Tech ties the knot: New tools ease wedding planning

It’s official: After years of flirtation, weddings and technology are finally getting hitched. Matchmaking credit goes to today’s digitally savvy couples, who increasingly want the arduous process of planning their big day to sync up with the rest of their lives. less It’s official: After years of flirtation, weddings and technology are finally getting hitched. Matchmaking credit goes to today’s digitally savvy couples, who increasingly want the arduous process of ... more Photo: Christopher T. Fong / The Chronicle Photo: Christopher T. Fong / The Chronicle Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Tech ties the knot: New tools ease wedding planning 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

It’s official: After years of flirtation, weddings and technology are finally getting hitched. Matchmaking credit goes to today’s digitally savvy couples, who increasingly want the arduous process of planning their big day to sync up with the rest of their lives.

Take San Francisco couple Nica Rognmoe and Jason Dorfman. He surprised his longtime girlfriend with a proposal on Christmas Day by getting down on one knee as the sun set over the Pacific just beyond Point Lobos in Monterey County and asking Rognmoe to spend the rest of her life with him.

Dorfman, a hotel general manager, used Google to help find the perfect spot to propose. After sharing the news with close friends and family via texts and calls on smartphones, the couple announced their engagement on Facebook. Rognmoe plans to create a wedding website, and she’s likely to use Pinterest for feedback from friends and consider online-only Weddington Way for bridesmaids’ dresses instead of land-based stores. “I have a couple of friends in Alaska, and they’re not going to be able to go to a location,” she says.

Rognmoe and Dorfman are like so many couples today: older than the newly engaged of decades past, at ease with technology, living apart from friends and family spread out in different time zones, and planning a wedding they’ll pay for themselves. They face what has traditionally been a complicated, expensive, time-consuming endeavor that easily “becomes a second job if you let it,” according to Carolyn Gerin, co-founder of the WedTech Summit conference being held May 18 in San Francisco. (See By the Numbers, Page 8.)

It’s a situation not lost on Silicon Valley, which is “really starting to rally around weddings,” says Gerin. Bay Area companies Honeybook, Wedding Spot and Weddington Way received multimillion-dollar investments last year.

Each hopes to tap into tech-savvy couples.

“These are folks who are used to hailing a cab with a smartphone. They’re used to paying bills online, to planning vacations online and shopping online,” says Honeybook co-founder Shadiah Sigala. “So when it comes to one of the biggest occasions in their lives, it doesn’t make sense not to be doing things the way that they’re used to doing them.”

Along with emphasizing the practical, the latest crop of online and mobile wedding tools indulges modern couples’ hunger for the personal and unique.

Says Gerin: “The No. 1 thing that’s going to drive everything is personalization. Millennials are not looking at tradition. They don’t care if Martha Stewart says it’s all about pink cupcakes.”

Already overwhelmed? Ease the burden with our list of wedding must-dos and tech tools to match. Some new and noteworthy local companies:

Honeybook: Currently open only by invitation to wedding event pros, $10 million in funding secured last fall has this local startup poised to extend its wedding planning and logistics tools to consumers in 2015. www.honeybook.com.

Weddington Way: Mastermind your bridal-party style and scope out looks for the rehearsal dinner and other events with a private online showroom, where brides and bridesmaids share, vote on and buy dresses in over 1,000 styles and a sea of hues that can be mixed and matched. Along with extras like coordinating accessories for groomsmen, a new rental feature now in beta from the company, which received $9 million in investor funding last year, offers commitment-free styles. www.weddingtonway.com.

Lady Marry: A new project management tool for tying the knot, this startup aims to deliver simple, personalized timetables, checklists and to-do items for the big day. www.ladymarry.com.

Wedding Lovely: Get planning advice, collab with your other half, access printable checklists, and find wedding vendors with a free account on this 500 Startups accelerator grad’s platform. http://weddinglovely.com.

Honeyfund: The recent winner of a $400,000 deal on ABC’s “Shark Tank,” the Sebastopol site lets you crowdfund your dream honeymoon — or raise cash for other big-ticket asks on your wish list. www.honeyfund.com.

Wanderable: This slick online registry for honeymoon travel ups the ante by allowing users to send gift messages wrapped in signature envelopes or boxes and for couples to say thank you with personalized postcards sent through its iPhone app. www.wanderable.com.

Lorraine Sanders is a San Francisco freelancer. Twitter: @DigitalStyleDig

Wedding tech checklist

Start planning Simplify with online tools. One to try: Wedocracy combines calendars and seating charts with social network-inspired features. www.wedocracy.com.

Create an app and/or website If generic, prefab sites aren’t your thing, try a user-friendly service like AppyCouple, Squarespace, Wix or Bliss & Bone, which offers gorgeous, customizable templates as unique as your love story.

Crowdsource inspiration From attire to hair to the signature cocktail, gather ideas from loved ones — and total strangers — on Pinterest or Lover.ly, where you can also shop and connect with vendors.

Secure the venue For site-stalking 2.0, Venue Report (www.venuereport.com) and San Francisco’s the Wedding Spot (www.wedding-spot.com) offer images and pricing for locations from luxe private estates to rustic barns for hire.

Hire vendors Planning from afar? Hire local sources for everything from catering to videographers online with Carats & Cake (http://caratsandcake.com).

Ready, set, register Sites such as Newlywish (www.newlywish.com) and Zola (https://www.zola.com) are bringing more variety and flexibility to online registries than ever before, whether it’s boutique brands you seek or a group fund for a home down payment.

Invite Beyond paper invitations from go-to sources such as Minted (www.minted.com) and Etsy, issue digital invites to the WedPics app to secure easy access to guests’ photos and videos taken during your wedding and related events.

Brave the bachelorette Cut pre-party anxiety and unwieldy group e-mails with a planning tool like the Bach (http://thebach.com).

Be image conscious Creative add-ons to traditional photography might mean a GoPro on your bridal bouquet or budgeting in a drone to snap aerial shots of the venue.

Say thanks Avoid cramped fingers and digitize the chore with Postable’s custom cards (https://www.postable.com) or Touchnote’s postcards (www.touchnote.com) made from your images.

— L.S.