An Honest Review of Zola as a Wedding Planning Tool
Opinions never seem to be in short supply in the wedding industry, and there are countless tools to help you on your journey. Here’s a full and honest review of Zola as a wedding website and planning tool.
This post is in no way sponsored by Zola, nor am I receiving any compensation from them.
I used Zola for my own wedding in 2019 and I absolutely loved it! I found that the wedding website tool was absolutely perfect for all of my needs as far as directing guests and the wedding party on day of coordination, but I think my favorite tool that they offer is their wedding checklist tool.
Nowadays, I recommend Zola to all of my friends and family who are about to get married. But let's dive in to an in-depth and honest review of everything they offer for brides and grooms to be to see if it’s worth your time for your own wedding.
My Zola home page. Imagery from Amanda Wood Photos. Venue: Sun River Gardens, Orem, Ut
This is a screenshot (desktop) of my Zola home page. Here you can see you’re easily directed to your wedding website, you can find or review vendors (florists, photographers, caterers, etc.), customize and purchase your wedding stationary, set up your registry, and if you scroll down, you can find a community of other wedding planning couples on Zola or get advice from Zola reps.
“Your Wedding” drop down menu
“Shop” drop down menu
“Plan” drop down menu
Let’s get into each of these
Your Wedding
First up, Zola’s most prominent feature; their customizable wedding website!
Imagery from my own engagement, captured by Amanda King, Elevated Roots Imagery
Imagery by Amanda King, Elevated Roots Imagery.
The home page to my own wedding website from 2019! Honestly the site was super easy to customize. Zola provides templates that you can pretty much just “fill in the blanks” for, and add your own photos. You can kind of just fill it in as you go, and when you’re ready to send invitations, send the website url along with it and your guests will have all the necessary information!
Each tab on the wedding website is really self explanatory:
Under “schedule” we put times to be seated or what time to arrive at the reception, or where and when to find the bridal shower.
For “travel,” we listed the two closest airports and some transportation options with all the applicable contact information for those businesses. Basically just did all the leg work for our guests so they didn’t have to.
”Registry” was, well.. the registry, lol.
”Wedding party” was fun - we had little profile pictures for each member of the wedding party - officiant, parents, the betrothed, and our entourages (bridesmaids and groomsmen), and flower girls.
”Photos” included a few of our favorite photos from our relationship
”Things To Do” featured restaurants and activities that our guests could enjoy.
Zola’s wedding website: a solid 10/10.
“Your Venue & Vendors”
The Vendor option didn’t exist in 2019 when I was planning by wedding, but I can say this: I’m on Zola as a vendor, and it’s free to list your business. That means that when you’re searching through vendors, they’re ranked organically and not by how much they’re paying Zola to rank them. We love an honest listing!! This is a great way to make sure that you, as a bride or groom to be, are finding authentic vendors and not those who just throw money at listing platforms. However, it is still new and might not have so many vendors listed yet as other wedding planning platforms.
9/10
“Your Budget”
Again, this is new! I didn’t use it, but to be completely honest, I’m not the kind of person who wants to input all of my spending into a third party site to track it. I genuinely don’t think I would find this feature useful. 10/10 for thoughtfulness, 3/10 for me personally.
6.5/10
”Your RSVPs”
RSVP page
Same thing with the budget! I did my RSVPs the manual way, and that worked best for me. I wouldn’t and didn’t use this. That being said, if I had a very large guest list, I might find this feature useful. I like that you can see all in one page who’s going to which function.
7/10 for an attempt well made
“Your Invites & Paper”
Ok, let’s look at the stationary that Zola has to offer. To get to this page I went to “shop” then “Invites & Paper” then “Matching Suites.”
Immediately, I love the designs they have, and they have a lot of them!
My biggest gripe is the price. As far as purchasing pre designed invitation suites goes, it’s actually not that bad. But as long as you’re not going crazy fancy with gold leaf inlay lettering, chances are that you can design and print your invitations yourself, or even right from your photographer’s website so the photos on your Save The Date cards are ✨crisp✨.
Although impressive and convenient, Zola’s invitation feature is going to be a no, thank you for me.
3/10
“Your Registry”
Below is a screenshot of my registry.
I loved having my registry here mostly because it was super easy for my guests to find, but also because you can add anything to it.
