'' 'TO WEB : TO WED' ''
THIS MAY SOUND UNROMANTIC -
But before the Internet era, planning a wedding was lot like car shopping. To find a place to get married, you had to read print ads -
With limited information designed to lure you in for visit and pressure you into, well, committing.
Nowadays, you can be more informed with the help of tech resources like online reviews, wedding planning tools and location websites.
But much hasn't changed : Venues still bombard you with heavily doctored brochures [now digitized] that make it difficult to compare prices.
These ads often lowball you baseline costs, and venues share detailed pricing information and only after you pay a visit.
''Once you're there, it's going to be harder for you to say no than just to deal with faceless website,'' said Michael Crider, who wrote ''The Guys Marriage.''
Then, the real costs emerge.
''Do you want your guests to be seated? If so, you have to pay extra for the chairs.''
Tech tools aim to make tasks like wedding planning more efficient and easier to mange. Yet, the wedding industry remains complex.
'I 've been learning this hard way,' writes author and researcher Brian X Chen, 'My fiancee and I were immediately overwhelmed after rummaging through PDFs and websites in search of venues, vendors and photographers.
Ultimately, we caved and hired a coordinator to do the heavy lifting.
Here's what we learned about the benefits and limitations of using tech tools to plan a wedding. At least so far, since our wedding is not until next year.
The vast majority of engaged couples turn to the web to help plan their weddings. The two most prominent digital wedding planning products these days are Weeding Wire and The Knot.
Both offer web and mobile apps, which include a comprehensive set of tools to plan a wedding from start to finish, including picking a venue, finding vendors, setting up a registry and creating a budget.
It's complicated. On average, couples hire 13 vendors to put together a wedding, according to Wedding Wire.
The big planning tools offer searchable lists of vendors and venues, with reviews and links to the businesses own sites. People can also turn to broader review websites like Yelp to help vet vendors, photographers and musicians.
Now that you have a clear picture of how thorough the top wedding planning tools are, let's discuss their limits.
Because of the deeply personal nature of a wedding, you can't just plan everything with a few taps on a smartphone or by sitting in front of a computer. Eventually you will have to talk lots of people the old school way : on the phone or in person.
That becomes evident when you turn turn to these tools to try to customize your wedding. Couples have always wanted their special day to be unique and to reflect their interests.
In a survey of about 2,700 couples by Wedding Wire, 85 percent said having a unique personalized wedding experience was a top priority.
With tools like Pinterest, which so easily lets you collect photos of decor and destinations from across the web, who could resist adding a personal touch?
'My finance and I have been pinning photos of poetry quotations and vintage typewriters that we want as decorations at our reception,' says writer Brian X Chen.
This makes giving directions to our coordinator especially easy :
We simply shared our Pinterest board . But such customization makes it difficult for couples to obtain realistic bottom-line costs from venues and vendors, said Lauren Goodson, a director of consumer insights for Wedding Wire.
The more you tweak, the more hours that go into different components of a ceremony, cocktail hour and reception.
Sites like Wedding Wire offer price estimates for some nuances.
But eventually, you've to move on from tech tools and engage directly with vendors.
''The cookie-cutter approach is less and less effective,'' Ms. Goodson said. ''It does take some interaction with the venue to address specific needs of a couple.''
She added that couples often underestimate the cost of their wedding by 40 percent, in part because they are initially unaware of costs of their customizations.
After becoming jaded with online brochures, my finance and I Began asking venues to send us their budget spreadsheets, adds Chen.
Neatly arranged cells and numbers are the opposite of romantic; but this was the only way for us to craft a realistic budget including our modifications without losing our minds.
With respectful dedication to the Parents, Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all '' register '' on The World Students Society : wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter - !E-WOW! -the Ecosystem 2011:
''' Wedding Industry '''
Good Night and God Bless
SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless
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