How You (Yes You) Can Plan Your Whole Wedding

Wedding planning can involve many decisions. Keeping it intimate, or inviting everyone you love? Staying local, or going destination? While you have many choices to make, it all starts with just one: Heading to Zola. Gone are the days of a million open browser tabs and phone calls. Zola makes it easy to plan your whole wedding, all in one place. We’ll cheers to that!

Hone Your Vision and Explore Vendors

If you aren’t sure where you’re headed, it can be hard to get going—and wedding planning is no exception. A solid vision of your wedding’s vibe and style can help guide many decisions, like your date, your venue, and more. Whether you’re just getting started or looking to add some finishing touches, Zola’s Real Weddings is the place to get ideas and bring them to life.

Start by exploring hundreds of photos from real, recent weddings (because a lot can change in a few years, right?) and gathering some inspiration. You can filter by setting, style, and color to get specific. The more photos you favorite, the better Real Weddings learns what you like and can personalize your feed.

But here’s the super useful part: Every photo features real vendors. If you fall in love with a cake, you can book the baker who made it. The same goes for florists, hair and makeup professionals, venues, and more. Many featured vendors are part of Zola’s community of wedding professionals, meaning they are pre-screened for quality and have received recommendations from the community. Reach out to these vendors in just a few clicks, right on Zola!

Super Link, Super Powers

Once you’ve figured out a season and venue, your wedding date should be easier to pin down. Take your time making the decision, but don’t wait too long! Calendars fill up quickly, so you’ll want to get a move on telling your guests.

But before you send your save the dates, you’ll need addresses. Enter: Zola’s Super Link. With only a few clicks, you can send a personalized link, complete with a photo and message, through text, email, or DM. When guests give their contact information through the included form, Zola will automatically add them to your guest list (more on this later).

And it doesn’t stop there. Choose a Zola save the date, and Zola will use those same addresses from your guest list to address your envelopes. Say hello to hours of your life back.

For those interested in a paperless option, or just getting the word out ASAP, Zola also offers digital save the dates in many beautiful designs.

One Wedding Website, So Many Uses

When you do eventually follow up with invitations, you’ll want to include a link to your Zola wedding website. Guests love asking questions, and you’ll love directing them to a place with all the answers. Your Zola wedding website is free and easy to create—you can even match it to your save the dates and invitations!

But your wedding website isn’t just a useful place for providing information about hotel blocks, schedules, directions, and more. Guests can also use it to RSVP and access your Zola registry. When they RSVP, your Zola guest list will automatically update their status and include details about their meal preferences, plus ones, and anything else.

Keep the Party Going Post-Wedding

As guests purchase items off your Zola registry, Zola will also track who gifted you what (did Aunt Suzy buy that stand mixer or those concert tickets…?). Grab some Zola thank you cards from your matching paper suite and go to town—once again, Zola’s got your back with free envelope addressing.

Speaking of gifts, there’s nothing worse than receiving a hundred boxes when you aren’t prepared. Okay, maybe there are worse things… but perhaps you just moved into a new house or apartment, you plan to be away for a while, or you just don’t feel like recycling mass amounts of cardboard all at once. Zola allows you to ship gifts on your schedule, whether that’s 6 weeks after your wedding, or 6 months. You can even exchange gifts for Zola credit before they ship, just in case you’ve changed your mind.

It’s All About You

When planning gets stressful, take a moment to recenter and consider what’s at the heart of it all: The two of you! Your wedding should be a celebration of your love in a way that feels authentic and true to you as a couple. You might feel like you have a million things on your plate, but remember that there’s just one place to start—Zola. With some good humor, a little patience, and Zola’s tools at your fingertips, you’ve got everything you need to plan like a pro.