Project management isn’t just for the office—learn how a wedding project management template can help you plan your wedding like a Boss!
It’s the moment you’ve been waiting for. Your significant other gets down on one knee with a beautiful ring in their hand and asks the big question: Will you marry me? You say, Yes!, with your hands in the air. When you announce the news to your friends and family, they are delighted and can’t wait for the big day. They start asking about the date, the venue, did you know your cousin is allergic to shellfish, are they able to bring a guest, and of course it would be an honor for them to sing at your wedding.
A few days later, the glow starts wearing off as you realize the mass amounts of work you just signed up for. (And what you actually said Yes! to). Only one of the most magical, memorable, and stressful events of a lifetime: your wedding.
The Basics: Finding Inspiration
There are many apps and online resources that you probably use every day, and may have even been using to start planning before you even got engaged. In fact, on one of the most notorious places for wedding ideas—Pinterest—users are known to actually have wedding boards created well before the engagement. 81 percent of engaged pinners said they began planning on Pinterest before the question was even popped.
Pinterest isn’t the only place for inspiration. Wedding blogs offer a wealth of information on everything from budgeting to venue-hunting. The Knot, for example, has a search engine for you to filter through venues and photographers based on rate, rating, and location.
For hair stylists or makeup artists, many brides-to-be browse Instagram looking for samples of ideas or local salons to reach out to. Etsy is the perfect spot for wedding party gifts, unique decor, and cake toppers. And on Youtube, you can watch videos of other weddings for more ideas on themes or even whether buying a wedding video package is worth the extra cost. (Just make sure to have tissues nearby if you watch the wedding from Crazy Rich Asians!)
It’s useful to have so many options for websites or apps that help you discover the look and feel for your wedding. However, you can get lost for hours through Pinterest boards and there’s no guarantee that the hair stylist you’re vying for will even see your Instagram DM. You still need to find a way to track all of your ideas, timeline, budget, guests… the list goes on.
Wedding Planner Websites
There are a few digital tools and resources that have grown in popularity over the years and helped couples in the planning process. Here are some of our favorites:
- All Seated: With All Seated, yourself or your event planner can put together a floor plan and seating chart in minutes! This is great for large spaces or long wedding guests lists. They also offer VR technology so you can see what the space will actually look like without leaving your couch.
- The Knot: The Knot is not only useful for inspiration, but it also offers many other resources for couples. Planning checklists help you sort through what needs to be done and when. You can create your own wedding website, so guests know the details and can RSVP directly online. It’s also useful to pull all of your gift registries in one place. In fact, we recommend using The Knot’s newest registry feature: “Newlywed Fund,” a cash registry. Newlywed Fund is more customizable than its competitor Honeyfund, allowing you to use the cash for your honeymoon or other “newlywed” expenses. (Plus, Honeyfund takes a transaction fee. There are no fees with The Knot.)
- Appy Couple: This one isn’t free, but offers design features that help you maintain a consistent theme across your website, save-the-dates, wedding invitations, and thank you’s. It also allows for consistent communication with guests, whether you need to send travel reminders or you want guests to share their photos in one place. It’s also helpful if you have multiple events for the wedding and need to have some separation between the communication for the rehearsal dinner, bachelor party, or the wedding.
- Google Drive: You didn’t know Google Drive was also a tool to plan weddings? Think outside of the box! Google Drive’s planning spreadsheets are the perfect place to break down budgets and share with your significant other or your family who may be helping with the bill.
All of these tools are useful, but it’s easy for information to get lost across multiple tools. Fortunately, wedding project management tools allow you to keep track of all your information in one place! How?
Bring it All Together with Gryffin’s Wedding Project Management Templates
Project management software may seem like something best suited for the office, but it’s actually incredibly useful in planning a major event like your wedding. When using project management software, you can better keep track of your emails to different vendors. With Gryffin, for example, you can even create a new project or task directly from an email.
Let’s take one aspect of the wedding planning that looks simple, but can get easily complicated: the flowers. You can use Gryffin’s project templates to keep track of all of the florist recommendations you have, along with their price range, availability, and link to their websites. You can give your significant other a task to review each recommendation. Once you narrow down the top picks, you can then email the florists.
From there, you’ll need to set up a phone call or meeting and get that scheduled on your calendar. With project management software, you’d be able to see your availability and after the meeting, add meeting notes with tasks for what you need to do next. You can even add deadlines on when final payments are due as well as reminders for checking in with the florist on what flowers might be in season, closer to the date.
The florist may send you pictures of what you like or ask for links to your Pinterest Board. In Gryffin, you can keep your links in one place—and keep it specific to the project of focusing on the flowers of your wedding. Plus, you may want to do some research of your own on buying bulk flowers from a store. It’s nice to keep all of the information in one central place.
Without a project management tool, you might end up using your email to contact the florist and keep tracking of your favorites in a Google spreadsheet. Meanwhile, you’re using another Google spreadsheet to add/subtract numbers in your wedding budget. And you’re also texting your significant other reminders to send your credit card information. And you’re searching through your browser history to figure out why flowers even cost that much money. (…This may be based on a true story.)
The point is, part of the reason the wedding planning process is overwhelming is because not all couples can afford to hire a wedding planner. (The average one costs at least $1500). When you have to keep track of your communication, budget, and timeline in many different places, it’s easy to see how emotionally consuming it can become.
Put all of the stress of the planning into a clear workflow, like a project management tool, and you may discover that executing your dream wedding isn’t as impossible as you feared.