Plan your dream wedding with Adobe

Planning a wedding can be exciting yet overwhelming, with numerous details and intricacies to consider — all while trying to stay on budget. Unfortunately, inflation has driven wedding costs up drastically in 2023. According to a study from Zola, couples are expected to spend an average of $29,000 on their weddings this year, which is an increase from $28,000 in 2022. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the average cost of weddings was around $24,700.

Fortunately, there are tools to help you organize and save money while creating your dream wedding — especially when it comes to the seemingly endless amount of paperwork!

Popping the question. Paper or digital?

When you hear ‘document,’ you probably think paper. But there’s a good reason to do away with paper for your wedding and opt for a digital-first approach. Traditional wedding invitations come with a hefty price tag, averaging between $5,000 and $8,000 according to wedding experts. In contrast, digital wedding invitations usually cost no more than $100. Couples can save that extra cash or reallocate funds toward other aspects of their special day, like a photographer, reception food and beverages, or a honeymoon to destress after the big day.

Not only are weddings expensive, they can have a huge environmental impact. The average wedding generates around 400 lbs. of waste and emits approximately 63 tons of CO2 — equating to 1 billion pounds of trash and emissions. That’s what approximately four individuals would produce in a year, all within a single day, according to the Green Bride Guide.

Weddings cost a lot and produce a lot of waste. Here’s how to save money and reduce the environmental impact of your wedding by adopting a digital-first approach with Adobe.

We gather here today...to get organized

Anyone who has planned a wedding will tell you organization is everything. Before diving into the deep end of planning, find a system that works for you. You’ll need a checklist for everything if you want to make sure each event in your wedding runs smoothly, so check out Adobe Express for available templates to download. From there, you can export the template to the free Adobe Acrobat where you can share, comment, and collaborate on documents. Acrobat Reader and Liquid Mode also make it easy to view and work on documents on small mobile screens. Manage all the details from venue planning and contracts to seating charts and agendas for bachelor(ette) parties and the wedding day.

Paper lists make collaborating with your partner, family, friends, or wedding planner nearly impossible. With Acrobat, you can streamline your wedding into an interactive and manageable PDF that anyone can access from anywhere. You can also comment directly in your PDF to divvy up tasks between you and your partner, add calculation fields to track your budget, link to wedding supplier websites, include checkboxes to track your progress — the list goes on! Did we mention you can do all this from your mobile device?

Tying the knot (with vendors)

Now that you’re organized the fun can begin. As you begin to browse venues and vendors, make sure you have Acrobat ready to go. Weddings come with a lot of paperwork, and you’ll need a place to organize venue and vendor contracts in one place.

Within Acrobat, you can use Acrobat Sign to digitally sign contracts and track signature progress across all parties. The tool makes it easy to combine documents, send them to partners or parents for review, close the deal with easy e-signatures, and distribute final copies to all parties involved. This feature can be incredibly helpful if there are several people contributing financially.

Say “I do” to digital

Finalizing vendor agreements means it’s time to send save-the-dates and wedding invitations. Instead of relying on traditional mail, use digital invitations for RSVP responses. On top of the cost saving, it’s so convenient to direct guests to your wedding website where they can quickly indicate their attendance with a simple "yes" or "no" response. You can also track invitees who have not responded.

Digital wedding invitations possess the same beauty as physical ones with Adobe Express, the all-in-one content creation app. Adobe Express has thousands of templates to choose from, where you can customize your invitations to match your style and theme in just a few taps. Once you’ve created the initial design, collaborating with your partner becomes seamless with Adobe Acrobat. This collaborative platform allows you both to make final edits, provide feedback, and ensure that your wedding invitations perfectly reflect your shared vision.

I now pronounce you — partnered and paperless!

Checklists, vendor contracts, and invites are just a sample of the documents it takes to plan a wedding. which is why you need a tool to organize them in one place. Use Document Cloud to save and share copies of your venue agreement with important parties. It’ll be crucial to quickly reference the agreement as you prepare for vendor arrival and clean up following the ceremony and reception, as well as any contract clauses related to additional fees, like cancellations or damage. You may even need to keep digital copies of bartender licenses or rental receipts to share with the venue.

Your marriage itself comes with paperwork. Use Document Cloud to store digital copies of your marriage license application and marriage certificate.

They don’t call it a “big day” for nothing. There’s a lot of planning, organization, and paperwork that goes into a wedding, but at Adobe, we’re here to provide the tools that make it easy and special.

Learn how to get started here.