Congratulations! Valentine’s Day is one of the most popular days to pop the question. About 30,000 couples will start their lives together today. Take a deep breath and enjoy this moment. You are engaged and life feels perfect. But here are a few sites to help you avoid getting overwhelmed as your life starts changing faster than your Facebook relationship status.
Couples today have plenty of online opportunities to hone in on what they need to create their ideal wedding. While there are no replacing savvy wedding planners like the staff at French’s Point, it’s certainly undeniable that the Internet is a tremendous resource for start-to-finish wedding inspiration. Even a little while spent at quality sites can help a couple realize in detail what they had perhaps only dreamt about in the abstract. Here are a few of my favorite sites to get you brainstorming:
The Knot – This website for the eponymous gold-standard wedding magazine combines the magazine’s punchy, informative articles with simple planning tools covering everything from engagement to honeymoon. At The Knot, you can, for example, look for area vendors; watch a video about how much is too much to pay for a wedding cake; or monitor your budget, guest list, and registry. Be sure to check out the “Real Weddings” section, where you can get a ton of ideas from the slideshow profiles of readers’ ceremonies. To help you compare apples to apples, “Real Weddings” is also divided into categories like fall, winter, summer, and spring; budget; and destination.
Prepare to Wed – PreparetoWed.com is streamlined, stunning online resource that also manages to pack in a wealth of detailed advice on every aspect of the wedding ceremony. Designed by a wedding planner, Prepare to Wed offers tools to manage your guest list, budget, and other important aspects of the ceremony, and also includes an impressive archive of “Expert Advice” from top vendors working in all aspects of the wedding. The archive is searchable by season or wedding style and includes hundreds of posts on everything from whether to invite children to the wedding to what to do if it rains on your wedding day. You can even tap the archives for aesthetic inspiration by searching by the colors you intend to use at your ceremony. Be prepared to lose an afternoon sifting through this impressive resource – this is an easy site to get addicted to.
Wedding Wire – Another excellent resource for couples that includes budget, guest list, and registry planners; WeddingWire.com’s distinction is its database of 200,000 vendor reviews. Searchable by zip code and service, the reviews are done by real newlyweds who rank vendors according to quality of service, responsiveness, professionalism, value, and flexibility. Wedding Wire also gives out annual awards for the best-rated vendors and badges to vendors who received three or more reviews in the past year (which Wedding Wire says means the vendors care about honest feedback). Both of these badges can be found on the vendor’s profile.
Maine Wedding Company is an online wedding planning source for destination weddings and for creative couples getting married in Maine. From luxury seaside resorts to casual lobster bakes on the beach, Maine provides a unique experience for Maine destination brides and local Maine brides alike. Their featured Maine Wedding Company vendor members are exceptionally talented, setting trends and going above and beyond in service. The MWC’s network of wedding professionals stand for quality and hospitality.