Planning a wedding can be complicated. Not only are there many vendors, choices, and opinions to decide among, but there are also so many moving parts to keep track of. And when you add the complexity of many couples’ families today (step parents, half brothers, family feuds) it seems as though planning a wedding is a complex game of Tetris.

To help ease the frustration with tracking all of your wedding details, Wedding Mapper has just launched its Guest Manager. This new tool, currently in beta, not only allows you to manage your RSVP’s (did Aunt Sally say she can come to the Welcome Dinner but can’t come to the Farewell Breakfast, or the vice versa?) but it also helps to track your guests’ meal selection, address information, gifts received AND seating arrangements per event.

Just when you thought creating a seating chart was only a matter of picking tables and placing guests at each table per your desired room layout, Wedding Mapper has stepped in and has accounted for the stress of managing family altercations. When you add a guest to your Guest Manager you can place parameters around who else they MUST and CANNOT sit with (World War III may erupt if Uncle John and Aunt Linda sit at the same table)! Then when you’re creating your seating chart, it will place guests together if you have requested that (which means faster seating!) and will remind you if, by accident, you seat John and Linda together. We’re looking out for you!

The flow among all the content within the Guest Manager allows for an easy and fun way to track all the content around your guests. We know your wedding planning process can be stressful, so we’re doing all we can to help organize your planning – so you don’t have to.

Cheers,
Alison
Wedding Mapper

We just started tweeting about our favorite weddings, vendors and venues from around the world. Follow us on Twitter! http://twitter.com/weddingmapper

Cheers,
Alison

Our newly designed website has launched and is getting glowing reviews! The new site has a fresh color scheme, better navigation, local photo galleries and much more. We’ve made it easier for engaged couples to connect with other engaged couples, newly married couples, and vendors and venues in thousands of local areas world wide.

If you haven’t checked out the new Wedding Mapper, you should definitely take a peek!!

Cheers,
Alison

Noted wedding expert and author, Sharon Naylor, talks about hot topics and answers real questions from brides-to-be in our new Ask the Expert section.  Sharon is the author of over 35 wedding planning books and a frequent guest expert on Get Married with Colin Cowie, Good Morning America, and other top shows. She has recently been featured in such magazines as Martha Stewart Wedding, InStyle Weddings, Brides, Modern Bride and Southern Bride, she is the iVillage Weddings expert and host of “Here Come the Moms” at Wedding Podcast Network.   We are very excited to have Sharon join the Wedding Mapper community and offer free advice to our couples.

To view the latest hot topics or to ask Sharon a question click here.

Cheers,
Alison

Cheers,

Alison

Now couples can create a free Wedding Map and use our new Vendor Manager tool.  Throw that spreadsheet away and keep all of your venue and vendor information in one place.  The Vendor Manager tool will allow couples to:

• Get budget recommendations
• Send “Information Requests” to local vendors and receive more information about their services
• Manage vendor contact and payment information
• Schedule and track vendor payments
• View budget and payment reports
• Set reminders and create To Do lists

More great tools are coming soon!

Wedding Mapper has created a one-of-a-kind advertising system that allows vendors to reach only the customers that they want at a fraction of the price that they would pay on other sites.

Most sites only allow vendors to advertise in a geographic region such as “Northern California” and will charge hundreds of dollars a month, even though most of the people that view their advertisement are not looking for services in their specific local area. Wedding Mapper allows vendors to reach customers in over 10,000 individual cities and towns around the world, allowing them to target their message only to those people that are looking for services in the specific cities and towns that they serve.

We provide vendors with statistics about each local area so that they can tell how many people will view their ad, allowing them to make informed decisions about where to advertise.

The best part is that each ad costs as little as $1 for a 2 week time period. Finally they’ll be able to reach the customers that they want, when they want, at an affordable price!

Get started by creating a free vendor account.

We are excited to share our glowing endorsement from wedding expert and author, Sharon Naylor. Sharon used Wedding Mapper for her own wedding and was so happy with the experience that she recommended us in her high profile blog http://sharonnaylorweddings.blogspot.com/search?q=WeddingMapper.com and included this endorsement in the 3^rd edition of her book ‘1001 Ways to Save Money and Still Have a Dazzling Wedding’ (due out in 2009):

“As a wedding author, I’ve recommended the top websites to my readers in all of my 35 wedding books, and when it came time to planning my own wedding, I knew my groom was going to LOVE working on the wedding maps with me. We opened up WeddingMapper.com, and we had a fantastic time entering our ceremony and reception site, the hotels for our guests, our own home for the rehearsal dinner — and it was so easy and efficient, with easy sends to our friends and family, easy updates, and the very fun attraction of satellite view which we and our guests loved! WeddingMapper saved us a ton of time (and paper!), getting our locations and easy To-and-From directions to our far-flung guests in record time. I highly recommend WeddingMapper to every bride and groom! You’ll love working on this together!” — Sharon Naylor, wedding expert and author of 35 wedding books, www.sharonnaylor.net

Sharon has written 35 wedding books that can be found online at her site, www.sharonnaylor.net.

Happy Mapping!

Alison

Now you can connect with other couples in your area using our new Local Message Boards. Ask questions about a local photographer or DJ, swap ideas about area hotels or transportation, and share advice about the best time of year to get married or which flowers are locally grown and in season.

Click here to go to your local message boards.

Happy Chatting!

Alison

You asked for it and here they are! We have added two new sets of icons for couples to use on their Wedding Map.

Bubble Icon Set

Cut-out Icon Set

Enjoy!

Alison