As I write this now, my fiancée and I are about a month deep into wedding planning since getting engaged. It's been amazing, I have to say. I enjoyed every bit of the journey scheming and plotting as I designed the ring, and then again as I laid out the plan for how I would propose to my soon-to-be wife (a story for another time). As stressful and nerve-wracking as it was trying to make sure I didn't give myself away too soon, I thoroughly enjoyed every part of it. So when the moment finally came—when I put the ring on her finger and asked her to be my wife—I was already looking forward to planning what will hopefully be one of the best days of our lives.
With all that excitement, I was shocked when I would talk to other men who had previously gone through the whole process of planning a wedding and they seemed to be dismissive of the entire thing—saying things like "The woman plans most of it anyway," or "It's mostly for the women." Granted, this wasn't the sentiment of a large majority of the gents I talked to, but given my personal excitement for the journey, I was curious why others didn't share the same feeling. It seemed more like a hurdle to get over, or a thing to shirk responsibility for and leave in the hands of a more willing partner.
I doubt I'm the outlier in saying this, but I've looked forward to the wedding and the wedding planning as much as the prospect of spending the rest of my life with someone. For so long, I've seen the joy of planning a wedding as a build-up of what marriage itself entails—making compromises, ensuring each of us gets space to be represented, stepping in to support one another, and the coming together of experiences, villages, and all the other wonderful things. Suffice to say, I didn't agree with the notion that wedding planning had to be a chore.
But believing that and being ready for it are two different things. When we eventually got into our own planning, I decided to set myself up for success—because even if the "wedding planning is a headache" warnings were largely overblown, I still wanted to be operationally ready. My fiancée and I got a spreadsheet going, we signed up for both The Knot and Zola to compare experiences, and I even played around with the idea of a Notion board. There is no lack of tools or products out there ready to sell you a service for wedding planning. And yet, digging through all of them and trying to find one that would help us plan, fill the gap of what we didn't know and what the event required, keep track of everything, and still enjoy the process, I couldn't find anything that worked as seamlessly as I wanted.
So one Sunday, I came up with a crazy idea: build something for us, entirely from scratch.
The main motivator was that I wanted to implement something similar to what Storyworth has—a way to capture the stories of individuals over time. Except that rather than gather stories after a lived life, I wanted to capture ours during the engagement. To inspire us to live in the moment and savor it. After all, they say the time flies by so quickly, and I didn't want that to be so true that we missed the little things. I'm sure I could've hacked together a cool Notion board or Excel spreadsheet given some time, but I felt a little more inspired than that, so I threw myself into creating a self-hosted product that would let us plan, document the journey, and find joy along the way. I built out the rough framework and draft in Notion, specced out the full MVP that same night after getting frustrated with planning, and began building over the next couple of weeks.
What you see (and are hopefully using) now is the brainchild of my frustration with the inefficiency of planning tools for engaged couples who want to do it themselves, and the unshakable belief that planning the union of the rest of your lives should fuel your joy, not take from it. Hence, Confetti was born—my personal rebellion against a dull, monotonous, and joyless wedding planning experience. If you're here, I sincerely hope it's the same for you too!