Zola has a web extension that you can enable in order to add any item that you find on the web to your Zola registry! You can also add a cash fund that your guests can donate to, or a Zola gift card. I appreciated the option to mark items on the registry as “most wanted” so that your guests knew where to start. Also, they have filter options for your guests (like “filter by price”), which is SO nice to see as a shopper.
Once a gift from your registry is purchased, Zola will ask the buyer if they want to keep that purchase a surprise. You’ll receive an email letting you know something was bought, but if it’s a secret, the buyer information (name) will be hidden. (You can still look if you need to, but Zola hides it initially). Gifts that are purchased are marked as such!
10/10
“Your Seating Chart”
Ok again, maybe great for a big wedding, maybe just more of a hassle than it’s worth.
You can grab and move names between tables with ease making it easy to figure out which layout you’ll need.
7/10 for a useful tool, if you want it.
“Your Albums”
I LOVE this feature! While I always suggest printing right from your photographer’s website for photo albums (high resolution images are a must), if you want to add photos like people’s smart phone shots from the night, this is a really easy way to get everything that’s special to you in one place.
8/10
Shop
We’ve addressed “Registry,” “Invites & Paper,” and “Albums” so next up is
“Wedding Boutique”
I like this! It doesn’t have everything, but it has enough. It’s a good place to start shopping for things like veils, necklaces, shoes, or other miscellaneous things you might need.
6/10
Plan
The plan tab lists more things we’ve already touched on, so here’s what’s new on this menu:
“Community”
This is a great idea but honestly just kind of feels like facebook. Good for scrolling to see opinions and such, but bad for actually searching for information.
3/10
“Real Wedding Inspiration”
Just like pinterest! I like that Zola is trying, and I like that the inspiration photos are all real weddings and not staged shoots, but I genuinely think pinterest is still the queen of wedding inspo.
6/10
“Expert Advice” - The Wedding Checklist!!!
Not to be dramatic, but this was actually my favorite tool from Zola and I can’t rave about it enough. You start out by choosing what kind of traditions you’re considering including in your wedding. Catholic traditions? LDS (mormon) traditions? Pagan Traditions? Don’t worry if you’re only considering them - you can delete tasks from your to do list no problem!
Once you decide the traditions you want to include, Zola organizes tasks into a timeline for you. This makes it so manageable! As a wedding photographer I can say that the timeline is very reasonable as well. Wedding planning seems like a lot to handle until you see it broken down like this. You can even assign tasks to your partner so that if they’re logged in as well, they’ll receive notifications for those tasks. A thousand out of ten would recommend!
Difinitive 12/10.
100% great.
Misc
Lots of emails that you actually don’t need. Things like “A reminder about our holiday cards” and “have you printed your wedding album yet?” Unsubscribing is always an option!
6/10
Post - Wedding Needs
Want help changing your name? Zola sends to right to Hitchswitch, which is an easy to use and much less time consuming way to change your name than the manual way. Wedding Albums? Already covered. Your registry will stay up until you delete it, so if you want to do some home shopping a little while after your wedding, you’ve got some of your classic favorites waiting right there for you.
9/10
Mobil App Use
Below is two screenshots from my phone. You can log right into your Zola platform on the app and manage everything from there! I loves working on my registry from my phone, and I like that the registry and website are easy to share with the little share button literally right there for you.
The layout feels good, and I haven’t seen any glitches at all when working between desktop and mobil both.
You can even add a wedding countdown widget to you phones home screen, which is super thoughtful!
10/10 very nice!
This is where the link will jump to
Comprehensive Score and Summary
105/150
I like Zola 70.3%
Zolas wedding website and checklist are my two favorite tools I’ve ever used or recommended for wedding planning. The usefulness of the registry has literally followed me four years into my marriage. I recommend these things to anyone who is planning a wedding, whether you’re struggling or not! They’re some of the best tools out there.
Things I would skip: budget tool, “your invites and paper,” community.
The Budget tool feels redundant, especially if you already know what kind of a financial plan you’re looking at.
The invitations and paper, although beautiful and convenient, cost more than other options.
The Community feels like a wedding facebook, which can be fun and enlightening, but isn’t an extremely productive space to be searching for specific information.
by Poise & Ivy Imagery
Let me know in the comments what you thought about these Zola tools, or if there are more wedding tools you want to see scored and considered!
Thank you so much for coming along with me and as always,
All the love
Ivy <3