
Ask HN: Wedding planning? - dyeje
I recently got engaged.  Looking for recommendations for apps, services, etc to help smooth out the wedding planning experience.
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tathougies
The #1 recommendation to have a hassle-free wedding is to get married in an
'off-month'. My wife and I got married in March, which is the second least
popular month to get married in. It gave us so much leverage in setting our
own prices. We got married in the city of San Francisco, which is a pretty
competitive market. I would call and ask venues a year out and say 'We're
getting married next year, do you have any availability'. Almost every one
said 'no, we're completely booked'. Then I would tell them we're getting
married in March, and they said 'we are free all of march.' Ultimately, we
ended up getting a bunch of stuff for free. Like, my wife ordered flowers, and
the company just threw in chair covers and ribbon. We didn't even want chair
covers and ribbon originally (was too expensive when we researched it), but
they just gave it to us!

Another tip is to not overthink it. We let each vendor handle their own deal.
For example, my wife didn't tell the florist how to decorate. She said 'you
are an expert with flowers, I want pretty flowers, make it look nice'. Along
with this, I would choose pretty venues that are easily available or public.
We had the reception on federal land, which means that the prices are somewhat
regulated already. We also got married in one of the beautiful Catholic
churches in the city, which needed no decoration whatsoever and was totally
free (although, obviously, you have to be part of the community there).

Finally, do not waste money on a fancy photographer (probably my most
controversial opinion). Photographers are expensive, and there's only one part
that's super important to photograph (the ceremony). We could not afford a
top-tier photographer for the entire thing. We instead hired a good
photographer only for the ceremony. For the reception, I went on craigslist
and hired a photography student. She wasn't as polished as the professional,
but she gave us 1000+ photos which we later sorted through ourselves. Not only
was this fun, but it was a lot cheaper. The professional photographer would
have charged 3-4k for the entire night. Instead we spent $200 for the ceremony
and $600 for the reception.

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AnimalMuppet
Get a wedding coordinator. That person's job is to listen to what the two of
you want, and then to make it happen - over everyone else's opinions, if
necessary. The wedding coordinator is the bad guy (no gender implied) to
everyone else. If, for example, the bride's aunt wants to sit on the bride's
parents' row, the wedding coordinator shuts that down, _so you don 't have
to_, so you don't have to fight with the bride's aunt.

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itamarst
A wedding doesn't have to be a massive production. You can just have a party,
with family and friends. You don't need special software, you don't need to
spend huge amounts of money. Really.

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muzani
This is very dependent on the families involved. To some, the most important
event of someone's life is their child's marriage. For some, it's considered
disrespectful to not spend huge amounts of money on it, and this can create
resentment in the long run.

~~~
srean
> For some, it's considered disrespectful to not spend huge amounts of money
> on it

Then one should go the extra mile on purpose to make them feel disrespected.

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RNeff
There is an entire website based company based on this topic.
[https://www.theknot.com/](https://www.theknot.com/)

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IpV8
Go on to your fiance's phone, computer, router, etc and block all of the
wedding marketing engines from showing up in her google searches. This
includes, but is not limited to, theknot, pinterest, etc. This will
singlehandedly reduce cost and stress more than any other single action.

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IanDrake
[https://www.perfecttableplan.com](https://www.perfecttableplan.com)

Last I knew this was a solo dev doing great work.

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ecesena
Pinterest - inspirations, style, even share mood boards if you need. You can
use “secret boards” to keep it for yourself.

theknot - hustle free website and many other tools

zola - if you need online registry

minted - physical cards, they’re also integrated with the know so you can have
some website templates in style with the cards.

paperless - decently cool emails instead of physical cards.

Congrats, and enjoy the process!

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quickthrower2
See also
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16123393](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16123393)

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wyatt888
Am a guest to a wedding using withjoy.com. It's been nice from the guest side
of the fence...

