Using Our Day to plan your dream wedding

You share the essentials in a single guided form: date, location, guest count, your budget for the category, and a sense of your style, plus which vendors you still need to book. That’s the only form you fill out for that category. You’re not rewriting the same paragraph into five different vendor contact forms, and you’re not fielding five different sets of clarifying questions from vendors who are missing basic context. Everyone starts from the same brief.

Behind the scenes, Our Day filters our vendor network down using the details you gave us (category, location, your date, and your budget) to the vendors who genuinely qualify. That shortlist is then ranked so the closest fits to your brief surface first, with a plain-language reason attached to each one, instead of an unordered list you have to evaluate yourself. Nobody makes the list just because they paid for placement or happened to answer first; they make it because the specifics you gave us line up with what they offer.

Style is the part that’s hardest to reduce to a checkbox, so it gets more weight than a simple filter. “Warm and candle-lit” and “bright and modern” point toward very different photographers even when both are available on your date and priced the same. The explanation attached to each match is meant to tell you why it made the list, not just that it did, so you can sanity-check the reasoning instead of taking it on faith.

Once you have a shortlist, Our Day negotiates Our Day-exclusive rates with those vendors for you. You don’t have to be the one asking a stranger about money, and you don’t have to chase anyone for a follow-up quote. That doesn’t mean every quote will be the cheapest option in your market. It means you get a real, current price for your actual date and guest count without doing the asking yourself, and without the back-and-forth that normally takes a vendor days to answer.

It’s worth being upfront about what this isn’t: it isn’t a coupon, and it isn’t a guarantee that every category will come back cheaper than what you’d find negotiating yourself. What it reliably saves is time and awkwardness: a firm number for your date, without a week of back-and-forth emails to get there.

Because quotes come back in a consistent format, you can actually compare them (coverage, inclusions, and price) instead of decoding five differently structured PDFs or emails that each describe “the package” a little differently. You pick who you love based on the actual details, not on who happened to explain their pricing most clearly. Once you’ve chosen, we help with the booking.

It’s also the point where it’s worth asking your own follow-up questions: what’s included in the hours quoted, what an overage would cost, what the cancellation policy looks like. A consistent quote format makes vendors easier to compare against each other; it doesn’t replace doing your own due diligence before you sign anything.

Vendors see your brief: the date, location, budget for their category, and style details they need in order to quote well. They don’t see your contact information, and they don’t see the other vendors you’re considering, until you choose to move a conversation forward yourself. You stay in control of who you talk to and when, rather than being reachable by anyone who finds your listing. There’s more on how that balance benefits both sides in how Our Day fosters vendor–couple relationships.

Our Day works best if you know roughly what you need: a date (even a flexible one), a general area, and a budget range for the category you’re booking. It’s a good fit if you’d rather review a short, qualified list than spend evenings browsing open directories, and if you want pricing up front instead of “contact us for a quote.” If you’re still deciding on a date or a city, or you want to browse broadly before narrowing down, a directory search may suit that earlier stage better. You can always come back to Our Day once those basics are set.

It’s also worth using for more than one category at a time. Each vendor category you need (photography, catering, a venue, a DJ) runs through its own brief and its own match list, so you can be mid-conversation with a florist while you’re still comparing venues, instead of finishing one search entirely before starting the next.

The best way to use Our Day is to come in with a number and a list. Work out roughly what you can spend per category with how to budget for a wedding, and get a sense of who you still need from the vendor checklist. You don’t need exact figures. A realistic range for each category is enough for us to filter well. The more specific your style notes, the more useful the “why this vendor fits” explanations will be.

What if none of the six feel right? Tell us why (wrong style, wrong price point, wrong vibe), and we’ll go back to the network with that feedback instead of leaving you stuck with a list you don’t like.

Do I have to book through Our Day? No. The matches and the negotiated rate are yours to use however you decide; you’re never locked into booking a vendor you matched with.

How is this different from browsing a directory? A directory hands you every listing and leaves the filtering, contacting, and comparing to you. Our Day does the filtering and the initial contact first, so what reaches you is already qualified against your date, budget, and style.

What happens after I choose a vendor? You let us know who you want to move forward with, and we help coordinate the next steps so the conversation moves from “are you available” straight to planning the details.

Once you have a budget and a shortlist of categories, the fastest next step is to tell us about your day and let the matches come to you.