Guide for planners & venues

Wedding planners and venues play a different role in Wedding Computer than other vendors. Because you coordinate the whole day — not just your own piece of it — you can take a managing vendor role that gives you additional controls: timeline ownership, change approvals, and oversight of the full vendor team. Two features are built specifically around this role: the operational packet, a single living document that pulls the schedule, team, guests, and seating together so you can run the day from one place, and checklist templates, which let you standardise the repeatable steps behind every wedding you coordinate.

This guide covers everything specific to planners and venues. For features shared with all vendors (CRM, invoicing, run sheets, calendar), see those sections in the main documentation.

The managing vendor role

When you’re added to a wedding workspace, you can be assigned the can manage flag. This makes you the managing vendor for that wedding. As the managing vendor:

You are the timeline lead, so you can add, edit, and remove shared timeline rows directly
Other members who can see a shared row submit a proposal when they want to add, edit, or remove one
You can approve a proposal as submitted, adjust it before approving, or decline it
Ceremony, reception, getting-ready, portrait, setup, and other logistics live as timeline rows, each with its own time and location

Planners and venues are typically the natural candidates for this role. A planner who is coordinating the whole day needs to hold the timeline; a venue whose room schedule drives everything else similarly needs to gate timing changes.

To assign yourself as managing vendor: when you’re added to a wedding (or once you’re already a member), go to the wedding workspace → People → click your own name → enable Can manage.

If you created the wedding workspace yourself (by promoting a booked contact to a wedding), you can set this when creating the workspace.

Creating and managing wedding workspaces

As the planner or venue, you’ll typically be the one who creates the workspace.

To create a workspace: go to Contacts, find your booked couple, and choose Promote to wedding. Fill in the core wedding details (date, general location, and ceremony type) and create the workspace. Add all day-of times and locations as timeline rows.

To invite the couple: from the workspace, go to Add people → Invite couple. Enter both email addresses. The couple gets a free account — no subscription needed.

To invite other vendors: go to Add people → Add vendor. You can search for vendors already on Wedding Computer, or invite by email. Invited vendors can:

View and contribute to the shared timeline
Propose shared run-sheet additions or changes, and manage their own private rows
Read shared notes and documents
Upload files to the document library

Vendors you invite don’t need Pro subscriptions to participate. They join as members of your workspace and can contribute fully.

Standardising your process with checklist templates

Every wedding you run has the same recurring steps — legal paperwork, planning calls, supplier confirmations, load-in and load-out tasks, post-wedding wrap-up. Rather than rebuilding that list on each new booking, build it once as a checklist template.

To create one: open Checklists in your vendor sidebar, choose New template, and write it in simple Markdown — ## Section name for a section heading, - [ ] Task for an item. Keep separate templates for different booking types, such as full-day coordination versus day-of only.

To have it deploy automatically: enable Deploy automatically when a new wedding is created on the template you want as your default. Every wedding workspace you create afterwards starts with a copy of that checklist already in place, so nothing gets missed because someone forgot to add it manually. Editing the template later doesn’t rewrite checklists already copied onto existing weddings.

A wedding’s checklist is private to the vendor account that created it — the couple, other vendors, and even another managing vendor on the same wedding don’t see it through the shared workspace. It’s your own working list, separate from the shared timeline and workspace notes.

See Checklist templates for the full reference.

Timeline management

Your own run sheet items

Use one row for each part of the day: getting ready, ceremony, portraits, reception, bump-in, supplier arrivals, room flips, meal service, and end-of-night logistics. As the timeline lead, you edit shared rows directly; other visible members propose changes for your approval. Vendors can still manage their own private rows directly.

The shared timeline

Timeline items marked couple are visible to every workspace member. Items marked vendors are visible only to vendor members. Items marked private are visible only to the vendor who owns them.

As the managing vendor, you can see everything except other vendors’ private items.

Approving timeline change requests

When another member proposes adding, editing, or removing a shared timeline row, you receive a timeline-change notification.

