It seems as if nothing these days can escape the inevitable march of technology, not even weddings – that age old tradition that has been with us for millennia. But technology becoming a ubiquitous part of the wedding landscape isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it can be an essential way to help you plan your wedding, especially if you’re the type of person who isn’t particularly interested in the nitty-gritty details.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a geeky couple or not, here are some ways that technology can help you plan your ideal wedding,
Get The Word Out On Twitter
One of the ways that technology has changed our lives is that it has made us far more interconnected. In the past, if you wanted to organize a rip-roaring wedding, you had to track people down, find out whether they’d moved to a new address and send them individual invitation letters. Today, finding people is exponentially easier thanks to social media platforms like Twitter, even if you plan on sending out regular wedding invitations in the post.
Savvy couples use social media to help them compile their guest lists, get in contact with guests and do wedding invitations. They also use social media as a platform to announce their engagement, inviting comments from people they might have forgotten about but should probably still invite. Thus, social media helps take a lot of the legwork out of inviting guests and makes it easier to find people that would have once been difficult to track down in real life.
Amazon Wedding Registry
Gift giving is a traditional (and often essential) part of the wedding ceremony, but it’s also a logistical nightmare for everybody involved. Lugging a new coffee machine or a full-height lamp into a church or hotel is a massive hassle.
In the past, couples and their guests had no choice: all gifts had to be brought to the ceremony. But thanks to new technologies, the need to bring gifts in person is now a thing of the past. A few years back, Amazon set up their own wedding registry. The idea was to make it easier for guests to shop for newly married couples online. Instead of buying gifts and bringing them to the wedding, shoppers could simply add their gifts to the couple’s online wedding registry which would then be shipped to the couple’s home address at a time of their choosing. In short, technology means that you can finally say “goodbye” to gift tables and “hello” to unencumbered guests.
Social Media Wedding Groups
Wedding plans rarely stay the same throughout the planning period. Instead, they change as circumstances change. Before social networks were invented, keeping people up to date with your latest wedding plans was nearly impossible. But with social groups, it’s much easier.
Creating a wedding group is simple. Just go to Facebook, create a group for your wedding and invite all the guests. Then, if there are any changes to your plans or things that people need to be made aware of, you can keep them up to date. If you don’t feel like sending out wedding invitations in the post, you can do so online, saving you even more time, money and energy.
The Cloud
The cloud is one of the most exciting developments in digital technology so far, yet few people actually know what it is despite using it practically every day. The great thing about cloud-based services is that they can be accessed virtually anywhere, whether you’re at the wedding venue itself, at home or doing some last minute shopping with the bridesmaids.
Cloud-based services, like Evernote, are especially useful because they allow you to keep track of your spending and planning notes wherever you and your spouse-to-be are located. Any updates are immediately stored in the cloud, meaning that both you and your partner can work on your plan at the same time and stay abreast of each other’s decisions. In other words, the cloud allows you to keep tabs on everything, no matter where you’re located.
Wedding Planner Apps
If you’re not comfortable using generic cloud-based services, like Evernote and Dropbox, no problem: there are now dozens of wedding planning apps out there on the market which you can install on your phone with the click of a button.
Wedding Planner, for instance, is a wedding app that enables you to search for local professionals, track your budget and create to-do lists. Inside the app, you’re presented with a timeline which shows your itinerary, including your progress on things like researching a band, florists, and caterers, as well as a calendar setting out when all of those jobs need to be done.
There are many other wedding planning apps, such as iWedding, WeddingHappy, The Knot Ultimate Wedding Planner and Wedding Countdown. The Knot Ultimate Wedding Planner and Wedding Countdown have countdown timers, telling you down to the second how much time you’ve got left to get everything done before the big day.
Bespoke Items With Etsy
Etsy is an online platform, similar to Amazon, which brings local sellers together. As a result, it’s a great place to get bespoke wedding accessories and clothing, especially if you’re looking for something rare or unique.
People who have nickel allergies can’t wear jewelry which contains nickel. But since nickel is found in most mainstream jewelry products, this severely limits choice. In the past, brides and grooms with nickel allergies would have been severely restricted in what they could wear. But thanks to sites like Etsy, it’s now infinitely easier to find suppliers of non-allergenic jewelry who offer a higher degree of choice. Sometimes it’s possible to go to a vendor directly and just ask them to create something bespoke out of a material like titanium, and they’ll do it for you, often at a surprisingly low price.
Wedding Streaming
Sadly, some of your guests may not be able to attend your wedding because of health problems, job commitments or financial constraints. But thanks to modern technology, that doesn’t matter. With services like Periscope, Facebook Live and others, you can live stream your wedding for all the people who can’t be there in person. Just set up your laptop, connect it to a camera and the WiFi, and open your favorite live streaming service. Punch in the time that you’d like it to start streaming and that’s it. Now your 92-year-old grandmother can watch the ceremony, just like everybody else.
Digital Music Compilation
Many couples want their wedding to have a distinctive sound. Technology can help here too. Instead of going out, buying a bunch of records, and handing them over to the sound guy to play at the opportune moment, couples are now using services like Spotify to create easy-to-use playlists.
Sound hiccups are common at weddings. But simple playlists help to cut down on complexity dramatically. All the sound guy needs to do is click play on your playlist, fade out music or click to the next track. With a digital music compilation, there’s no need to change records or skip to individual tracks on certain albums. It’s all there in one easy-to-use place.
Inspirational Wedding Websites
Thanks to a community of dedicated bloggers, couples have more access to wedding-related information than ever before. Websites like Getting Married and World Wide Wedding are great resources, covering everything from wedding invitations to planning your ceremony on a budget.
Technology can help make planning your big day easier in all sorts of different ways. How will you use it to create your ideal wedding?
