The Right and Wrong Ways to Use AI to Plan Your Wedding

You have the ring, the bubbly has popped, and all that’s left to do is…well, everything. It’s wedding planning time! The challenge isn’t simply how to plan a wedding; it’s how to fit the planning into your life. You’re juggling all the normal time constraints and suddenly adding ‘fiancé duties’ to the list. Luckily for you, there are many ways you can maximize your planning time with help from our friend AI. However, there are plenty of pitfalls to watch out for as well. As the founder of Plannerd, the ultimate online wedding planning platform, I have helped couples everywhere cut through the stress and chaos of wedding planning! Here are six easy ways to use AI to plan your wedding, as well as three ways to scale back and take matters into your own hands.

Just Engaged:

It’s early in the journey and you’re just starting to get a handle on what you want to plan.

Do: AI to synthesize your vision
Sit down with your partner and use the voice dictation function on your favorite AI chat. Describe your vision and the overall vibe you see for your wedding and let AI put it together as a vision statement. Continue refining this between the two of you, and bring it to vendors to help easily convey your vision.

• The prompt: “I’m going to describe how I want my wedding to feel, like the atmosphere, the emotions, the experience I want for myself and my guests. I want you to listen and then reflect back a clear, specific vision statement I can use to guide my decisions and share with vendors. Ready? [then voice dictate or type freely]”

Do: Use AI to Check your priorities
List out your top priorities for the wedding together as a couple, then ask AI to break down or flag where priorities are likely to conflict. This will help surface any tradeoffs you likely have to make and questions to ask yourselves before you start putting money down.

• The prompt: “Here are the things my partner and I both want for our wedding: [full dance floor all night, food people rave about a year later, conversations with every guest, etc.]. We haven’t set a budget yet. Can you identify where these priorities are likely to conflict with each other, what tradeoffs we’ll probably have to make, and what questions we should be asking ourselves before we start making decisions or spending money?”

Don’t: Use AI to research and recommend specific local vendors
This is the most dangerous early mistake. AI will confidently name vendors, describe their style, and even quote approximate pricing. Some of that information may be outdated, hallucinated, or simply wrong. Vendor businesses close, change ownership, and shift in quality. Always make sure to verify any specific vendor recommendation independently and never shortlist someone based solely on what AI told you about them.

Actively Wedding Planning:

Things are heating up! You’re in talks with vendors, signing contracts and tasting cakes:

Do: Identify your blind spots
Now that you have a sense of your vision, you need a team to help you bring it to life. Hiring professional and well-vetted vendors is one of the most important aspects of this entire journey. Use AI to help you suss out what questions to ask as you determine the right fit within each vendor category.

• The prompt: “What are the most important questions first-time couples forget to ask when meeting with a [photographer / florist / caterer / venue / DJ] for the first time, especially the ones that lead to regret, surprise costs, or problems on the wedding day? Please focus on the non-obvious ones that a first-timer wouldn’t think to ask but an experienced planner would always cover.”

Do: Compare key vendor terms
You’re in talks with a strong list of vendors and now you need to read and understand the fine print. Use AI to help you identify and compare key contract terms so there are no surprises.

• The prompt: “Here are my wedding vendor contracts: [upload contracts]. For each one, pull out the following: cancellation policy (mine and theirs), payment schedule and due dates, overtime or additional fee clauses, and anything unusual or worth flagging. Then compile everything into a comparison table so I can see all the key terms side by side.”
  Note: you may need to do this in batches, depending on the number of vendors. Check the summary against the original contracts and ask the vendor to clarify anything unclear.

Don’t: Use AI to tell you what things should cost in your market
AI can estimate national averages or general ranges but it may not have reliable, current information about what a florist in your specific city charges right now, what the going rate for a DJ in your area is this season, or whether catering costs have shifted since its training data was collected. Use AI to understand the categories of cost and what elements might affect pricing, rather than a source of actual numbers you take into a negotiation.

Wedding Week:

It’s the week of your wedding and the end is in sight! Keep your sanity as you watch all the details come together:

Do: Create contingency plans for last-minute changes: Even the most organized couple might themselves rearranging seating cards the morning of the wedding when a guest cancels at the last minute. Use AI to help you make a list of all the things that need adjusting when someone changes their RSVP at the final hour.

• The prompt: “I’m getting married soon and a guest has just canceled last minute. I need to figure out everything that’s affected by this change. Please ask me questions about my wedding setup so you can build me a complete checklist of everything I need to update or notify.”

Do: Build your wedding morning schedule: The challenge of organizing an efficient yet realistic morning timetable shouldn’t be underestimated. When you’re juggling a lot of moving parts the morning of your wedding, use AI to help develop a plan to get everyone beautified and out the door on time.

• The prompt: “Help me build a getting-ready schedule for my wedding morning. Here are my details: [number of people getting ready, number of hair stylists and makeup artists, time per person for each, photographer arrives at X, we need to leave for the venue by X, first look yes/no]. Build a realistic minute-by-minute schedule that works backwards from our departure time and flags anywhere we’re likely to run behind.”

Don’t: Use AI to draft communications to vendors on your behalf without careful review: AI doesn’t know the relationship you’ve built with your florist over six months, the informal agreements you made verbally, or the tone that fits that specific person. A message that sounds perfectly professional in isolation can land wrong with someone who knows you. Always revise the message in your own voice before sending, or at least read it carefully before hitting Send.

Hannah Roze is the founder and CEO of Plannerd, a modern wedding-planning platform she created after realizing there was no true project-management tool designed for today’s brides. A Seattle native with an MBA in Technology Management from the University of Washington, Hannah previously helped scale high-growth tech companies, including equity-management unicorn Carta. She lives in Seattle with her husband and young daughter.