What The...?! Google is Your New Wedding Expert.

google wedding planning tools overview

Sometimes I think cynicism is one of my best qualities. Google launches a suite of wedding planning tools… reeeeeeeeeeeeally? Well ok – I suppose they have access to plenty of information, and the manpower to create something really good – but I have two questions.

1. Are Google the right people, with the right mindset, to provide just what brides and grooms need?

2. How much of this new Wedding Planning site at www.Google.com/weddings is relevant to UK brides and grooms?

Oh and 3. What? Seriously? Google?!

google wedding planning tools overview

What’s in the Google Wedding Planning tools

It’s nothing new, but the Google wedding planning tools are all nicely wrapped up in one place for brides. These are tools web designers and companies have been using for a couple of years. It’s pretty interesting they’re targeting them for wedding planning… but they will work (and they’re all free). You get:

Google Sites to create your own free website about your wedding. Includes pretty templates and image editing via Picnik.

Google Docs Wedding Tools – template documents for planning everything from your budget to a timetable for your wedding day. These look pretty good to me: the budget template is in dollars but I just changed it to pounds with no trouble.

Google's wedding planning tools - the budget estimator

There’s a small typo: stationary. Grr. But it would be really petty of me to mention that. The timetable is a little… military. If you don’t want a set time for toasting the maid of honour or putting the usher’s suits on you’ll need to modify the spreadsheet a little… but it’s good to have everything in there to start with I suppose.

Google Wedding Planning Tools seating chart

The seating chart is basic but effective – on the surface it seems to be a simple spreadsheet with coloured columns. Great if you’re not familiar with spreadsheets and just need something simple to plan tables with. It won’t rival the likes of toptableplanner but it’s perfectly ok for a simple seating plan.

Thank Google for the Memories? Wedding photo sharing tools

Sharing Photos with Picasa is the last tool included. It’s nothing more exciting than a photo sharing website, but it’s free to use and nice to have in the same place as your other planning tools at www.google.com/weddings. (I prefer flickr, but I use Picasa for my own images as well – it’s easy to use and handy to have.)

Google are promoting the new suite of wedding planning tools with a prize draw – to win $25,000 towards your dream wedding with Michelle Rago. That is only for US couples, unfortunately.

Google Docs wedding planning tool

So to answer those two questions I started with… no, Google aren’t the right people to do this. But they knew that so they’ve collaborated with Style Me Pretty and Michelle Rago to design the tools, and done a good job.

And yes, UK brides and grooms can use the wedding planning tools – just change a few dollar signs to pounds, and you’re away!

Answer 3. Yes, Google. It makes perfect sense that they’ve spotted a huge source of web traffic from brides and grooms. And the trend for budget weddings means free software will be very, very popular I’m sure. Free help for brides and grooms? Can’t be a bad thing, can it!