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Weddings are dreamy and exciting and almost seem effortless when the big day arrives, but when you get involved in planning your own wedding, you realize that it is a monumental task. There are more moving pieces than you can wrap your mind around, with different deadlines and people to work through. Whether your wedding is going to be tight-knit with just your closest friends and family or a giant gathering of nearly everyone you've ever met, a lot of work will need to go on behind the scenes to make it happen.
If you feel overwhelmed with coordinating finding a dress for you and your wedding party, suits, ties, the wedding cake, invitations, a venue, decor, vendors, a registry, and all the other things that go into creating a wedding, you're in good company. Everyone agrees it's too much for one person to do alone, so luckily there are companies that have created handy online tools to help you keep everything organized and on track.
Thursday, June 12th
Wedding Planning Assistant is an online platform that you can use for free or pay $29 for with upgraded features. It's designed to be effective for both couples planning their wedding or wedding planners juggling multiple events. They've included all the important features we could possibly think of and according to users, it's easy to navigate. It has helped many people keep themselves organized and save money. Wedding planners can create a business account (to be found by couples needing their services) for a monthly cost and test out the platform with a free trial. This is a robust system that would be useful for every newlywed-to-be, so it's earned our highest rating for wedding planning.
Joy is a free tool that helps couples gather guest information, get RSVPs to their events, send invitations, create a registry, make their own custom website, and even save on lodging if they have friends and family traveling for the wedding. Over the years they've created more professional, comprehensive features that come at no cost to you. This is a great place to organize wedding details for both you and your guests, so there's no reason not to take advantage.
Aisle Planner is an alternative for wedding and other event professionals trying to manage multiple clients and all their details with 3-ring binders and complicated spreadsheets. This online platform has 4 pricing tiers depending on how many clients you have and comes with a 30-day trial so you can give their features a test run. It has comprehensive sales, project management, and payment tools that users are happy with, as an easy-peasy way to keep all their events on track and organized. This is not a good option for brides and grooms trying to manage their own wedding details, but for professionals, it's a great option.
Planning Pod is a robust system for professionals who plan not only weddings but any type of big events on a regular basis. Their pricing tiers are based on how many events you'll be in charge of each year, so you'll spend a little more or less depending on what your clientele is like. There are 3 products you can choose from a la carte or purchase them all, including event management and planning, venue and facilities management, and floor plan designing. If you call customer support they will likely allow you access to a 14-day free trial you can test out before subscribing. We're impressed with the features here, but realize it is for serious businesses rather than couples looking for planning help leading up to their wedding day. This is a great software, but won't be the right fit for everyone.
WedSites is a comprehensive choice for wedding planning if you're tackling your own event and need a way to keep your timeline and to-do list straight. (FYI: it's not much of an option for wedding planners because it isn't built for that.) Here you can make a basic wedding website for free, but all the important features like budgeting, checklists, RSVP, invitations, and seating charts come with the highest membership level that costs $199 (one-time payment). You'll have to pay for this if you plan to use everything WedSites offers, so it's more expensive than some other options on our list that you might want to check out first.
Zola is a free service that offers wedding announcement designs, wedding website creation, a budget calculator, and the option to create a wedding registry through them. People have had major concerns and issues with the registry aspect of Zola, so we wouldn't recommend using this feature. The company has an "A-” rating from the Better Business Bureau, but a lot of people feel they've been scammed. Zola isn't our favorite place to turn for wedding planning assistance.
The Knot is part of a family of brands all focused on helping people celebrate important life milestones. They offer free services like website creation, building a registry, finding local vendors, making wedding invitations, and more. However, they have really terrible reviews from both users of their site and vendors that they list online. People say that you don't get competitive pricing when you book a vendor through The Knot and it doesn't seem like all their reviews are accurate. Vendors complain of being ripped off by The Knot when they don't get legitimate business like they thought they would. There are so many issues that go on here, so we don't recommend using The Knot for anything outside of their free tools, if you even choose to do that.
Wedding Planning Professional was a program developed years ago to help individuals and wedding planners alike keep all their to-do items and guest lists organized in one single place. It has a lot of potential, but unfortunately does not seem to be getting active maintenance or having new users. You'll have to pay to download the program on an app and then pay an additional yearly subscription to use the features. There is little to no information about a refund or cancellation policy and we wish there was a demo or free trial we could use before signing up. The customer reviews for this program are mixed, and they are at least 9 years old, so they aren't as reliable anymore. In short, we'd try a higher-rated service before using Wedding Planning Professional in order to get the most up-to-date features and a reliable experience.
Some people choose to hand over all the heavy lifting of wedding planning to a dedicated professional, but this is usually really expensive. It can also leave you feeling like you aren't giving as much personal attention to the process and being part of every step.
Online wedding planning tools are much more affordable and make it easy for you and whoever else is part of the process to stay on the same page and check all your boxes to accomplish the tasks that lie ahead. When you get organized and can clearly see what needs to be done, it makes the days, weeks, and months leading up to your wedding so much more exciting and stress-free.
So now that you know there are options for wedding planning to make your life easier, how do you narrow down the right company for you? We've highlighted some key areas to pay attention to as you look at the different platforms out there:
The experts at Top Consumer Reviews have researched some top companies that offer wedding planning assistance online. We hope this information helps you enjoy the process and stay on top of all the little details that will come together to make your wedding day magical!
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