Getting started as a wedding planner

As a planner, Wedding Computer is the hub for every wedding you manage. You coordinate vendors, hold the timeline, and create the workspace that everyone else joins into. Getting set up properly means every wedding you take on runs through a consistent, professional system.

Step 1 — Complete your business profile

Go to Settings → Profile and fill in:

Business name — what couples and vendors will see when they view your profile
Category — select Planner
Location — your base city or region
Timezone — your local timezone, used for all dates and calendar events
Bio, website, Instagram — these appear on your public directory listing and in your vendor profile when you’re added to a wedding

Why: Your profile is what other vendors see when you invite them into a wedding. A complete profile — business name, location, photo — tells them immediately who they’re working with. Vendors are more likely to accept an invitation from a planner who looks established.

Step 2 — Import your existing contacts

If you’re moving from another CRM, open Contacts → Import. Upload a CSV, TSV, or JSON export and map its columns to Wedding Computer’s contact fields — there are ready-made mapping presets for Dubsado, Studio Ninja, HoneyBook, and VSCO Workspace/Tave, so you don’t have to work out the field mapping yourself. If you don’t have a clean export, you can instead paste raw text (an email, a spreadsheet snippet) and let AI extract the contact details into a structured record.

Before anything is committed you get a preview of what will be created, and duplicate detection flags contacts that look like they already exist in your pipeline. Rows that represent already-booked couples can optionally auto-create their wedding workspace as part of the import. If something comes in wrong, the whole import is reversible — you can archive the contacts a given import created.

Why: Migrating years of client history by hand is the single biggest reason planners put off switching tools. Because the column-mapping presets already understand how Dubsado, Studio Ninja, HoneyBook, and VSCO/Tave lay out their exports, you can bring your existing pipeline across in one sitting instead of re-entering every lead — and because the import is reversible, there’s no risk in doing a test run before you commit to it.

Step 3 — Build your enquiry form

Open Forms → Enquiry and customise the questions couples answer when they contact you.

For a planner, useful questions include:

Wedding date (required)
Wedding location or venue (or “shortlisted venues”)
Estimated guest count
Ceremony type (outdoor, indoor, destination, elopement)
Which planning package they’re interested in (if you offer tiers: full planning, partial, day-of coordination)
How they heard about you
Any detail about their vision or style

The current editor does not have a conditional-logic builder. Use clear section headings, or create separate forms when different packages need materially different questions.

Why: A good enquiry form qualifies leads before you invest time in a response. If your form asks the right questions, you’ll know from the first message whether a couple is the right fit, what their date is, and what service level they need — before you pick up the phone. Submissions land directly in your contacts pipeline, at the same new-enquiry stage as any lead you add manually.

Step 4 — Use your inbox and AI drafting for replies

Every vendor account includes its own address at handle@wedding.computer — claim your handle under Settings → Business settings if you haven’t already. Open Inbox to see everything threaded by conversation: incoming enquiries, your replies, and anything sent from your other tools that you’ve CC’d or forwarded in. Every message sent or received through this inbox logs automatically onto that contact’s activity timeline, alongside their form submissions, invoices, and contract status.

When you reply, click AI draft to generate a first pass built from that contact’s history, the wedding details already on file, and your own voice and context. It covers the routine cases — a follow-up, telling a couple you’re not available for their date, referring them to another planner — so you’re editing a draft rather than starting from a blank message.

Why: Planners live in email, and a separate inbox for client correspondence means either duplicating messages into your CRM by hand or losing the thread on what was actually said. Because every message here attaches itself to the contact automatically, the full conversation is sitting on that contact’s record for anyone — including you, months later — to read without digging through a mailbox. AI drafting removes the blank-page cost of routine replies, so a fast first response doesn’t depend on finding a spare ten minutes to write one.

Step 5 — Configure your default service contract

Go to Settings → Contracts and write your standard planner agreement. Wedding Computer keeps one default service contract and copies it onto each new invoice. You can edit that invoice’s copy for package-specific terms without changing earlier invoices. Include:

Scope of services (full planning, partial, day-of coordination)
Payment schedule (deposit, instalments, final balance)
Cancellation and postponement terms
What happens if a vendor you recommend is unavailable
Communication expectations

Why: Your contract protects both you and the couple. On the booking page, the couple types their full name and email address and confirms that they agree. Wedding Computer records that acceptance against the invoice. This is not a drawn signature, and it does not create a downloadable signed PDF; the confirmation email includes a text copy of the accepted contract.

Step 6 — Configure Stripe for deposits and payments

Go to Settings → Payments → Connect Stripe and complete the Stripe onboarding.

Set up your payment schedule in each invoice: typically a deposit (20–30% of the total fee) at booking, a mid-payment at a certain milestone, and the final balance 4–6 weeks before the wedding.

Why: When card payment is configured, the couple can pay the booking-fee instalment through Stripe Checkout. Later instalments remain on the invoice schedule for you to track and record when received.

Step 7 — Set your availability

Open Calendar → Availability and:

Mark which days of the week you take on weddings (most planners work weekends)
Block out personal dates and holidays
Under Settings → Availability sharing, choose Public so enquirers can see your available dates before they contact you

Why: A public availability calendar means you stop getting enquiries for dates you’re already booked. Couples check your calendar before they enquire, so the leads that do come through are for real available dates.

