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Little Ways That Tech Can Make Planning a Wedding Much Easier

Most people are aware of how far technology has come in recent years. From ordering a meal to picking new furniture to paying your utility bills, you can pretty much handle every aspect of your daily life by simply looking at your phone. Naturally, these advancements have also made it a lot easier to tackle certain tasks related to your wedding. Since planning such a large event can be a headache, any amount of assistance can be a huge relief. In fact, some of the perks come from unlikely places. 

Whether you’re trying to find a way to effectively communicate with your party members or you need help feeling excited about your big day, you can easily turn to digital solutions to make your life easier. Review these tips to learn more about your options.  

Group Chats

Some groups can be more challenging to control than others. If your closest family members and friends are the types of people who have difficulty understanding basic instructions or remembering important details, you might be worried about how to best communicate with the group. Instead of handling each person individually, you may find it best to corral everyone together. This is where technology can be a huge help. A group chat allows you the flexibility of placing everyone in an environment where info can be shared and recorded. 

It is best to not rely on your standard messaging application for this task. When you’re dealing with multiple people, you run the risks of each person having different service providers or being located in different countries. Instead, have everyone use a standard messaging program like WhatsApp. These applications take group chats to the next level by making the process as simple as it is effective. Some people even like to give their group chats clever names as a way of putting a fun personal spin on things.

Planning With Countdown Apps

When you spend most of your time planning the details of your nuptials, it can be hard to think about the event as anything other than a point of stress. However, you should feel excited about your wedding. This can be a big challenge for plenty of couples, so using the right tech can give you the push you might need. Countdown apps are very popular for those waiting for their big days to arrive. The concept is quite simple: These applications create a visual reminder of the time remaining until the wedding.

It might seem silly on some level, but the human mind is easy to trick. No matter how stressed the event is making you feel, looking at a countdown may drive up the excitement levels. However, it can have adverse effects in some people. If countdowns raise your anxiety, shelve this idea for a mediation application that teaches different methods of relaxation.

Money Transfer Services

It is becoming incredibly easy to live a cashless life. While debit and credit cards already provided a sense of convenience to consumers, the digital age has taken away even the need for a physical card. Cash transfer applications like Venmo have become popular because they make it incredibly easy for people to send each other money instantly. For your wedding, this means that you can use these apps to handle things like covering the costs of vendors, tipping bartenders, and paying back anyone who lends you money during the last leg of preparing for your event. 

Technology can be used in countless ways to make the process of planning a wedding less complicated. Using applications to handle smaller tasks like communicating with the wedding party and paying vendors may not seem like much, but it can be huge when it comes to lowering your overall stress levels. 

Wedding Invitations: Tips and Ideas

Retro Floral Elements- illustrations for wedding invitations.

Getting your wedding invitations in the mail with plenty of time for family and friends to respond is key to having a good turnout at your wedding.

If you’re one of the many couples planning a summer wedding, you’re probably thinking about getting your wedding invitations and save-the-date cards out after the first of the year. The invitations set the stage for your wedding. It’s the first opportunity you have to share the style of your celebration. You’ll want to have an idea of what type of ceremony you’re having, classic or modern, elegant or casual. When you order your invitations, you’ll want to consider other wedding stationery, such as menu cards, ceremony programs and thank-you notes, that carry your motif and colors throughout the event.

Making Your Wedding Invitations

Here are some tips and ideas you’ll want to keep in mind when you make your invitations:

  • Choose your wording carefully. Learn the rules of how your invitation should be worded. Traditionally, it’s the host of the celebration who is listed first. If you are dealing with multiple sets of parents, you may choose something different to honor everyone. Don’t put too much information on the card. Print separate enclosure cards for directions to the venue and travel information.
  • Don’t include registry information in your invitations. Put it on your wedding website and tell your family for when guests ask.
  • Order invites and other stationery together and early. This saves you time, money and stress.
  • Double or even triple check everything that is printed. Have two or three different people look at the proofs to ensure nothing is missed, misspelled or incorrect.
  • Get creative with fonts and coloring, but make sure the invitation is readable.
  • When ordering invitations, count mailing addresses, not guests. But remember to add a few extra invites to avoid having to run a reprint later on.
  • Send an invite if you’ve sent a save-the-date card. Even if you know the guests cannot attend, send the invitation, because not doing so implies that the guest is no longer invited.

Deadlines

  • It’s recommended that you send invitations about six to eight weeks prior to the wedding, but 10 weeks is becoming the norm in these busy times. You have to remember not to send invites too early, because people forget to RSVP. Sending invites too late doesn’t give you enough time to get responses to tell your caterer an official head count.
  • When putting an RSVP deadline on the card, give yourself a few extra days between the real date and the date you tell people. For example, you have to give your caterer a head count on June 1. Make the RSVP deadline on May 24, a full week earlier. If you have to spend time calling people, you won’t be so stressed. Giving people a short time to respond makes them take care of it quicker. You might even choose to move the date up even more.
  • Help your guests respond to invites with all the information that you require. You might be surprised how many people forget to write their names on the reply cards or just forget to respond at all. Discreetly number the reply cards to correspond to the list of guest names, or consider pre-printing a label for the reply card.

Making Your Wedding Invitations: Outside the Envelope

  • Don’t use address labels on the envelope. Hand write them yourself or ask your bridal party to help. If you’re concerned about making mistakes, just get a few extra envelopes. The hand-written address makes the invite feel more personal.
  • Get a glue stick to seal the envelopes without damaging the invites.
  • Be careful about the outside of the envelope. Use a dark-color ink to address the envelopes to make sure it can be read.
  • Check the correct the postage before you mail. Take one envelope with the reply cards inside to the post office and have it weighed and examined. To be sure that the clerk got it correct, mail an invite to yourself before you send out the others.

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