valley & co. planning :: top tools for planning your wedding

‘Tis the season for couples defining their style and diving right into the wedding planning process, so we’re dishing up a few of our favorite planning tools and fun resources to get you started on the right track.

  1.  First stop: sign up for BAZAAR Bride – you’ll receive twelve newsletters brimming with pro tips in various categories, gorgeous eye candy, styling tips, and so much more. We purchased the newsletter membership ourselves and know first-hand how informative it is. We’ve even started gifting it to our couples!
  2.  Party Slate hosts a plethora of chic and on-trend wedding and party ideas that you can filter by season, color, and style.                                         Photo: O’Malley Photographers for Valley & Company Events
  3. Shameless plug, but our first book Storied Weddings is filled with hundreds of in-real-life images and over 30k words laying out a roadmap for your planning process. We poured 16+ years of knowledge and tips for planning and designing creative weddings. Not to mention, it includes sage advice from fellow pros in several artistic crafts – Ceci New York will tell you all about what you need for your wedding stationery and Kimberly Schlegel Whitman will dish on wedding etiquette and traditions. We literally wrote the book with a step-by-step outline for planning a wedding that’s ultra personal. Side note: how beautiful is our couple pictured above? Nina and Matt are the sweetest! Photos above by the talented O’Malley Photographers for Valley & Company Events                              
  4. We love Riley & Grey for setting up wedding websites (a must for your guest experience) – they have countless creative styles for templates and let you totally customize your site with ease. Pro tip: keep your website to-the-point and create a form for guests to give you their email addresses so you can send out  newsletters before the wedding, spelling out travel details, attire, and all important things to note.
  5.  Our good friends at BRIDES.com bring the wedding inspo and tips daily, with real weddings and great articles featured from around the globe. You can often catch a glimpse of Anna Price Olson, Senior Editor, scoping out fabulous properties around the country!

Photo by the incredible Ryan Flynn Photography for Valley & Company Events

Above: all planning/design/floral: Valley & Company Events

6. Carats & Cake also shares beautiful imagery and real weddings (no styled shoots here!), showing the heart and details that go into a celebration. Also, their site is brimming with the best hand-selected wedding creatives (including our team!) sharing their work and crafts. We love this team so much!

7. Finally, download the Pantone color app for a fantastic way to customize your color story with real life items (think: your favorite flower, those velvet shoes you love, or the botanical wallpaper in your favorite café). We always encourage our couples to look to things in their life for inspiration before diving into other weddings – find what you love and create a vision from there!

Any of these planning resources will help you get on a fun and inspiring track no matter where you are in the planning process!

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