If you have Pro, enable AI auto-reply — when a new enquiry arrives for a date you’re free, the AI sends an immediate personalised reply acknowledging the enquiry and confirming your availability. Couples expect fast responses; this handles the first reply automatically.

Step 8 — Connect your calendar safely

Open Your profile → Your wedding calendar to create your private personal feed. Choose Subscribe in Apple Calendar, or copy the link into Google Calendar or Outlook.

With Pro, open Settings → Calendar & contacts → Create calendar connection for a business-calendar feed or CalDAV account. Give each app or device its own connection so you can revoke it without disrupting the others.

Why: These connections show your Wedding Computer bookings and permitted timeline rows alongside your other commitments. They are read-only: changes made in Apple Calendar, Google Calendar, Outlook, or a CalDAV app do not flow back to Wedding Computer. Treat every feed link or credential like a password and revoke it if it is shared accidentally.

Step 9 — Create your first wedding workspace

When a couple books, open their contact record and click Promote to wedding. Fill in the wedding details:

Date and general location
Ceremony type

Then, immediately:

Set yourself as the managing vendor — go to People → your name → enable Can manage. This makes you the timeline lead. Other members can propose additions, edits, or removals to shared rows; you can approve them as submitted, adjust them before approving, or decline them.
Invite the couple — Add people → Invite couple. Enter both email addresses.
Invite the vendor team — as each vendor is confirmed, add them to the workspace. They join as members, can propose shared timeline changes, and can manage their own private rows.
Check your checklists deployed — any checklist templates you’ve built under Settings → Checklists attach to the wedding’s to-do list automatically the moment you promote the contact, so recurring tasks are already sitting there rather than something you re-add per booking.

Why: The managing vendor role gives the shared schedule one clear lead. Day-of logistics live on timeline rows instead of duplicated wedding-level fields, and proposed shared changes come through you before they affect everyone else. The automatic checklist deploy exists so a step doesn’t get missed just because a booking happened on a busy week — the to-do list is already populated before you’ve thought to build it.

Step 10 — Build the initial run sheet

Go to the wedding → Timeline and start building the day’s structure. There is not currently a built-in Generate run sheet button. With Pro, a connected MCP assistant can propose or add timeline rows from a draft you review; otherwise add the rows directly in the timeline.

Add the ceremony, reception, getting-ready, portrait, bump-in, supplier-arrival, room-flip, and end-of-night logistics as timeline rows. Each row has its own time and location. Set shared operational rows to vendors visibility, rows everyone should see to couple, or internal rows to private.

Why: The sooner you have a structure in the timeline, the earlier vendors can see where they fit. Your photographer can see portrait time, your celebrant can see ceremony start, your venue can see their setup window — all from the shared workspace rather than separate emails from you.

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 it saves immediately — there is no separate plus-button step. Use the custom label only for someone outside the roster. Assignments are shared read/write operations: every collaborator who can see a shared row sees its assignees and can add or remove them directly; only the owner can manage assignees on a private row.

Step 11 — Build the operational packet (BEO)

Go to the wedding → Operational packet to assemble the single day-of reference document — the banquet-event-order-style packet that pulls together the run sheet, team assignments, guest counts and dietary needs, seating, and shared files into one place. Because it draws from the same live data as your timeline and guest list, it updates as those pieces change rather than needing to be rebuilt by hand each time something moves.

Share it with on-site staff who don’t have a Wedding Computer account via a public link, or export/print it as a PDF for anyone who needs a paper copy on the day.

Why: This is the document a planner or venue is most likely to be the one assembling for everyone else — it’s the single reference every vendor and on-site crew member can check instead of texting you “what time does the room flip happen” or “how many are vegetarian.” Because it’s generated live rather than maintained as a separate file, it can’t quietly go out of date the way a static BEO sitting in a shared drive can.

Step 12 — Add team members (if you have staff)

If you work with an assistant or coordinator, open Team in the sidebar and add them to your business roster. The roster is available on both plans. A team-member record does not create a login or grant account access. Assign that person to the relevant wedding, then select them directly on timeline rows.

Why: The roster records who is working each wedding and lets the shared timeline name the actual coordinator responsible for a row. If someone needs to sign in and edit the workspace, invite them separately with the appropriate workspace membership.

You’re ready when:

Your profile is complete (name, category as Planner, location)
You’ve imported your existing contacts, if you’re migrating from another CRM
Your enquiry form is live and asking the right questions
You’ve claimed your @wedding.computer handle and know where AI drafting is in your inbox
Your default service contract is configured
Stripe is connected and your payment schedule structure is decided
Your availability is set and visible to enquirers
Your calendar feed is subscribed in your phone/desktop calendar
You know how to create a workspace and immediately set yourself as managing vendor
You’ve built checklist templates so they deploy automatically on future bookings

What to do right now

Take your next booked couple and create their workspace. Set yourself as the managing vendor, invite them, and invite any vendors you’ve already confirmed. Start adding your coordination milestones to the timeline, then build out the operational packet once the schedule has some shape.

Seeing it work for a real wedding is the fastest way to internalise the system. The planners & venues guide covers the managing vendor role, change approvals, and live mode in depth.

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