKnot , WeddingWire, and MyWedding to find suppliers and services. Here are some additional sites for specific types of services:
- For photographers, there is SnapKnot or Photographer Central.
- LocalCatering or Gigsalad for Catering
- GigMasters for bartenders, musicians and DJs
If you’re looking for more affordable options, you can find people to hire on TaskRabbit , as this couple has done :
TaskRabbit was extremely helpful. We found a photographer serving waiters, a chef for the next day’s brunch, which we also host at the same Airbnb apartment, cleaners – definitely for a fraction of the cost it would take to have a real team, for example. come and do it for us … So, for the ceremony itself, we order a barbecue at one of our favorite barbecue spots, and TaskRabbit picks it up for us. And the next day for brunch, we ordered something like a Peapod at Instacart.
They hired someone from TaskRabbit to prepare brunch for them too . Of course, you work directly with the person in charge of the task, so you may not get the guarantees that you get when working with a reputable company (although TaskRabbithas its own guarantee ), so this should be borne in mind.
If guests come to you from another city, you can book blocks in hotels so that everyone has a place to stay. Jetaport can help you find hotels that allow you to book nine or more rooms at a time. However, it is not just a search engine, it is also an online travel agency that will negotiate these blocks on your behalf. You simply fill in your dates, location and the approximate number of rooms you want, and Jetaport fills in a list of hotels to check.
Find a dress and other formal wear
It is easy enough to find and make an appointment at local bridal boutiques or well-known stores (like David’s Bridal). However, if you’re looking for more creative options, there are plenty to choose from.
For example, Almost Just Married sells used and sample wedding dresses at great discounts. After you order the dress and receive it in the mail, you have five days to decide if you want to keep it for yourself. And, if you like, you can sell it back through their online marketplace. It’s kind of like Glide , only for wedding dresses!
You can also rent a wedding dress through Rent the Runway. Obviously, you can’t change the dress, so it should be perfect, but the prices are pretty stunning: most dresses cost less than $ 100 for a 4-day rental. You can also rent the apartment for eight days if you need more time. Union Station is a similar site but for bridesmaid dresses. You choose your color and style, the bridesmaids register on the site, submit their measurements, and Union Station sends you the dress. You also don’t need to rent; You can also buy new dresses.
Weddington Way is another rental option for bridesmaid dresses , tuxedos and suits. You can order several at once to try on, and then choose the one that you like. However, there is a $ 10 fee for the dress you try on, but if you use their services, they charge that amount. Generation Tux and The Black Tux offer similar online tuxedo and suit rental services. You choose a few of them that you like, agree with your grooms, and then set a date for ordering for rent.
If you don’t feel like trying on a bunch of dresses, Brides.com has a pretty handy tool that lets you try on things virtually. That way, you can figure out what works for you and narrow down your options. This will save you time trying to buy something from the store.
Keep your notes and plans in order
When my friend found out that I was planning a wedding, she offered to help and then pulled out a huge folder from her wedding. I laughed because I thought it was just overly organized, but no – there is so much information to keep track of: ideas, quotes, receipts, business cards, addresses.
It’s gotten pretty commonplace, but Pinterest is a useful tool for keeping track of all your ideas. You can create boards, search for ideas, and then organize them by board. If you are a visual person and see tons of interesting things on the Internet while researching, this is the perfect option for you. There are many wedding websites out there that are meant to be a one-stop resource for planning, researching, and keeping track of everything. These are great tools, but I’m just using Evernote to keep track of things. I have a whole notebook called Wedding and I just stuff all my receipts and ideas into it. However, you can go a step further and create subfolders dedicated to each category: salespeople, receipts, addresses and guests … you get the idea.
Wedding Happy is a fun iOS app that counts down the days to the wedding and helps you plan with assignments. It’s like a to-do list and a digital pad rolled into one. Our Wedding Planner is a similar option for Android (both are free). Brides.com also offers an interactive wedding listing to help you do just that. Tasks are broken down by month, depending on your date. You can also filter by category, overdue tasks, and completed tasks.
OurDreamWedding.com also has a helpful budget tracker to help you figure out how to categorize your budget. It also affects the number of guests you invite, as well as the number of people at the wedding party. And here is a whole list of wedding budget tables in Excel.
Planning a wedding is fun, but it can also be very stressful, especially if you are not really a wedding person and have never thought about it. These tools can help you streamline and organize the process, making it a little less intimidating.