This new startup is a digital wedding planner, available to all.
My wife and I got married five years ago (it was the second time around for both of us). Like most couples, we found out that wedding planning starts off fun and exciting — and then inevitably turns into spreadsheets, checklists, scribbled notes, vendor disagreements and email inbox overload.
So when I met two young entrepreneurs recently, Jesse and Arielle, who have founded a new startup with a digital platform for wedding planning, I was immediately intrigued.
For many young couples, their wedding is the most expensive project they’ve ever managed, with a lot of moving parts. It’s also, needless to say, one of the most important days of their lives. Expectations are high, and so is the potential for stress. Families who can afford it will often hire an expensive wedding planner to manage the process, but most people aren’t able to shell out thousands of dollars for a personal wedding planner.
Jesse and Arielle’s new startup, Rella, is a complete suite of wedding planning tools ranging from automated budgeting to guest list and RSVP tracker, from centralized notes to vendor conversation tracking. And yes, you can sync your Pinterest boards! Rella has workflow tools, and tips and advice, all in one platform. And, of course, the platform learns about your vision for your wedding, so that you’re creating a personalized experience for yourself and your guests. It also allows you to invite your partner, bridesmaids (even your mother-in-law!) to collaborate on the platform so that you “share the love and ease the work”.
Other companies have tried to build platforms for wedding planning, but most of them get their revenue from selling you things. Part of what makes Rella unique is that it’s a subscription-based service — they make their money by helping you produce a fabulous wedding, not by selling you anything along the way.
Nobody in the history of marriage has ever said “the thing I loved most about our wedding planning was managing all the complex spreadsheets!”. Rella allows couples to spend their time better and get back to planning the fun parts quicker. They will be launching later this year and already have a waiting list of couples wanting to be amongst the first to use it.
