It's not going to replace The Knot anytime soon, but search engine king Google just launched Google Weddings that gives brides-to-be a nice, simple platform to create a wedding site, share announcements and photos, and yes, plan your wedding.The interface of Google Weddings is very clean and simple, just like its search engines. Created with input from wedding planner Michelle Rago and the gorgeous site of wedding planning ideas Style Me Pretty, visitors are offered four main choices: creating a wedding website on Google Sites; editing photos and creating announcements; a gateway to Google Docs for planning worksheets; and a portal to Picasa, Google's photo sharing web platform.
As a New Jersey wedding planner, I think this is a great tool for couples, though I didn't find the planning guide initially to be as intuitive as the simplicity of the rest of the site suggests it would be. Clicking on the first link "Wedding Planner" takes you to a rather ugly spreadsheet that gives couples tips on how to proceed with their plan, such as starting with your guest list. You then have to back out of the page and head to the other links to get to the various other spreadsheets for the address book, budget, music, etc. Again, these are Google Docs, so they're not so stylish.
You also have the opportunity to enter to win a $25,000 dream wedding designed by Michelle. That's, of course, around the average cost of a wedding these days, but couples shouldn't pass up the opportunity of having their wedding costs defrayed.
I plan on recommending my clients make full use of the site. Google Weddings is a great tool to use and I think it will help couples getting married to plan and keep their weddings on track and within budget.
While The Knot also offers many of the same tools, the site is, let's say "busy," so getting quickly to what you need isn't always a simple task. Google Weddings on the other hand gives couples the means of finding the items that means most to them right away.
No comments:
Post a Comment