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Our big list of wedding planning apps! Part I: inspiration and collaboration tools
The days of a big ol' binder for planning a wedding are long gone. The reign of the wedding planning app has taken over. Let's... Read more
We've told you before: Get thee a Dropbox for wedding vendors. We've talked about how super awesome this level of techie organization can be for planning a self-catered wedding; and how awesome Dropbox is as a collaboration tool for wedding planning.
But don't take our word for it. Remember Jensen and Quinn's wedding? Jensen credits Dropbox with helping them stay true to their goals:
It's easy to get lost in traditions and lose sight of what you actually want. To keep my vision, I planned A LOT and even created a Dropbox for my vendors so we could all be on the same page. -Jensen
Never used Dropbox? No sweat. It basically lets you create folders that sync between your computer and the cloud. That means you can access everything that's in those folders even when you're on another computer (or even on your phone). Which means your vendors can access it too! No waiting till you're on the right computer to email a vendor an important document or photo.
“Oh, that?” you say, calmly and totally on top of everything. “That's in my Dropbox. Here, lemme send you the link.”
- Create an account. An install of Dropbox will download automatically to your computer.
- Open the downloaded Dropbox file (it'll end with .dmg) and follow your machine's instructions to complete the install. If you're on a Mac, that means basically just clicking a cute icon and ta-da! Dropbox ends up in your Applications folder.
- Open Dropbox and create new folders just like you would in, say, your Documents folder or on your Desktop. You can always find your Dropbox folder (and all the folders you created in it) under your User name on a Mac. Note that there are a few different ways to do things like create and share folders, depending on whether you're accessing Dropbox via your computer or Dropbox's website. It all ends up in the same place — just remember that space is limited with a free Dropbox account, so don't let things get too cluttered!
- To share a folder with a vendor, right click on a folder in your Dropbox (you can totally do this online too, but this is how you share folders straight from your computer). Select “Share this folder,” and a new tab will open in your browser. Enter your vendor's email address in the field that pops up and click Share. They'll have access to all the info you've put in that folder! Oh and with free Dropbox accounts, anyone you've shared a folder with can edit its contents. Make sure you keep backups!
Anyone else have wedding tips and hacks when it comes to using Dropbox?
I used dropbox in wedding planning, too! Mostly, because FH and I live in a long distance relationship and it made planning much easier, since both of us had access to all the files (guest list, seating chart, drafts for the invitations and such stuff). Later on we added his sister, who is our DoC. Pretty useful!
All my wedding planning documents lived in my dropbox. I had a subfolder called “inspiration,” which I further divided into folders that could be sent to individual vendors (flowers, hair, cake, shoes, dress, ketubah, centerpieces, etc.). It was a great way of getting everyone on the same page and giving my vendors a real feel for what I wanted.
Also, your vendors don’t need to have a dropbox account in order to see your shared folders. All they need to do is click on the link.
I do not have a dropbox, but a huge folder (split in many tiny themed folders 😉 ) in google drive + a Trello page (great! You could set deadline alarms, checklists, pictures, links, taggs ans many other functions – I have time boards like “to do 10 monts before”, “to do 6 months before” etc.).
I also have an account at twojasuknia.pl – I recommend that site to every polish bride! Not only you have discounts and a cheklist automatically generated for the date of your wedding (when to get the documents for church etc.), but also you can make a guetlsist with all extras (who needs a hotel, special meal etc.), the table sets an many more. And you can register your gown recipe and there is a tiny little possibility you will win the re-pay for your wedding dress. Who would not like that? 😉