6 Part Planning, Big Picture Stuff, Tools, Vendors

No Wedding Planner? Here Are 6 Tools To Help You Do It Yourself

by Raj Desai | 10/28/21

All products listed were in stock and priced as shown at the time this was written. Dulhan may be compensated for the following recommendations.

If there’s one wedding vendor that I’ve seen a LOT of couples do away with, it’s the wedding planner.

And why not?!

It’s an added cost. Maybe your parents want to handle everything. Or you’re type A and want to do it all yourself (respect 🙏🏾).

But you don’t really need to do it all by yourself.

These days, there are a ton of products and services out there to help you DIY wedding planners stay organized and execute a week of flawless wedding events (minus your token drunkle*).

Products like planning books to keep you organized, and milestone cards to help you celebrate along the way.

Services like a wedding timeline generator—so you can make sure your Indian Standard Time relatives *actually* show on time (eh, maybe tell them one hour earlier just in case)—and a South Asian digital wedding concierge (hey, Dildiya 👋🏾!).

With tools like these, you’ll have every aspect of wedding planning *covered.* Just enlist the help of your v. bossy masi for the rest.

So are you ready to kick wedding planning’s a*? Here are 6 things that’ll help you do it.

via GIPHY

*drunkle = drunk uncle

Planning Books

True story: I forgot about an entire event (haldi); a time-honored tradition (my uncles putting on my chooda set); and was completely unprepared for my mehndi event (put together an outfit last minute).

And I hired a wedding planner!

Okay, so he was a terrible planner (obviously). If only I had used a list, book, website, *something*…I wouldn’t have forgotten any of those things.

All this to say, step 1 for you is ensuring that you don’t end up like me.

Stay organized (and don’t forget a thing!) with any of these 14 South Asian wedding planning books.

You can also check out The Busy Bride’s Guide To Wedding Planning ebook ($49), and read through this free shopping checklist here.

Your City's Visitor Center

I bet you didn’t know about this one!

Which is totally cool, ’cause I didn’t either until I started my wedding research…*after* I got married. 😝

And that’s this: your visitor’s center is chock FULL of wedding planning help.

Maps and activities for out-of-town guests. Deals with venues that are different (and often better) than what traditional planners can get.

And. It’s all. FREE!

Wedding Planning Agile Tools

If you live the corporate America life, then you don’t need an introduction to agile.

If you don’t, it’s a methodology designed to take big complicated things and break them into smaller, easier pieces.

Tools like Asana and Trello (where you can find Dulhan’s 6 part planning board), are user-friendly platforms where you can customize your to-do list, assign roles, and have a bird’s eye view of every task’s progress.

You can also hire a service to show you how to apply it to your wedding, like the founding duo at Scrum Your Wedding.

Little Brown Diary

Okay, so like f* Facebook and all, but this Facebook group is wonderful!

In case you haven’t heard of it, Little Brown Diary (LBD) is a group for South Asian women (last time I logged on it was 30k strong), and they have subgroups for every possible topic you can imagine. Weddings included!

It’s a great place to ask religious and cultural questions, find vendors, and get advice and support from other brides.

Log onto Facebook and search for the main group first (Little Brown Diary). Once you’re a member, you can request to join the Weddings and Events subgroup.

Wedding Day Timeline

Shortly after March Madness in 2016, I started to get emails from my vendors asking for a wedding timeline. My reaction was, Huh?

Come to find out, my planner was supposed to put an itinerary together and send it out to every vendor.

You know, so they knew what time they had to be in what place. Which is prettttty important information to have.

So I just guessed. Typed something up. Emailed it out. And hoped for the best. 🤷🏾‍♀️

Well, there is finally an intuitive, interactive, timeline generating tool that takes the guesswork out—and that’s Wedding Day Timeline. (founded by the incredible, inimitable Hooman Bahrani of Vesic Photography 🙌🏾).

It is a robust platform that’s shareable with friends, family, and vendors *and* integrated with Google Maps.

Stay tuned to the website to find out about the official launch.

Dildiya: Wedding Concierge

Handling the décor is one thing, but what if you want muscle for finding vendors, negotiating contracts, and overseeing the planning process?

Then you need to check out Dildiya, a South Asian-specific wedding concierge service.

No matter where you’re located or what stage of planning you’re in, you can book a package that matches the level of support you need.

You can get professional planning services for as little as an hour (at $75 per hour), right up until your wedding day.

Need a replacement vendor for the one who backed out at the last minute? How about a customized wedding checklist to match your fusion wedding? Or creating a budget that keeps the whole gang happy? Dildiya will help with allll of that.

As if you needed any more motivation to add Dildiya’s professional planning chops to your DIY planning toolkit, get the added perk of testing the waters before you commit with a free consultation.