Is your wedding day approaching but you’re still wondering what it should look like?
There are hundreds of wedding websites online but what you need are tools that can help you put together ideas that you like while you keep an eye on your budget at the same time.
Here are four great applications to assist you during this joyful yet stressful time:
1. The Knot
This app is a feast to the eyes; it puts you in the mood by showing you pictures from real weddings that have different styles. If you’re living in the US, you can take advantage of vendor details attached to each wedding.
Best features:
- Checklist: use the default checklist items, add new ones or delete those that don’t apply to your wedding to keep track on all things. You can set a due date for each task too.
- Budgeter: The Knot lets you budget your wedding according to a pre-set list of categories which you can add to or delete.
- Guest list: The Knot lets you create a list of invitees to your wedding party or a pre-wedding one by creating an event first, then entering every invitee’s personal information as well as email address and phone number. You have to add location details for your event. After that, you can determine if an invitee has RSVP’d or whether or not an invitation was sent.
- Favorites: under this tab you can find all your favorite things that you spotted while browsing The Knot’s app.
2. Brides Wedding Genius 4.1
Browse wedding gowns, wedding bands and rings, honeymoon destinations and pre-wedding beauty tips all in one easy to use app.
Best features:
- Wedding dresses: browse wedding dresses based on your preferred dress length, neckline, sleeve style, silhouette, price or brand.
- Honeymoon destinations: check out the dreamiest and most romantic destinations for your honeymoon based on your preferred activities and style whether you’re looking for a hut on a beach or a villa in the countryside. Brides Wedding Genius provides a long list of destinations for nightlife lovers and adventure seekers. All you have to do is decide on your honeymoon style and budget before you start browsing.
- Beauty blog: find tips on everything related to the big day from choosing the right perfume to do’s and don’ts on your wedding day. Brides Wedding Genius features expert advice to help you look and feel great on your wedding day so make sure to dedicate some time to reading their blog posts.
3. Wedding Budget
Budget all your wedding’s expenses with the Wedding Budget by simply entering budgeted amounts for each field then the actual amounts.
Start by entering details of your wedding; try not to panic when you look at your wedding’s countdown though. The earlier you start planning and budgeting the better.
You can use the app without registration but consider signing up if you would like to professionally plan your wedding as you can sync your profile to Wedspace.com where you can find daily articles and inspirations for your wedding.
Best features:
- Budget: using this tool, you can either enter the budget amount of money for your wedding and then go through the categories or add new ones to find out if the budgeted cost is reasonable or start with the categories and then update the total budget accordingly. After you pay for every item, modify the actual cost. It would feel amazing to see that you have managed to save on any category!
The paid version of the app offers more tools such as a checklist, a guest list, and a seating chart.
4. Pinterest
As a bride-to-be, you’re probably spending a good amount of time everyday browsing the Web. You might be looking at different wedding sites and wondering what style to choose for the invitation cards, wedding favors and flowers.
With Pinterest every time you see an image you like on a website you can ‘pin’ it, either by clicking on the “P” icon on the image or clicking on “share” then the Pinterest button, or by simply copying the image URL and saving it to your Pinterest board. Voila, by doing this every time you see a wonderful dress or a nice flowers bouquet for example, inspirational images from all over the web are saved into one place. You can also share and invite your friends and relatives to pin with you.
Best features:
- Boards: on your Pinterest account you can set up as many boards as you want with different titles. So, for example, you might have one called ‘Wedding flowers’ or another called ‘Potential wedding venues’.
If you would like to have a theme for your wedding, why not start a board and call it “My wedding style” to which you pin pictures you like; after a while, a pattern will start to emerge for sure.
The same way of finding out about your true desired wedding style applies to THE dress. Create a new board and start pinning pictures of dresses that you like to help you decide on the style of your wedding dress.
Pinterest allows you to pin videos as well, so you can pin your favorite model walking down the aisle while wearing your dream dress.
Start your first board now.
- Explore interests: on Pinterest itself you can find thousands of wedding pictures that you can re-pin including articles and infographs as well as videos. Follow other people’s boards which interest you for inspiration and help with your own wedding.
5. IKEA
Don’t get caught up with the wedding only to forget to plan your dream home.
Best features:
- IKEA‘s home planners: IKEA provides a software through which you can easily design your future home. Be your own interior designer. Take measurements of any room then use any of IKEA’s home planners for the kitchen, bedroom, office, wardrobe and living room to mix and match till you visualize your perfect room. After that, save your plan to IKEA’s server and head to the nearest IKEA store to make your purchase.
