Today we’re thrilled to announce the launch of some great new wedding planning tools.  We’ve made the new tools, including a wedding checklist, wedding budget, and personal wedding vendor list, just as easy to use as our great wedding websites.  The new tools are extremely powerful, and we’re confident that they’re the best out there.

A wedding checklist is at the center of the new wedding planning tools.  We’ll get you started with common tasks, but you can easily add, edit, and remove tasks to fit your own planning.  You can also assign tasks to categories, occasions, and owners and then filter those tasks so that you can focus on what needs to be done.  Tasks can also have dates and times associated with them, meaning your task list doubles as an appointment calendar.  Your  checklist tasks can also be linked to vendors or budget items so it’s easy to see how everything is related.

Our wedding budget tool is just as innovative.  It makes categorizing budget items easy.  The wedding budget tool allows you to track estimated and actual costs, and when you provide us with a target budget we can give you some estimates on how much certain things might cost based on industry averages.  Having experienced this with our own weddings, we also realized that tracking payments is just as important as tracking your budget.  A budget allows you to see how much you are spending on different parts of your wedding, but payments allow you to keep track of what money is due when, and how it is getting paid.  For example, many vendors will require a deposit up front, and then the remainder at some point in the future.  With the payments integrated into our wedding budget, managing these is a breeze.

We’ve also made big updates to our wedding vendor area.  With tens of thousands of wedding vendors to choose from, you’re sure to find the right vendors for your special event.  To make it easier, we now let you search and sort vendors by various criteria, such as number of reviews, average rating, alphabetically, etc.   This means you will spend less time searching, and more time comparing the ones you are interested in.  We also let you save vendors, and give them personal notes and ratings.  For example, if you like a vendor you can save them to your personal list and write a note explaining why you liked them.  If they aren’t available then you can make a note of that and not worry about forgetting that.  You can also write down any quotes or pricing they gave you so at a quick glance you can easily see and compare all of the vendors you are considering.

You’ll notice we’ve also made some changes to our site navigation and the ‘My Account’ page in this launch. To start planning for any event go to the ‘My Account’ page and click on the ‘Start Planning’ link in the top right corner of the event.

As always, we’d love to hear how we can improve these tools - so let us know what you want to see!

Happy planning!

The MomentVille Team

Just because you are on a budget doesn’t mean you can’t impress!

A lot has to do with the venue that you choose for your reception/ceremony. At a hotel or hall you are going to have to do a lot to put your personal stamp on it. Choose a unique venue that is beautiful in and of itself. Be that a beach, a tropical garden something with a view of it’s own. That way you don’t have to use special lighting, lots of flower arrangements and other things to make it look other than four walls.

Pay attention to your tablescape. You don’t need a fully set table (it cost’s too much, the more utensils, glasses and dishes the more you pay). Use ribbons in your colors to criss cross the table to give it color. If you are on the beach fill vases with sand, shells and a candle. Use something inexpesive like raffia as a napkin ring with a starfish glued to it. If you are in a garden pick some of the flowers and use them on your table…nature is there and is free, use it to make your tables a wow.

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Authored By Lori. Lori is the Innkeeper/owner of Sea Breeze Manor Bed and Breakfast Inn in Gulfport, Florida. She hosts weddings in her tropical garden for up to 100 people. The bride makes the dramatic second story entrance, joins her groom under the jasmine covered gazebo for their vows, head’s across the street to the beach for photos and then finishes up dancing in the garden under the stars! See www.seabreezemanor.com for more information.