Wedding Jojo 2.0

Well Wedding Jojo’ers, it’s been quite a year!  What started as just an idea has evolved into something that once seemed impossible and we couldn’t have accomplished what we have without you (so cliche, but true!)  

As many of you who have emailed us have found out, we take customer support very seriously!  With lots of great feedback over the months, we’ve slowly and progressively added new features and tweaked existing ones.  We’ve also grown from four themes to eight (more on this later.)  While our feature list is nowhere near the end, we feel that we’ve taken the best and most common suggestions and morphed Wedding Jojo into a great tool (if we do say ourselves.)  

We’re very proud and happy to launch the newest version of our Admin pages which many of you are checking out for the first time.  We felt the old one lacked cleanness and ease-of-use and, after many months, are ready to unveil our revamped admin pages as well as some other new goodness.   

Ok, let’s dive in and see what’s new and what’s right-around-the-corner:  

Cleaner User Interface 

The biggest thing we focused on was just making the admin easier to use.  We beefed up the sidebar, adding in the site structure and making it easy to jump in and start editing no matter what page you’re on.  

Drag and Drop Re-ordering 

Setting up your Wedding Jojo website is an ongoing process, one that often involves moving things around.  No longer do you have to arduously click the up and down arrow, but now you can simply drag and drop items to the order of your preference.  

Enhanced Mini-feed 

Let’s be honest, the mini-feed was kind of, um, a bit boring.  We re-styled it and added new elements, with many more coming in the following couple weeks.  We aim to have the mini-feed as the central hub of your site, giving you an easy glance at its latest happening.  Watch for more to come here as we continue making it more robust!

Fast and easy Photos

The photo section received some much needed love, adding in a more robust and concise status upload bar and group uploading.  We also moved away from Flash to make things run more smoothly and efficiently.   

We added this same status bar to all photo uploading on the whole site (not just the photos section), such as Friends and Family, About Us, and the Homepage image.

New Help Section 

Sticking with the theme of ease-of-use, we redid the help section to make it easier to find what you’re looking for.  We’re adding a search feature and will continue to be updating this knowledge base to provide more info and help for frequently asked questions.  And, as always, contact us if you need any additional help!

RSVP at a glance 

RSVP is a very important section and as such, we really wanted to make this as best we could.  Easily keep track of your RSVPs with easy to read headings that show you your event stats in an easy and manageable way.  We also cleaned up the Email invite tool as well as the guestlist, making them easier for you to keep track of all your RSVP needs.

Update your credit card in your admin 

While this isn’t the most exciting feature, you can now update your credit within your admin.

What’s coming up

Short Term

• Make event feed more robust, capturing more user and front facing events
• The ability to re-name and re-order sections in Travel and Registry. 
• Add ability to delete respondees in Guestlist table
• 4 great new themes

Long Term

• Revised Registry page, with better formatting for notes and Registry Jojo integration
• Color and font picker
• Music

Beta testers wanted for new Wedding Jojo site!

We are really excited at the launch of our upcoming site Registry Jojo.  Registry Jojo will be a honeymoon registry, basically allowing you to set up a registry for individual activities of your honeymoon.  Guests can then purchase these items and you get the cash to put towards your big vacation.

We are looking for some members to help us beta test the site.  If you would like to be one of the first people to try it out - shoot me an email at parker@weddingjojo.com.

Thanks!!

Quick little feature: Added Guestbook security

Quick little update we wanted to let everyone know about.  We added a little feature that allows guestbook moderation, meaning that you must approve each post before it’s published live to your site. 

If turned on, you’ll have to approve each comment, including existing ones.  This gives users control over what shows up on their site :)

Tips for a great outdoor wedding

Outdoor weddings are simply put - awesome!  An effervescing moment made all the better by a beautiful 70 degree day.  Whether you’re thinking a camping style wedding or in a vinyard or in a beautiful resort in Hawaii (yes, that wedding in Modern Family last week had me quite lustful), there are certain keys to implement to insure that everything goes smoothly and comfortably for your guests.  

Warn your guests before hand 

You’re the leader and visionary.  And as the leader, you are responsible to provide your guests with as much (up-to-date) information.  Make sure your guests know that they’re going to be outside for a couple hours (if not longer) and that they should plan accordingly.  This is especially true for out of town guests less accustomed to the nuances of your city’s weather.  I recently found myself on a remote Portland camp ground in short sleeves and it was a very long two hours.  Don’t forget to keep an eye on weather conditions or any other changes that your guests should know about.  It’s usually easy enough to proliferate weather news through the help of some relatives and friends.  

Can you hear me now?

Spend some time at your venue and really make sure that person officiating the wedding can clearly be heard.  If not, consider a microphone or even moving everyone closer together.  Also, don’t forget about unexpected wind conditions as they can also greatly affect how far one’s voice carries.

Photo credit

While we’re talking about wind

Wind should be considered not just for voice travel and weather (see above), but a slew of other concerns, such as, but not limited to:  hairstyles, decorations, food, the tent, your dress, paper handouts, furniture, and allergies.  Whew.  That was long and probably sounds very daunting.   For the most part you hopefully won’t have to deal with any of those things, but it’s important to be prepared and warn vendors/stylists/guests to take the necessary precautions.  

Bugs, burns, and backup, oh my! 

If it’s a buggy area and/or taking place during sunsetting hours, you might want to offer guests some bug repellent candles or those other nifty devices they sell.  If sunny, warn guests to wear sunscreen, sunglasses, and shade.  

Last, and the most important, have a backup plan! The weather is unpredictable and a lot of things can happen that you don’t expect.  If you’re prepared and have a backup plan, things will go great and you’ll have a wonderful and memorable day.  

New RSVP Changes

We’ve made some cosmetic and functionality overhauls to RSVP on the user side as well as on the admin side.  Our main goal was to make it easier for guests to get the most important information, the event’s details and note/description, and the input process info friendly and intuitive.  

On the user side, you’ll notice the major change to the look on the user side, mainly the addition of the event detail box on the right side and moving your note in a more prominent position (the example below doesn’t have a note, but it appears under the main headline.)  Users RSVPing yes select the number of people from a drop down menu and enter in the names of each guest (something that wasn’t available before.) 

Another big addition was that of meal choices.  If you’d like to have guests RSVP with their meal choice, you can enter in the food options on the admin side.  Guest who RSVP yes will then be presented with a meal choice.  

On the admin side, we spruced up the guest list table with some formatting and display options.  The box can be expanded vertically to make it easier to see all responses.  Then, we added an Export to CSV option, an much requested feature that I’m sure will make things much easier for everyone.  

Don’t hesitate to let us know if you have any suggestions or feedback! 

Our Mom is a professional pastry chef and wedding cake maker extraordinaire.  Check out some of her most recent creations:

Great niche food roundup

If you’re starting to see a theme around here, you’re right.  We love food!

After the great response from our last post on the rise of niche food, I figured it’d be great to do a roundup of sorts, outlining some of the great food trends that your wedding can benefit from.  

1)  Cheese Burgers 

2)  BBQ

3)  Korean-style frozen yogurt 

4)  Cupcakes (also see deconstructed cupcakes, cupcakes on a stick, and cupcakes in a jar)

5)  Korean-Mexican fusion

6)  Empenadas 

7)  Rustic Pizzas 

8)  Micro-brewed beers

9) Artisanal made Chocolates

10)  Gourmet Hot Dogs

Know any we’re missing?