You saw their wedding earlier today. Now let's see how they pulled it all off with the help of technology!
I met my husband on OkCupid. For about four seconds I was embarrassed about this (my parents have the ultimate meet-cute involving a lost ring and a wrench), but it didn’t matter because Elliot is the greatest human alive and I couldn’t be luckier to have met him. Plus, in San Francisco, where we met, almost every couple I know met online. (And actually, most of my good friends are people I met online from Twitter, blogger conferences, MeetUp, Couchsurfing… The list goes on.)
How do you include the non-tech-savvy into your tech-y wedding?
How do you dealing with the fact that, technology-wise, you are living in the 21st century, but your parents and their friends are not? I'm... Read more
So, when we got married (holy shit I'm married), it only made sense to make our wedding the most tech-powered day ever.
Let’s see the list shall we?
Airbnb
We rented an Airbnb house for our wedding. After a little snafu involving our own back yard (turns out our upstairs neighbors were holding their reception in the yard on THE SAME DAY), we quickly turned to Airbnb to find a place nearby with a pretty yard. After only a day we snagged a gorgeous Victorian with a yard three times the size as ours, a fountain, and the friendliest property manager a girl could ask for. Who knew?
Amazon
We turned to Amazon for all our wedding decorations. When we realized last minute that we’d now need to decorate, we just used our Prime membership and spent $100 on tissue paper, LED lights, Mason jars (because of course) and ribbon.
Glosite
Our wedding website and invitations were sent through Glosite. Though both my grandmothers requested I print out the digital versions and snail mail them. I’m not sure why I’m surprised.
Thankful Registry
Instead of registering at a store, we used Thankful because then we could get presents from ALL THE PLACES! Which means we could get gift cards from REI, a coffee foamer from Amazon AND this freaking fantastic portrait from Etsy:
Thumbtack
Obviously I turned to Thumbtack to hire professionals for all the extra stuff. Jayne Serba, an incredibly talented tailor and costume designer, revamped my dress (which I — duh — bought used online). She also tailed Elliot’s linen suit (also bought online — shoutout to Suit Supply) so it fit him like a glove.
TaskRabbit
Since we were DIYing this whole shindig, we turned to TaskRabbit to hire some spare hands. We found someone to man the day — making sure the bathroom was stocked, wine bottles were recycled and tables/chairs were picked up on time. And another person to help pick up our food at a local restaurant and deliver it to the yard.
Sidecar
No fancy limos for this group. After our ceremony and reception, we called a Sidecar to take us to our karaoke after party. While I was expecting the driver to be all, “wow, did you guys just get married?” seeing that we were decked out in our wedding costumes, he seemed completely un-miffed. We even chose the shared ride option but didn’t get matched with anyone else going the same way. Bummer. I was definitely hoping for some attention on this one.
Moral = Tech is your friend
While I’ve never been the type to dream about my wedding since I was old enough to form a coherent thought, I did turn into a slightly crazed version of myself in the days months leading up to the event. Even with a casual, 30-person backyard party, there are still a million balls in the air and I don’t wish the stress on anyone. That said, I’m so grateful to live in a city that’s powered by so much creativity and weird ideas. The people we hired and the websites we used and the apps we downloaded saved our asses more than once.
invitations: Glo
registries: Thankful Registry
services: Thumbtack
I’d love to hear more about your experience with Thankful Registry. I really like the idea of an independent and flexible registry site, but I’m wondering whether the process of buying items off-site and then marking them as fulfilled might be confusing for some of our less tech-savvy guests.
We definitely had that problem! All in all though, we only got one double-gift (a milk frother). The good news though is that wedding gifts tend to come in waves, not all at once on the wedding day. With Thankful we could mark a gift as fulfilled even if the purchaser didn’t. So yeah, it’s a pain, but it worked for us since we really wanted one place we could list honeymoon contributions and our backpacking things AND the more traditional house stuff.