Planning a wedding is a daunting task. From wedding venues, to vendors, dresses and jewelry, you have a lot of decisions to make and it’s easy to feel overloaded with wedding information and options. So how do you weed out the good from the not so good online? To help with your navigating and planning, we’ve compiled top online wedding resources based on Sitejabber consumer reviews.
1. General Planning
The Knot has many free tools such as planning checklists, budget guides, local vendor information, wedding gown designers, the lowdown on honeymoon destinations and gift registries. The Knot also has a community where you can exchange recommendations and talk with other brides as one reviewer points out:
“I think this is one of the best wedding sites out there and their magazine is also a great resource. They list tons of places to get favors, they have ideas for bridesmaids dresses and so much more. The community was great as well because when you are getting married it is good to be able to talk with other newly engaged people.”
2. Brainstorming
Are you still trying to get a sense of your theme? Pinterest is helpful in organizing your ideas, finding inspiration for your wedding and DIY examples:
“Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes. You can browse pinboards created by other people.”
3. Save the Dates and Invitations
Wedding Paper Divas has a huge selection of save the dates and invitations. They also have a great review system of your proof before the final cut goes to print, as another reviewer points out:
“I ordered our wedding invitations and our Thank You cards from them and they were beautiful, they were affordable, and they offer promotions once in a while! They have a great review system to make sure you’re cards/invites have all the info on them they need. I forgot to put the wedding time on the invites and got an e-mail from someone the following day asking what time the wedding was! That would have been a blunder had they not caught it.”
4. Wedding Website
A wedding website is a nice bonus for your guests. You can relay important information like event details, accommodations and your gift registry. Wix is a great source for building your very own wedding website as it has multiple templates to choose from, is easy to set up and is a free website building tool:
“I know there is plenty of sites offering free website builders and templates similar but this one offers FLASH on addition to all the templates and you can add your own videos and images and stuff as well.”
5. Wedding Attire: Wedding Gown, Bridesmaids Dresses and Shoes
Bride’s Gown: Laila Monroe
There’s a lot of sites that claim you can order a custom wedding gown, but purchasing a gown online may be a gamble with quality and ultimately price in the event you need to get significant alterations. Laila Monroe offers custom, quality dresses and a happy customer shopping experience at affordable prices:
“I had one personal experience with this site and my fiancé also had one experience and in both cases, it was an excellent. The site is based in Ireland and is unusual in that they make custom sizes at no extra cost.”
Bridesmaids Dresses: Celeb16
Choosing bridesmaids dresses can be another difficult task because you will most likely need a dress for different body shapes and style preferences. Celeb 16 has a big selection of styles and colors to help ease the difference in opinions and body type:
“I had 5 bridesmaids and a groomswoman to dress, and all of them were different heights and sizes. This dress worked out great for all 6 of them. Some of them are large chested and they felt more comfortable in this one compared to the strapless sister dress…I thought they all looked amazing!!”
Shoes: Zappos
For your wedding day, you’ll want shoes that are comfortable, stylish and of course fit you just right as chances are you will be on your feet throughout the wedding. But sometimes when you order online, the shoes may not fit right so using an online store that has a solid return policy is a must:
“I know this is nothing new, but I am so enamored with Zappos’ return policy! It alleviates so much pressure when it comes to ordering shoes online.”
6. Gift Registry
If you’re looking for an alternative to the traditional registry, Our Wishing Well provides just that. It’s a registry for your honeymoon or a fund for your new life together:
“This was my second marriage and I wanted to set up a honeymoon gift registry. I had set-up a wedding gift registry in my last marriage and was trying to do something different his time. After deciding the destination with my fiancé, I went ahead to create the registry. There were so many options to choose from like dinner at an exotic resort, scuba diving, spa at a luxury salon and much more… I was able to do all the things which I always wanted to do on my honeymoon.”
7. Wedding Rings
Zoara has quality engagement rings and wedding bands at affordable prices with helpful and easy-to-reach customer service:
“We ordered the ring but we ordered one to big so Zoara did everything they could to help us get the correct size made and shipped to us in time for our big day. They were in contact with us via email and we were always kept up to date with progress of the ring. When they said it was shipped it was and when they said it would arrive, it did, they made it very stress free at a time that things can be very stressful.”
8. Wedding Favors and Custom Items
You can create all types of custom gifts and they have a variety of items and prices to choose from to meet your budget. Plus, ordering personalized gifts is a fun way to add that extra special touch to your wedding day:
“I love that you are able to personalize just about everything! We purchased personalized stamps that match our wedding ‘logo’ and it added the perfect finishing touch to our wedding invitations! Super quick turnaround and just as we wanted them to look and feel!”
9. Photography
You’re probably thinking, what am I going to do with all those photos? In addition to professional photographers, we all use our smart phones to capture pictures so you will have a lot of priceless photos of your wedding celebration. Wedding albums from a traditional photography can be very pricy, but Shutterfly is a tool for uploading and sharing photos and even compiling your photos into an affordable photobook:
“Ordered some photobooks for my wedding. Overall the online software to make the books is pretty good… If you wait long enough for the right promotion, you can get a good deal (I got 40% off and free shipping). The printing quality was okay. Customer service – great!”
10. Honeymoon
Especially if you are traveling internationally or to a destination you haven’t been to before, TripAdvisor has customer reviews on hotels and restaurants so you can scope things out ahead of time:
“For travel to a location I haven’t been to before, a little quality time on Tripadvisor.com is essential for checking out hotels prior to booking. However, I use the averages as a loose guideline only and am I’m careful to read both ends of the ratings, paying particular attention to the details on the bad ones.”
Good Luck!
Coordinating all the moving pieces online you’ll need to plan your wedding at an affordable price can be tricky but doable. Be sure to check out the community’s reviews of wedding dress stores, engagement ring stores, and wedding invitation stores, and read reviews of the sites you’re using before making a purchase or uploading personal information. Happy wedding planning!
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