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Joy Review

Monday, May 19th

2025 Wedding Planning Site Reviews

Joy Review 4 Star Rating

Joy

4 Star Rating
  • Free to use
  • Personalized websites
  • Create guest lists and invitations
  • Make a wedding registry
  • Positive reviews from couples

Joy was founded by 3 friends after one of their sisters was planning her wedding and struggled to find a website that offered personalized attention and detail. The friends built her a custom website to fit her style, and then other wedding guests and friends started asking for one of their own. Joy was officially founded in 2016 and has been featured by Vogue, The New York Times, Good Morning America, Cosmopolitan, Brides, BuzzFeed, Insider, and other prominent media outlets.

Complicated site navigation

Our initial impression is that you can forget about trying to navigate a simple, clean, user-friendly site when you're exploring Joy. What should be a simple page scroll turns into images zooming in and out, preventing us from quickly getting where we want to go. We imagine that within a few minutes some couples will want to abandon the site altogether since it feels overwhelming.

Best Wedding Planning Sites

Personalized websites

But, if you decide to press forward anyway, it's worth it. The main things you can do on Joy are design a personalized website and create a registry. There are hundreds of templates available for wedding websites to fit every style and make it easier to design something you love without having to start from scratch. You can change colors, photos, fonts, and even do a little coding to adjust formatting if you know how. The website can reflect your personality and set the tone for the wedding vibe you're planning.

Organized guest lists

A crucial part of planning a wedding is collecting addresses, sending out invitations, and tracking RSVPs. With Joy you can do just that. You can keep track of your guests' special dietary needs, who will make it to the rehearsal dinner, who is in the wedding party; communicate with them about important updates; and more. Joy lets you keep all details related to wedding guests organized in one single place. You can use their website to design and order your save the dates and wedding invitations too, so you don't have to look elsewhere for this service.

Create a registry

Joy is free to use because they make money from the registry portion of their site. When couples add products to their wedding registries from different stores, Joy earns a commission from the stores. You can add any products from your favorite retailers to your registry list and create unlimited cash funds with zero fees. It's one of the most popular tools on Joy and often what brings people to this wedding planning site in the first place.

Best Wedding Planning Sites

Professional end results

We weren't able to find a rating for Joy from the Better Business Bureau, but we did find quite a few reviews from users for the site. The biggest perk for couples is that Joy is free to use. And beggars can't be choosers, right? Yes, there are quite a few things about the site that drive people crazy, and there are a lot of suggestions that people have for the design team to make the whole platform more user-friendly. However, couples generally like how professional things turn out in the end and say there aren't glitches or issues with important things like RSVPs.

A good, free option

If you're looking for a place to keep yourself organized in the midst of the wedding planning process without spending any extra money, Joy is a great option. It's not going to be perfect or have every tool you can think of that would be useful, but it's a terrific resource. We recommend looking through all of Joy's features to see if it will take care of your wedding planning needs.

What Are the Best Wedding Planning Sites?

Weddings are a huge milestone in anyone's life. If you've found yourself here, it means that either you or someone close to you recently had the question popped, so congratulations from us to you!

While some people have dreamt of what they want their big day to be like since they were a little kid, others dread the idea of planning such a huge occasion and want all the help they can get. Either way, it will take some assistance to get all the details right and ensure that the day goes smoothly

The Best Wedding Planning Sites Compare Wedding Planning Sites Compare Wedding Planning Site Reviews What are the best Wedding Planning Sites Best Wedding Planning Site Reviews

