Before smartphones were ubiquitous, planning for your big day meant using paper calendars and handwritten to-do lists. But now, getting ready for your wedding is easier than ever thanks to technology.
Push notifications remind you to order stationery, schedule your dress fittings, and track down missing RSVPs. YouTube videos can teach you and your partner simple moves so you can nail the first dance. And it's likely your guests will rely on your personal wedding website for all the details.
But which apps are the most reliable in managing all these moving parts? Ahead, we've identified some of the best to help you plan your perfect day.
Julie Rogers contributed reporting.
Loverly Virtual Wedding Planner
If you want to talk to a wedding planner without having to meet in person, you might like Loverly's app. Some of the app's services are offered for free, or you can choose one of Loverly's paid wedding planning packages for virtual advice.
The app will help you find local vendors, like florists, caterers, and photographers, but you can't search for them yourself — you have to go through the virtual concierge. You can play a flat rate for the "signature package," which includes thinks like vendor recommendations and a budgeting sheet. Or, you can pay a la carte for smaller services, like creating a custom hashtag and Snapchat filter.
In addition to chatting with a wedding planner, you can also use the app to read Loverly's wedding content and find plenty of inspiration for your big day. You can save articles and photos, too, which is useful if you want to keep everything in one place.
If you want a wedding app to keep all of your photos in one place, but don't need to create a wedding website, WedPics is a good option. You can create a simple wedding profile and link your registries and hotel information, but it doesn't have the details you'll find from The Knot or Appy Couple. Still, if all you want to do is share and download pictures, that's not a bad thing.
You can invite wedding guests to the app using a custom code, and they can see the photo albums you've created, as well as upload their own images. Plus, you can also order photo prints right through WedPics, which will help make your wedding photo album a breeze.
If you don't know where you want to hold your ceremony and/or reception, Wedding Spot is a great place to start. Just enter the city and state you'd like to get married in, and the app will find a variety of venues in your area. You can also filter by the type of venue and your price range.
When you do find a venue you want to check out, you can make appointments to see the space (and get a price estimate) right through the app.
If you want a more organized way for your wedding guests to share photos — other than just searching your hashtag on Instagram — WedSocial is a great option. (Plus, guests will need a code to access your wedding on the app, so you won't have strangers seeing all your photos.)
In addition to sharing photos, the app can serve as a one-stop shop for your wedding guests. You can add your events calendar and information about local hotels into the app, through an integration with your free WeddingWire website.
Style Me Pretty has long been a favorite website for brides looking for inspiration, but now the company has a wedding app, too. The app is great for inspiration — it features everything from gorgeous real-wedding photos to stories about real brides. Plus, you can save real-wedding pictures you love, whether that's a black-and-white photo you want to recreate or a cake design you want to show your baker, all in one place on your profile.
The app also lets you follow specific vendors, like caterers and photographers. If you're looking for local vendors, or just following vendors whose style you like, there's no shortage of inspiration. And if you do want to get in touch with local vendors, you can send them an email right through the app. So if you see photos you love, you can contact, say, the florist featured in the photos right away.
Evernote isn't officially a wedding app, but it can still be a huge help during the planning process. You can organize to-do lists, notebooks, and even sketches in the app — and you can choose which ones to share with your partner, family, and wedding party.
Plus, you can search the notes for keywords, so even if you're not the most organized, you can still find that random note you made during, say, your fifth cake tasting. You can also sync your notes across devices, so if you're on your laptop, you can still access notes you made on your phone while going to planning appointments.
Evernote's basic plan is free, and offers most of the features with limited monthly uploads. Evernote Plus is $34.99/year, and comes with additional features, like the ability to access your notes while offline.
Appy Couple isn't free, but it is by far the most customizable app of the bunch. It coordinates with your wedding website, which you can set up through the app or on a computer. The websites come in a variety of seriously beautiful and modern designs, so this is a great choice if you're looking for one that matches your aesthetic vision for the big day. Pricing starts at $39, with additional fees for "luxury" designs.
In terms of planning, Appy Couple helps you manage your guest list (either by manually inputting the names or uploading a spreadsheet) and keep track of RSVPs. The app also offers group messaging for communicating with your bridal party and invitees ahead of the big event. Guests can also upload and view photos directly through the app, so even people who can't make it to your wedding can feel like they were there.
Wedding Planner by WeddingWire
WeddingWire's app offers multiple features to help you plan your special day. You can search its database of more than 200,000 vendors, and you can also scroll through photos of real weddings for inspiration.
Another feature from the app is the ability to chat with other couples who are planning their weddings, so you can get advice from people who know what you're going through.
Plus, if you create a WeddingWire account, you can use the browser version of the website to access features like hashtag generators and seating charts.
If you're planning a wedding, you've no doubt heard that single-store registries are a thing of the past. Universal registries allow you to add items from any website, or create cash funds — basically, they're a lot more flexible.
Zola is one of the most popular among such registries, and while you can access it through your computer, the app makes registering fun thanks to its Tinder-like gift-suggestion tool. Swipe left or right on suggested products to add them to your wish list instantly.
Slack is a group-messaging program that is taking the corporate world by storm. But as Mashable explains, it can also be really useful for planning a wedding.
Use the app to message other users and share photos, and choose who sees what, so private photos can stay private. It also allows you to sync Google calendars with other users and create reminders for tasks on your to-do list. Mashable also suggests creating a Slack channel for users to make song requests ahead of time, to be shared with your DJ before the big day.
If you're on a tight budget, The Knot's free planning and wedding-website apps are essential. The Wedding Planner app offers checklists of tasks that need to be completed each month leading up to your wedding, while the budget tool helps you stay on track financially.
If you've created your wedding website through The Knot, the Guest List app is also an easy way to keep track of invites and RSVPs. Guests can RSVP directly through your wedding website — though you may still want to send formal invitations and reply cards, since not everyone will opt to go digital.
It wouldn't be a list of the best wedding-planning apps without Pinterest. Although there are a lot more digital wedding-planning tools now than when Pinterest first launched, it still reigns supreme among millennial brides-to-be.
Wedding magazines, floral companies, dress designers, and decor retailers — you'll find them all on Pinterest. And then, there are the boards created by other brides-to-be, which can really help on the inspiration front. Prefer not to display your wedding style publicly? No problem, you can pin to secret boards, too.
Like what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here?
Pre-Schoolers Make The Right Decision For America By Electing Oreos
There's A Powder That Turns Your Bathtub Into A Bowl Of Ramen
There Are 13 Different Starbucks Holiday Cups Dropping Tomorrow