To review requests: go to the wedding workspace → Timeline → look for the Pending approvals section. Each request shows:

Who proposed the change
What they want to add, edit, or remove, including the before-and-after values for time, title, location, visibility, and other changed fields
Their reason (optional)

You can approve exactly as proposed, edit the proposed row and then approve it, or decline it. The proposing member is notified of your decision.

Making timeline changes directly

As the timeline lead, you change the schedule directly on the Timeline. Edit the relevant row to change its time, location, title, details, visibility, duration, or relative timing. The wedding edit page is for core details such as the date, general location, and ceremony type—not a second copy of the day-of schedule.

Assigning people to a row

Available workspace members, vendors, and business team members assigned to the wedding appear under each row as direct add buttons. Select a name once and the assignment saves immediately — there is no separate plus-button step. Use the custom-label option only for someone who is not in the roster. Assignments are shared read/write operations: any collaborator who can see a shared row sees its assignees and can add or remove them without waiting for timeline approval; only the owner can manage assignees on a private row.

Coordinating the vendor team

Who’s on the wedding

The People section of the workspace shows all current members: the couple, vendors, and their roles. You can see who has accepted their invitation and who hasn’t yet.

You can remove a vendor from the workspace if needed — they lose access immediately.

You can control vendor visibility from the wedding settings:

Visible: all vendors can see each other’s contact details — useful when vendors need to communicate directly without going through you
Private: vendors can’t see each other; only you (and the couple) can see the full team

The vendor credits list

After the wedding, go to the workspace → Credits to copy the full vendor team list for Instagram posts, blog articles, or publications. You can copy in Instagram mention format (@handle), Markdown, or HTML.

Guest list, seating & room layout

The optional Guests app — enabled by the couple or a manager from the wedding’s Wedding apps — holds the guest list, RSVP responses, seating chart, and room layout for the wedding. Its visibility setting has three levels, and one is built specifically for this role: couple only, couple + planners/venues, or the whole vendor team. Whoever manages the wedding sets it, and the middle tier is the natural choice for a venue confirming room flips or a planner building the seating plan without opening guest details to the full vendor team.

Once you have access, you can see:

Guest units, their allergies, dietary notes, and seating priorities
RSVP totals, meal choices, and response counts
The seating chart and room layout

Seating chart: open Guests → Seating chart to drag guests between tables and the unseated bench, or use the automatic seat function to fill tables while keeping existing placements, benching anyone who’s declined, and detecting a kids’ table. It flags unseated guests, keep-apart conflicts, and over-capacity tables so you can resolve them before the day.

Room layout: place the same tables onto an uploaded image or PDF of the real venue floorplan, along with operational zones and ceremony seating rows — useful for finalising a floor plan with the couple or another vendor before it’s pulled into the operational packet.

Only the couple and managers can add guests, change invitation settings, or edit seating; other members with access can view but not edit. See Guests, RSVPs & seating for the full reference.

Operational packets: running the day from one document

The operational packet — often called a BEO — is built for exactly this role: a single living document that Wedding Computer assembles from the wedding’s current data, so you run the day from one place instead of stitching together the timeline, guest numbers, and seating plan by hand.

To open it: go to the wedding workspace and choose Operational packet from the command centre. Only a member with Can manage — normally you, as the managing planner or venue — can open, edit, or control sharing for the packet.

The packet pulls together:

The event date, location, and status
Non-private timeline rows, with their times, descriptions, and locations
RSVP totals, meal choices, and dietary and allergy notes
The wedding team and roles
The seating plan and connected room layout
Files shared with the wedding, and a floor-plan link if one’s been entered

Add a title, a draft/final label, notes for service, meals, beverages, staffing, setup, and accessibility, and a guest-count override if the RSVP total isn’t the number you want to print. Because it’s a living view, reopening the packet shows the current schedule, team, and guest numbers — not a stale copy from when you first built it.

To print or export: choose Print for a clean print view, then use your browser’s print dialog to print or save as a PDF.

