Cheap wedding planning: what to spend on and what to get free
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The software side of a wedding should cost you very little. A wedding website, guest sign-up, and a guest photo gallery are all available free. The one place worth paying is reaching guests quickly on the day, because that is where free options genuinely fail: group texts cap out around thirty people and email is read by about a fifth of your list. txt.wedding is free to set up, free for your wedding page and gallery, and $1 per guest one time if you want to text your guests, with unlimited messages.
Free and genuinely good
- A wedding website at txt.wedding/w/your-names, with schedule, travel, FAQ, and a guest sign-up form.
- Guest sign-up by QR code or link, so you never chase phone numbers.
- A guest photo and video gallery that doubles as a digital guest book.
- Copy-paste text templates for save-the-dates, day-of logistics, and thank-yous.
Worth paying for
- Reliable day-of guest communication. This is the failure that actually costs you: guests at the wrong address, missed shuttles, an empty ceremony at the new start time.
- Anything that saves your planner or your parents hours of phone calls.
Cheap options that cost more later
- Message-capped plans: you ration updates on the day you need them most.
- Monthly subscriptions: cheap per month, forgotten for a year.
- Guest-facing apps: free to you, but adoption is low, so you end up texting people anyway.
Common questions
What does txt.wedding cost?
$1 per guest, one time, with unlimited messages. A 100-guest wedding pays $100. The wedding page and guest gallery are free.
Can I use it for free?
You can create an account, build your wedding page, collect guest sign-ups, and use the photo gallery without paying. Sending texts to your guests is the paid step.
Is there a cheaper way to text 150 guests?
Not reliably. Personal phones get carrier-throttled at that volume and group threads cap out far earlier. Per-guest pricing at $1 is at the low end of dedicated tools, which commonly charge $2 per guest or bill monthly.