Wedding Planning Site FAQ

Congratulations! Your head is probably spinning with thoughts of "What do I wear?” and "Where do we want to get married?” Using a wedding planning website should be the first thing you do!
A wedding planning site is any service that helps you, well, plan your wedding! Some are really robust, offering an all-in-one location for sending out invites, creating a gift registry, and even sharing day-of event photos! Others are more static: you may find some downloadable checklists and shopping guides, but not much more. Whichever type you choose, it's a great way to sort through all of the possibilities and start narrowing down the choices until you've got your dream wedding ready to become a reality.
The best ones are actually free! (And since there isn't much else about your wedding that will be, enjoy that!) Many couples are pleasantly surprised at how much they can do with an online wedding planning site, all at no cost.
Popular features that many wedding planning services offer include a website (that can be used as an online invitation as well as a place to manage RSVPs, share photos, etc.), seamless integration with gift registries, question-and-answer tools for deciding on everything from budget to catering, and an easy way to create and send paper invites. Some wedding planning sites also provide vendor recommendations for venues, florists, and so on.
That's totally up to you. If you decide to go all-digital, don't forget to consider if your great-aunt Agatha will be able to access your online invite, mark the date in her paper calendar, and find the address to get to your wedding on the right day and time. On the other hand, if you've got a small group of close friends that you're inviting and they're all as tech-savvy as you are, there may be no need to spend the time, money, or paper on printed invitations.
Not necessarily, but there's a way to finesse it so that it's not seen as gauche or presumptuous: choose a wedding planning service that has a "Cash”, "Experiences”, or "Honeymoon” registry option! Especially with so many weddings where couples are combining fully-equipped households or have already established a home together, many guests welcome the idea of not adding more stuff to the mix - and instead, being able to help fund a dream destination honeymoon or something fun like cooking lessons for two.
It's essential to know if the site provides budgeting tools or templates to help you keep track of costs. Many couples want a platform that can break down expenses, set limits for each category, and provide real-time updates on how much they've spent versus their budget.
Most services let you set whether your website is publicly visible, searchable on search engines, and so on. You may also be able to make your wedding website password-protected; just make sure that the way you give guests the password is also secure!
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Continued from above...

Until you're in the thick of wedding planning, you don't realize how many small decisions need to be made to pull off a wedding. A venue needs to be chosen, a date set, invitations designed and mailed (which means gathering a LOT of addresses), attire selected for the bride, groom, and wedding party, decor chosen for the ceremony, food arranged, and so much more. There are a lot of moving parts when it comes to planning a wedding, so save yourself the trouble and don't try to do it alone.

Whether you decide to have a huge wedding and invite everyone you know or just keep it small and intimate, the logistics are similar. Wedding planning sites can take the guesswork out of planning by recommending vendors in your local area you could contact, giving you a checklist to manage all the to-do items you have, helping manage guest lists and RSVPs, offering you tools for setting a budget, and providing a calendar so you stay on track.

You have a lot to do and a limited amount of time to get it done, so rely on the resources that are available to you to keep the experience enjoyable and as stress-free as possible. You'll want to be able to look back on the wedding planning process with fondness and remember the excitement and anticipation you felt, so don't overextend yourself. Many wedding planning sites offer advice from other couples who have planned weddings with similar details to yours, so you'll get some good tips from them that will expand your creativity and options as well.

There are quite a few wedding planning sites out there and we'd hate for you to waste any time on ones that aren't going to serve you. We've weighed the pros and cons of some popular options to help you find one that will help you dive right into wedding planning and get your thoughts and ideas organized. Here are a few important things to take into consideration when you're looking for one to rely on:

  • Cost. The amount of money you'll be spending on your wedding might have you hesitant to spend a single dime more. Luckily, some wedding planning sites are completely free. Others have a fee for certain services, so you'll need to weigh their usefulness and decide if it's worth it for you to pay for it. Regardless of which site you choose, it will be a lot cheaper than a personal wedding planner would be, so when you look at it that way, it might bring a lot of value to use an online wedding site instead even if you pay a bit.
  • Services provided. Do you need a wedding planning site that will help you organize and plan every detail of your wedding? Or are you only looking for a service to help with collecting addresses and sending invitations? Maybe you only need a go-to place to find wedding vendors. Decide what is most important to you and ensure that the wedding site provides those services.
  • Features. Does the site allow your chosen friends and family to allow access to the wedding planning information and contribute? Is there an app that makes it easy for you to use on-the-go and always stay connected with your planning details? Think about the tools that are important for you to have and make sure the site caters to them.

The experts at Top Consumer Reviews have researched the best wedding planning sites available to you. We hope this information helps you have the wedding day of your dreams and ensure that everything goes according to plan!

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