To share it with on-site staff who don’t have accounts: turn on sharing to generate a link that opens the packet without signing in — useful for kitchen, bar, or venue crew who need the day’s details but shouldn’t have a login. Review the packet before sharing, since it can include guest and dietary information, seating names, and team names. Use Rotate link if a link circulates too widely, or Disable sharing once it’s no longer needed.

See Operational packets / BEOs for the full reference, including exactly what’s pulled in and the share-link security model.

Running the wedding day

Live mode

On the day, switch the timeline to live mode from the timeline page. As the managing vendor, you can:

Mark any item as started (not just your own) — this records the actual start time
See drift — how many minutes ahead or behind schedule the day is running
See all vendors’ contributions in the shared timeline in real time

Other vendors and the couple can also see the live timeline — everyone is on the same page about where the day is up to.

Ending live mode

When the day is done, tap End live mode. This clears all recorded start times and returns the timeline to its planned view. You can still access the timeline for reference after the day.

Venues: the financial party role

Venues that act as the central billing party for a wedding — collecting all vendor payments and distributing them — can be set as the financial party on a wedding. This is for venues that operate an organiser model, where couples pay the venue and the venue pays the vendors.

To set a venue as financial party: go to the wedding → People → click the venue member → enable Is financial party.

With this flag set, the venue’s invoices are marked as the primary financial relationship with the couple.

Multiple weddings on the same day

Wedding Computer’s calendar shows all your bookings. If you have two weddings on the same date, both appear on your calendar. Your availability calendar will show that date as booked, preventing additional enquiries for that day (if your availability sharing is set to public or AI auto-reply).

Each wedding has its own independent workspace, timeline, vendor team, and set of notes.

Analytics for your business

Planners and venues often have higher booking volumes and more complex pipelines than solo vendors, which makes the analytics dashboard (Analytics in the sidebar) especially useful for spotting patterns — conversion rate, revenue trends, and where your best leads are actually coming from. See Analytics for the full breakdown of what’s on the dashboard and what requires Pro.

Frequently asked questions

Can I coordinate multiple vendors from one workspace?

Yes. That’s the core purpose of the managing vendor role. You create the workspace, invite all your vendors, and the shared timeline becomes the single source of truth for the day.

Do other vendors need to pay for Wedding Computer?

No. Vendors you invite into a wedding you created participate for free. They don’t need a Pro subscription to view and contribute to the shared workspace.

What happens if a vendor proposes a timeline change I haven’t approved yet?

It stays as a pending request. The change is not applied to the shared timeline until you approve it. The vendor sees it as pending; everyone else sees the unchanged timeline.

Can I decline a change and still see what was proposed?

Yes. Declined requests are stored in the timeline history so you can reference them.

Can I prevent vendors from seeing the couple’s contact details?

Yes. Under wedding settings → Vendor visibility → Private, vendor contact details are hidden from each other. Only you and the couple can see the full team.

How does this work if we use a templated run sheet?

The shared timeline itself doesn’t have saved run-sheet templates — each wedding’s schedule is built from scratch as rows. As the lead, start by adding the key rows — venue open, bump-in, ceremony, reception — and build from there; invited vendors can propose shared additions and manage their own private rows.

What you can template is your own checklist: a separate, private to-do list (not the shared timeline) that you can set to deploy automatically onto every new wedding you create. Use it for the repeatable process around the wedding — legal steps, supplier confirmations, load-in tasks — while the timeline stays a per-wedding build. See Checklist templates.

Can I see the guest list, RSVPs, or seating chart from my planner or venue account?

Yes, if the wedding’s Guests app visibility is set to couple + planners/venues or the whole vendor team — see Guests, RSVPs & seating. Whoever manages the wedding controls that setting from the app’s visibility options.

Can venues use this for non-wedding events?

The run sheet, calendar, and CRM pipeline work for any event. The workspace uses flexible timeline rows rather than fixed ceremony, reception, or getting-ready fields, so many of the same tools also work for conferences, functions, and other events.