Wed Simple | WedSimple Review

Wedding Planning Features:

24 / 7 Access: make changes to your website from anywhere in the world, at anytime via an internet connection.
24 / 7 FREE Support: if the FAQ doesn't resolve your query you can use the support ticket system to register a query and receive an immediate response.
Advertisement Free: you won't be bombarded with 3rd party adverts
Privacy Guaranteed: WedSimple will never share your private details with 3rd parties.
Budget Planning Tool: add budget entries for each vendor involved with each event and see if you're staying within budget.
Email Shots: a powerful array of email shot tools provide you with an easy and fun way to announce your engagement, wedding details, website or anything else.
Events: You can add any number of events to your wedding plans, such as bachelorette / hen parties, bachelor / stag parties, showers, engagement parties, rehearsal dinner, rehearsal ceremony, ceremony and reception. You can invite different contacts to each event, or have every contact automatically invited to an event.
Exclusive Special Offers: a range of wedding-related products and services (e.g. wedding dresses, jewelry, stationery, perfume, photography, table planning software and much more) to take the stress out of planning your wedding...and staying within your budget.
Export Data: if you don't want to send out invitations via e-mail you don't have to - simply export your contacts list (open the file in something like MS Excel) and print it out. You can also export a list of your invited guests for a calligrapher to work with.
Facebook Application: lets you monitor your WedSimple.com account from within Facebook. You can also import your Facebook friends into your WedSimple.com contacts to speed up the creation of your invitation guest list.
Gifts: lets you keep track of who gifted what and whether you have sent them thank you notes.
Guest List: lets you include the names, addresses, telephone numbers and email addresses of your prospective guests.
Import Data: if you've already compiled a guest list, or want to add contacts from your Outlook address book, you can easily get this data into WedSimple.com through their "import data" feature.
Invitations: group your contacts into families, couples, etc. Let WedSimple automatically set up each invitation with a mailing address (outer and inner envelope) to help you build invitation lists.
Music Suggestions (iTunes): snippets of hundreds of popular tunes, via iTunes.
Plan With Family & Friends: give key family and friends access to certain parts of your WedSimple account so that they can e.g. help you gather contact details, organize seating arrangement, etc.
Reminders: get automatic email reminders about upcoming tasks
RSVP Status: instantly see who will be attending, who will not be attending, who has yet to reply. Keep track of which contacts plan to bring the additional guest(s) allowed for in their invitation.
Same sex marriage support: A feature that's surprisingly absent from most other websites is same sex marriage support, allowing you to choose "groom and groom", and "bride and bride", as well as the traditional "bride and groom" options when signing up! Support for same sex marriages is included throughout WedSimple.
Statistics: Access useful statistics on your account like task completion, total contacts (+ guests), total groups, contacts grouped %, RSVP'd contacts, estimated attendance, total attending, total not-attending, budgetary figures, gift thank you note % ...and lots more!
Table Planning: WedSimple.com supports different table shapes and will even create the table list automatically for you. You can then use third party software to create accurate representations.
Tasks: WedSimple.com can add tasks automatically for you (very helpful if you have no idea where to begin) and will even schedule them according to the amount of time you have left until your wedding day.
Time Zones: localize every task or event to your local time zone.
Vendors: keep a list of your vendors' contact details so you can quickly access those details when you need them.

Website Features:

Blog: keep a personal log of your wedding plans.
Bride and Groom: introduce yourselves to your wedding guests.
Build At Your Pace: enable parts of the site as you finish them.
Contact Us: Your guests can contact you directly via your wedding website. You can reply to messages and even be notified by email every time a new message arrives.
Countdown: show how many days are left until your wedding on your website.
Customizable Web Pages: add unlimited pages & content, customize each page to suit your requirements, e.g. by re-naming or re-ordering each page.
Designs (> 65): change the theme, color, font and content of each professionally designed page.
Domain Name: use the free subdomain name (***.WedSimple.com) or point your own domain name (www.***.com) at WedSimple and use that instead. Use the WedSimple domain name checker to see if the domain name you want is still available, then follow WedSimple's instructions for configuring your domain name to point at your wedding website.
Downloads: You can upload any number of files to your website for site visitors to download. Files could be a PDF document, MP3 audio file or perhaps a Word document containing out-of-town information you have already created.
Events: show event details on your website, including the venue, date and attire. You can also add your own specific information about each event to assist your wedding guests.
Guestbook: let your friends and family sign a virtual guestbook. You can then decide which entries to display on your website.
Honeymoon: let everyone know where you are going on your honeymoon. Or perhaps create a wish list of possible destinations and let people tell you what they think via the guestbook.
HTML Scripting: for the HTML savvy among you, simply click on the 'Source' button where appropriate and manually code the pages yourself.
Maps and Directions: WedSimple.com uses event information to automatically feature maps on your website, and even allows visitors to find directions to your wedding events.
Message Center: lets guests message you through the site. You can also use the message center to send a message to an individual contact, a group of contacts or wedding vendors.
Music: You can add music to your entire website, or to specific pages of your website to set a mood for each type of page. Music can be uploaded in mp3, wmv, wma, wav or .mid format.
Online RSVP: let your guests send their RSVP on-line, including details of their meal preferences.
Our Story: tell everyone about how you first met . Was it love at first sight?
Out-of-Town Information: provide a variety of information for out-of-towners, e.g. directions, recommended or pre-arranged hotel reservations, attractions and places to eat or shop.
Password Protection: password protect your entire website, or password protect individual pages. Set up a password protected area for your bridal party, bridesmaids, groomsmen, or even individual vendors.
Picture Gallery: Not only can you upload unlimited pictures, but you can sort, organize and edit your pictures using a variety of tools. You can even decide which ones to display on your website.
The Proposal: lets you tell the story of how you became engaged. If you'd rather incorporate that information into "Our Story" then you can simply hide "The Proposal" page from your website and just put the "Our Story" page on-line.
Unlimited Everything: Unlimited pictures, email shots, events, contacts, online RSVP's, web pages and support.
Video: lets you add video to any website page (in .wmv, .mpg or .avi format).
Visitor Counter: lets you see how many people have visited your site. You can reset the counter as many times as you like.
Website Management: highly customizable, user friendly system that lets you switch features on and off, reset counter, password project pages etc.
Wedding Party: You can opt to upload a picture of each wedding party member and even write a description about each person, e.g. how you met or what they mean to you.
The Community Forum, where you can discuss aspects of the site as well as your wedding ideas with other WedSimple members. The forum features include:
- categorized forums
- the ability to personalize your profile when posting to the forums by selecting a picture from your album
- the ability to add other engaged couples as friends
- email notifications of replies to your postings
- smiley support!

