My Wedding Concierge

Congratulations to all you soon to be brides and grooms who were engaged over Valentine's weekend!

Now that you've said "yes" and the realization that you are now getting married is setting in, what's a girl to do to plan your wedding? I must say that since I was married in '08, there is now a wealth of information available on the Internet that wasn't there even a year ago. Bridal Blogs (like the Invite Couture Blog) provide brides with a wealth of up to date wedding trends and information that's totally tailored to bride's individual tastes. If you have a rocker style, there are rocker bridal blogs. If vintage is your thing there are vintage bridal blogs. You just have to know where to find them.

With the hundreds of wedding blogs out there, where does one start? One newer service to check out is My Wedding Concierge. My Wedding Concierge is a wedding blog search engine. It works kind of like Google but without having a bunch of non-wedding stuff pop up that you're not interested in. Creator Phyllis Cheung created My Wedding Concierge to be a weddings specific source for brides to find area vendors.

My Wedding Concierge also has an iPhone app! How awesome is that?! Now you can easily take your wedding planning with you wherever you find yourself on the go!

I wish wedding planning was this easy back when I planned my own.

Best Wedding Websites for Design Snobs

Photo of Wedding Window's Celebrity Template

For all you wedding planning brides out there, I can't recommend enough the value of having a dedicated wedding website. Especially when it comes to saving money on your invitations and stationery, the more information you can post for your guests on the web the less cards and printing you might need as part of your invitation suite.

When I had decided to create a wedding website for my own wedding, overall it was somewhat of a new trend. In fact, I got a lot of slack for it from my parents. Funny thing in the end is we had more guests RSVP for the wedding through our website than through standard mail-in RSVP's. So overall it can be a great tool for planning your wedding.

I initally had plans to design my own website from scratch, but juggling planning a wedding along with a full time job more or less deemed that impossible. So instead I decided to search for some pre-made options. Being a total design snob, I searched high and low for companies that offer wedding websites who's templates I felt reflected quality web design. Below is a list of my top picks:

1. Wedding Window: I purchased my own website from Wedding Window. I loved that you could easily add a custom URL address to it and that the templates were not only beautifully designed, but very easy to modify and customize. They also had sections where guests could RSVP through the website for various parts of the wedding (shower, rehearsal dinner, wedding, etc) as well as a section where you can link to your registries. For sure they would be my top pick, though it is not a free service. I used their "Celebrity" template (shown above) for my own wedding.


2. eWedding: Another great pick being they also offer a free website option. Their templates too are well designed and customizable and they also offer things like RSVP's, photo albums and more.


3. Project Wedding: In addition to being a great resource for brides with inspirational photos, real weddings and vendor reviews Project Wedding also offers a great, free website tool. Their templates are designed by some of the top wedding invitation designers in the country. Though the features appear to be somewhat limited (for example no RSVP function, custom URL, etc) it's a great, free and well rounded website option for design snobs.


4. Wed Quarters: In addition to having some nicely designed templates, Wed Quarters also provides a lot of the higher end features like online RSVP for what looks to be one of the lowest prices out there for annual service.


5. Wedding Org: For higher end, flash websites I liked what I saw on the Wedding Org website. They are a custom design website service that specializes in flash wedding websites. Their custom services start at $450. Something like this would be great for a bride that wants something a little less DIY (all the above options require you to input all the info you want to see on the site) than what other website providers offer.

Do you have a wedding website? I'd love to hear if anyone has found another other companies that have quality designed templates that I may have missed. Be sure to comment!