The knot is tying me in knots

July 16, 2012 5:06 PM

Help me find a wedding planning website. Tried 'theknot.com' and I can't get past how disorganized & visually chaotic it is.

Searched MeFi and can't find a similar thread. I'm using Evernote to organize my thoughts, clip websites, and that's working out well. I like the Knot for how comprehensive it is, but it screams "OMG.....LOOK at the rock on my finger!" and the interface, which completely confuses me. I always feel like I'm missing something because it's so disorganized. Any suggestions would be appreciated!

posted by luciddream928 to grab bag (11 answers total)

It's possible they have changed things in the past few years, but I had good luck with the planning tools on marthastewartweddings.com.
posted by thejanna at 5:23 PM on July 16, 2012

Weddingwire!
posted by nkknkk at 5:23 PM on July 16, 2012

I'm not sure what you're looking for specifically when you say "wedding planning website" (i.e., what features you want/need), and I haven't really looked at The Knot, but if you're just looking for a basic guide/schedule as to the sorts of things you might want to be thinking about at certain times, there are plenty of free resources out there. I printed out about 60% of the the printable wedding planner here—essentially, only the parts of it that I actually found useful—and what I did print out I used as a rough guide rather than something that was set in stone. Between that, a lot of bookmarks, and a few self-designed spreadsheets, I've been doing pretty well. (Of course, I haven't actually gotten married yet, so for all I know things will blow up horribly come September. Unlikely, but hey.)

There's also apparently this thing from Google, which I didn't know about until just now. Might be useful.
posted by divisjm at 5:25 PM on July 16, 2012 [2 favorites]

I used the tools on weddingwire -- lots of local vendor reviews, and much less obnoxious than the Knot.
posted by ThatSomething at 5:31 PM on July 16, 2012

I think the best of wedding advice I received when I started planning our wedding was "Just stay away from the Knot!" It really is the worst of everything.

If you're looking for a site that actually helps with the planning of the wedding, I've found wedding wire to be the best option. If you just want wedding inspiration and ideas, I think Martha Stewart Weddings is actually pretty great. And then, of course, there is Pinterest and about a bazillion wedding blogs. A Practical Wedding is one of the best for keeping you sane and focused on what really matters (being married to someone you love!), and they also have some helpful planning spreadsheets.
posted by logic vs love at 5:45 PM on July 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

For ideas, I like weddingbee.com, wedding wire, and A Practical Wedding. I also enjoyed some stuff on offbeatbride.com!

Honestly, one of the biggest helps for us was our venue--they have worked with so many vendors in the area, and gave us a "recommended vendor" list. They claim they don't get any kickbacks from the vendors, and the vendors gave us sometimes huge discounts for using their services... our photography package was half off!

We ended up picking almost all of our vendors from the list the venue gave us because we were so impressed with them.
posted by Verdandi at 5:57 PM on July 16, 2012

The tools on TheInot really are awful. I used WeddingWire; they are much more functional.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 6:23 PM on July 16, 2012

What I wound up doing was starting out with WeddingWire (or whatever, I don't remeber which one specifically) to look at what the forms and fields looked like, and then adapting the forms on GoogleDocs to my own needs. It worked out well because I could share the spreadsheet with others.

I would also check out Offbeat Bride.
posted by bleep at 6:35 PM on July 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

A Practical Wedding was very helpful for me and it looks like they've added some Google Docs to help with planning.
posted by ceramicblue at 7:01 PM on July 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

I wish I knew about the GoogleDocs forms when I was planning our wedding earlier this year! I couldn't find anything that suited what we were doing without a lot of customizing, and ended up copying & pasting a lot of entries from various sites here and there into a spreadsheet on (heh) GoogleDocs, which my husband and I used to work out who was supposed to do what and when.

Offbeatbride.com was my favorite go-to site in general.
posted by telophase at 11:44 AM on July 17, 2012

Thank you everyone for your responses!! Super helpful and exactly what I was looking for.
posted by luciddream928 at 12:15 PM on August 17, 2012