Editor's Verdict:

WedSimple.com gets our No.1 choice award! Like our top 3 sites, WedSimple has a range of fantastic wedding-planning features, but unlike its rivals it has an uncluttered layout with color-coded panels neatly separating your Planning Features (e.g. guest lists, table plans, budget tracking) from your Website Features (e.g. your welcome page, the story of how you met, directions for out of town-guests, etc.). So building and managing your wedding website really is simple with WedSimple.com!

On the cost side, WedSimple offer very competitively priced packages, the most popular being the 12 month package for $60, though they have also recently released an unlimited subscription that lasts until one week past your wedding date for $80, which may provide better value. Their provision of an UNLIMITED amount of storage space is a major selling point. Many sites charge extra for increased storage space, or simply don't offer it at all.

The planning tools are extremely user-friendly. In fact, the tools associated with the Guest List are some of the best around. Not only can you include guests' names, addresses, telephone numbers and email addresses, you can also add a profile picture for each guest to help you remember the faces of your future spouse's family! WedSimple also lets you divide your guest list into sub-lists by simply selecting (guest list A, B, C, D) from a drop down box. This lets you identify A-list guests who will definitely be invited, and B/C/D-list guests who should be invited should your budget expand a little or a lot. When you've added your guests, you can group them into families, couples, partners, etc. for your invitations. Each invitation is automatically set up with a mailing address (outer and inner envelope) to help you build invitation lists.

WedSimple is one of the few wedding planning websites that has an inbuilt Table Plans tool to help you visualize your seating arrangements in the form of a 2D schematic of people sitting around their respective tables. WedSimple.com also integrates with third party wedding software such as Perfect Table Plan, which is invaluable if you want to enter the dimensions of rooms, tables, chairs and the spaces between each table and thereby discover precisely what table plans will fit your venue... and what table plans won't! (Thus avoiding last minute re-shuffles!)

Interactive video help (provided by vdoLife) is also on hand for new users. And if you need some inspiration choosing the right music for your special day, you can browse WedSimple's Music Suggestions feature (which contains snippets of hundreds of popular tunes, via iTunes).

The Plan with Family & Friends tool lets you share your account with friends and family and give them permission to help you with your wedding planning. For example, your parents might help you by gathering and entering the contact details of their respective relatives. You don't need to worry about friends and family making unwanted changes to other parts of your site, WedSimple lets you easily control which areas you'd like to make available to which people.

WedSimple also lets you upload a picture and write a blurb about each wedding party member for your wedding website. This gives your friends and family a nice introduction to A-list guests. On a practical level, it gives your guests (and especially your ushers) a useful heads up on who's who.

An Email Shot tool allows you to send emails to your guests at the click of a button. You can also send special emails to sub-groups like the bridal party. Again, if you're in need of inspiration, WedSimple.com can automatically compose a message for you (e.g., RSVP announcements). A facility for tracking your guests' meal preferences has also recently been added, allowing guests to state their meal preferences when they RSVP on-line.

The team at WedSimple.com are continuously adding excellent new features to their already impressive features list. For example, they have launched a Wedding Planner Application on Facebook® allowing you to monitor your WedSimple.com account from within Facebook. You can also import your Facebook friends into your WedSimple.com contacts to speed up the creation of your invitation guest list. WedSimple have also recently enhanced their importation system to support a variety of file types, not just CSV files.

Another interesting development is their refer-a-friend system where users are rewarded for every friend that activates an account after a referral. And there's no limit to the number of friends users can refer!

More developments are in the pipeline. For example, WedSimple are currently revamping a few areas of their site to make it easier for users to set up 'bride and bride' or 'groom and groom' accounts. The WedSimple team proudly state that, "as a result of a recent detailed competitive analysis, we now have over 40% more functionality than any other wedding websites."

We actually have personal experience of using WedSimple to plan a real wedding, so we're well-placed to tell you that the site has:

WedSimple is also great value for money. In fact, of all of your wedding-related expenses, a wedding planning website like WedSimple.com will probably give you the most satisfying return for your investment!

So click the button below to check out our No.1 rated wedding planning website for yourself and sign up today for a free trial!

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