So I got married recently. I had a great time planning my wedding, but I was not equipped in any way to blog-as-I-went. Too much work. Instead, I am going to try to blog every Wednesday about some wedding planning/ marriage detail that seems important in hindsight. So, today, I start with helpful wedding websites!
Wedding planning is stressful. I owe a lot of my mental health over the past few months to a few websites that I have visited at least once each day during the wedding planning process. You’ll see that none of these are wedding-specific blogs or websites. I avoided wedding-only vendors and blogs like the plague for all but the last two weeks or so of my engagement. Instead I focused on ultra-helpful multi purpose websites that were not out to sell me unnecessary wedding stuff, talk me into losing weight, or make me poor.
1. Grooveshark
Grooveshark is the greatest music-listening website in the history of time. You don’t need to create an account or register anywhere. Just search for the music you want and push play. It is free. There are no audio advertisements. It is sanity restoring.
2. Etsy.
Fuck DIY. During the wedding planning process, and pretty much every other time in my life, there are some things that are fun to do myself. (Like shopping.) The rest, I need to leave to the experts. Enter Etsy, a handmade, vintage heaven. If you can imagine it, someone on Etsy is making it in their basement and waiting to sell it to you. Or thrifting like crazy and collecting it in their basement and waiting to sell it to you.
3. Google Docs & Gmail & Google Voice
One of the most helpful things Rami did for me during the wedding planning process was to create a dedicated GMail and Google Docs account for us to share. We collaborated on our guest lists, schedules, budgets, vows, ceremony music and more using Google Docs. All for free! From our separate apartments! The gmail address was useful for wedding vendors and wedding demons (like the Kn*t). Having a dedicated email address for the wedding meant that I wasn’t overwhelmed with newsletters and coupons in my personal, individual, email account. Post-wedding we are using that email for things like our bills, family email, and other communication. Below is a snapshot of our Google docs account. We had so so many documents. Aggghhh.
If you don’t already follow the Pioneer Woman, you should. Great food, pictures, inspiration, and best of all, no wedding stuff whatsoever! No advice. No selling stuff. Just funny stories, basset hounds, and the chance to look around someone else’s neat life. Also, the pictures in her ‘recipes’ section kept me from building up the willpower to fall prey to any wedding-diet-crazy pressures.
5. YouTube
Need advice for how to do your makeup? Fold a napkin? Make wedding programs? Do your hair? YouTube is here to help! Plus it is also free! Here is one of my favorite make-up tutorials. Lots of great marriage advice, too. Heads up: NSFW. Unless you turn the volume way down first.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFaHDKkP1RQ&hl=en_US&fs=1&]