Not so long ago, when my friends got engaged, they’d ask me what wedding websites they should read or what books they should buy. (I mean, APW and the APW book and APW Planner obviously, but there are some other great reads.) But lately, the question from newly engaged friends is about apps. What wedding planning apps should they use?
But the funny thing is, wedding planning has never been super conducive to organizing on a tiny hand-held device, so I never know quite what to say to them. “Google Drive is good…” I normally offer. “And like, Pinterest and Instagram for ideas.” But that always feels like a sort of terrible answer, which isn’t a huge surprise, given that in nearly ten years in the wedding industry, I never cease to be underwhelmed. I like to joke that I have a successful wedding business because the bar was so low you could practically trip on it, at least back in 2008.
But the other truth that has been shown over and over again (and this recent article by Ellen Pao stomach churningly proves once more) is that tech is a deeply sexist place. And that means that most of the money that goest to build apps and wedding planning tools goes to men. Worse, it’s not uncommon for it to go to men who have never planned a wedding before. I know. I know. It’s so bad it’s almost funny.
This has been particularly driven home in recent years, as we’ve been on the other end of hundreds of wedding startup press releases, nearly always written by guys who thought, “Weddings would be an easy industry to disrupt,” and have ideas so laughably bad that I wish they’d been run by even ONE female wedding industry professional before money was wasted on it. (Favorite: An app that lets you send out all your wedding invites via Facebook Messenger… Great for people who want their invitations immediately lost to the digital wasteland.)
Which brings me to y’all. As some of the savviest people planning weddings out there, what tools are you using to help master the project management marathon that is wedding planning? What tools do you like? What tools have you found to be garbage? And while we’re at it, what’s the one tool you really wish existed?
P.S. For those of you who like paper, the APW Planner is a great place to get all the information you need to actually plan a wedding, and the APW spreadsheets are a great place to start building your Google Docs wedding planning machine.
Are you using tech (or even just a notebook) to make wedding planning easier? Share your best wedding planning hacks!
