Seems that just
about everything you need to pull off a wedding can be found or bought online
these days! I’m certain that planning a
wedding before Google arrived meant asking friends and families for advice and
shopping locally to get what you needed.
Now, you, my reader, are online on some sort of magical device that is
letting you read this. I too am
inundated with technology and have a job where the Wonderful World Wide Web is
only a click away at any given time. In
addition I have this thing called a Smart Phone (iPhone - another theme) that
is never far from my hands. These in
particular lead me to utilizing this WWW tool, and some other techie devices,
quite often.
Here are a few of
the ways that the WWW and new advances in technology have assisted Fletch and me
thus far in our wedding planning endeavor:
Email (Gmail specifically) has assisted us in
announcing our engagement, gathering guest information, sending out our save
the dates, sending newsletters to our bridal party and parents, as well as
communicating with our vendors. I can
even e-fax documents straight from my computer (through email)! This is how we reserved the wedding venue and
signed other various vendor contracts. I
also use my Google Calendar and Contacts religiously. Honestly, where would we be without email?!
Internet Search
Engines, particularly
Google (do you see a theme here?), have aided in my research of venues, styles,
color schemes, budget ideas, attire options, etiquette, recommendations on
wedding professionals and even accommodations for out of town guests. I learned how to apply for our wedding
license and how to have our friend get ordained online in order to become what
our county calls a “One-Time Deputy Marriage Commissioner” for him to legally
marry us {VERY important step in this whole process}! I found my Month of Wedding Coordinator
online through her blog and our engagement party invitations were ordered
online. Besides all of that, just about
every vendor we use has a website of their very own!
While I haven't
partaken of e-commerce for anything physical for the wedding yet, I
thought I should mention that you can purchase just about anything you want or
need from the inter-webs. You can buy
new or used items. I should probably
break this out into another post at some point, because really the
possibilities are endless! Anything from
decorations, clothing, accessories, shoes, jewelry, rings, bow ties, favors,
invitations, photo albums, cake toppers, toasting flutes, etc.
I use something
called Dropbox to organize all of my wedding documents, contracts, I Do
To-Do Lists, etc. This is a “cloud”
device which means that I can access the information in our Dropbox folder from
any computer that is linked to the same folder.
Fletch and I can share, view and edit documents at the same time without
having to email them back and forth. You
could do something similar with Google Drive (previously called Goggle Docs),
but I like the Dropbox formula better.
Next, we
purchased a subscription to a Wedding Website (Wed-site, if you will) that
includes behind the scene features like: uploading our contacts from our email
accounts to create guest lists (for all wedding related events), budgeting
tools that are integrated with our vendor list, including reminders of when
payments are due to vendors and a task calendar (which I haven’t been able to
make sync with my Google calendar yet).
The actual Wed-site that our guests see has some fun aspects to it, such
as photo albums, a link to our registry, a song request section, a guestbook,
links to hotels, directions from Google Maps and an online RSVP tracking
feature for later! By the way, Fletch
and I put the content together ourselves and I even got to do some very
rudimentary coding, but I felt very techie doing it!!
Speaking of our registry,
we did a couple of things that I think are neat and a little different. First we did the traditional gun scanner at a
big box store route, which was fun.
Then, I went online and found two online registry companies that allowed
me to 1) add items from any store around the world that has a website and 2)
gave us an option to have a honeymoon registry added as well. Both companies had internet add-ons that made
it very easy to click a button and add items to the registry when shopping
online. Both had iPhone Apps, so I could
add and delete items on the go from my iPhone.
We ended up using MyRegistry.com and could even customize it with
our picture and a message to our guests.
Some of the other
Apps that I love to use for my wedding adventures include Big Day Lite –
tells me how many days until our wedding!; Venmo, which is a social version of
PayPal where you can pay someone with just their phone number; Weddingawkr –
which I used to look at all the time, but now I favor Pinterest* more…; Pandora
- which gives me musical inspiration and when I find a song that I might want
at the wedding, I make a note in my phone – nifty!; and Google Blogger (but
it’s not very user friendly, sorry Google).
Other Apps that I use regularly, but have already mentioned above are:
Gmail, Google Calendar, Safari/Goggle, Dropbox, MyRegistry.com & the other
big box registry. And if it wasn't
obvious these all sync between my iPhone and online perfectly :)
In mentioning Apps,
I should talk about the iPad at home (and we have a couple of iPods too). An iPad that I don’t use regularly because
it’s hooked up to all of Fletch’s accounts, but that I’m considering using at
the wedding in one or two ways. First is
that we may use it to conduct our wedding ceremony and secondly I am
considering using it as a camera for a photo booth! I’ll blog about the whole photo booth idea
and photo/video sharing another time.
This brings me to
the Social Media phenomenon. I
don't really consider Facebook to be a "wedding" tool, however
if you wanted to use it that way, you could.
I follow our photographer and my stylist because I think they are great
at what they do, and I think we could be friends after the wedding - they are
interesting ladies. Facebook now has ads
that mirror what you "Like",
so I frequently see wedding related ads, but nothing really speaks to me. I mostly use Facebook to see and share
pictures and keep tabs on my friends and family. I mentioned Weddingawkr earlier and if you
haven't looked at it, you should; it highlights the best wedding blogs and
stories plus it updates regularly. *But,
I said that I favor Pinterest more and here's why: you get to save the
images that you like on a virtual bulletin board and that "Pin" will
take you to the direct source, so to the video, article or picture, that was originally
posted online. It reminds me of
bookmarking, but it's prettier, since you see the title picture on your
"Board". It's a great way to
organize your thoughts, things that you want, things that you want to do or
ideas to try later. I use it as a source
of inspiration and a place to look at pictures that make me laugh {Cats in
Clothes, anyone?}. I currently have 19
different Boards related to wedding stuff; 34 total - shows you where my
current interests lie {no surprise here, right?}. Pinterest is a sort of addiction, you can
follow your friends or other people (strangers) with similar interests to yours
and you can search very general categories of interest. The categories continuously refresh based on
what people pin or "Repin", so there is a lot of new content
constantly. It's fun for all sorts of
things - I have pinned recipes, fashion that I want to try out and vacation
spots. The other day, in the wedding category I saw a picture that said “Pinterest wasn’t
around when I got married, I want a do-over!”
Do you ever feel like that? If
you had Pinterest or any of these other technologies available to you when you
were planning your wedding, would it have made things easier for you? Would you have done things differently? Are there other technological tools out there
that you're using that I didn't mention or may not know about?
Future Mrs.
Fletcher
