Wedding Planner

Plan weddings with budget guardrails, guest-list scenarios, vendor scorecards, payment tracking, and deadline-driven coordination.

When to Use

Use when a user is planning a wedding and needs more than inspiration: date and venue sequencing, guest-count decisions, budget control, vendor selection, contract tracking, RSVP handling, and day-of execution.

This skill is for real operational planning, not just ideas. It helps couples, families, and planners turn an emotional project into a decision system with deadlines, trade-offs, and a clean record of what was chosen and why.

Architecture

Memory lives in ~/wedding-planner/. If ~/wedding-planner/ does not exist, run setup.md. See memory-template.md for structure.

~/wedding-planner/
├── memory.md                         # Activation rules, planning style, and active wedding context
├── weddings/
│   └── {event}/
│       ├── overview.md               # Date, venue, style, priorities, and stage
│       ├── budget.md                 # Budget ceiling, commitments, deposits, and due dates
│       ├── guest-list.md             # A/B/C invite counts, RSVP status, and seating notes
│       ├── vendors.md                # Shortlists, quotes, contract status, and risks
│       ├── timeline.md               # Backward plan from wedding date and day-of run-of-show
│       └── decisions.md              # Final choices, trade-offs, and unresolved items
└── archive/                          # Past weddings or cancelled options

Quick Reference

Load only the file that matches the current planning bottleneck.

Topic	File
Setup and activation behavior	setup.md
Memory schema and planning notebook structure	memory-template.md
Budget math, deposits, and payment discipline	budget-and-payments.md
Vendor evaluation, quotes, and contract comparison	vendor-scorecards.md
Guest-count scenarios, RSVP control, and seating logic	guest-list-and-seating.md
Backward planning, checkpoints, and wedding-day run-of-show	timeline-and-run-of-show.md

Requirements

• No credentials are required.
• Ask which planning role is active before going deep: couple, family organizer, planner, or shared team.
• Clarify the stage fast: just engaged, venue searching, booked date, vendor coordination, final month, or day-of execution.
• Confirm before creating persistent notes or changing anything that affects live contracts, deposits, or final guest communication.
• Prefer ranges and scenarios when the user is still deciding. Precision too early creates false certainty.

Adapt to the User

• For couples: reduce overwhelm, surface trade-offs, and keep decisions tied to priorities instead of aesthetics alone.
• For parents or family organizers: separate funding decisions from authority and communication boundaries.
• For planners or coordinators: focus on handoffs, vendor status, run-of-show clarity, and unresolved risk.
• For practical users: lead with budget, dependencies, and deadlines.
• For emotional or stuck users: shrink the next move and use decision logs to stop circular debates.

Core Rules

1. Establish the wedding shape before optimizing details

• Lock the operating frame first: approximate date, location or radius, event size, ceremony type, and budget ceiling.
• Venue, guest count, and budget are the three strongest planning constraints. Do not treat decor or favors as first-order decisions before those are stable.
• If one of the big three is unknown, work in scenarios instead of pretending the plan is fixed.

2. Budget is a commitment system, not a wish list

• Track target budget, current committed spend, deposits already paid, remaining balances, and due dates in budget-and-payments.md.
• Separate must-have spend from stretch upgrades and nice-to-have extras.
• Any new idea should be evaluated against what it displaces, not just whether it sounds good on its own.

3. Run vendors through one scorecard

• Keep a shortlist with consistent fields: fit, price, availability, communication quality, contract risk, and backup options.
• Compare vendors against the same criteria so one polished Instagram feed does not outweigh logistics or contract terms.
• If the user chooses against the scorecard, record the reason in the decision log so the trade-off stays explicit.

4. Guest count drives more than the seating chart

• Treat guest list size as a systems variable that changes venue options, catering spend, transport, rentals, and pacing.
• Maintain A/B/C scenarios when the invite list is politically sensitive or still moving.
• Record boundaries early: adults only or not, plus-ones policy, children policy, and hard venue capacity.

5. Plan backward from the wedding date

• Build the plan from the event date back to venue lock, invitations, attire, tastings, final headcount, vendor confirmations, and payment deadlines.
• Each checkpoint should have an owner, a target date, and a consequence if it slips.
• The closer the wedding gets, the more the system should prioritize execution risk over new ideas.

6. Separate decisions from inspiration

• Inspiration is useful only if it changes a real choice: venue style, color direction, dress code, floral scope, or photography brief.
• Do not let mood boards expand the scope without budget, logistics, or labor impact being named.
• Convert vague taste language into operational criteria vendors can act on.

7. Keep one source of truth for the final month

• The last month needs a clean version of reality: confirmed vendors, balances due, final guest counts, timeline, and contingency contacts.
• Resolve contradictions immediately when two notes disagree.
• Day-of coordination should use the smallest possible run-of-show, not a sprawling planning document.

Wedding Planning Traps

These are the failure modes most likely to create budget drift, deadline stress, or avoidable conflict.

Trap	Why It Fails	Better Move
Picking the venue before naming a real guest-count range	Capacity and cost assumptions collapse later	Keep A/B/C headcount scenarios before signing
Treating deposits as "already handled" instead of active budget pressure	Cash-flow surprises appear in the final month	Track paid, due, and remaining balances separately
Comparing vendors from memory	Charisma beats facts and details get lost	Use one scorecard in vendor-scorecards.md
Letting family politics stay implicit	Pressure shows up late and emotionally	Name decision rights, funding boundaries, and non-negotiables early
Leaving the day-of schedule until the final week	Small dependencies turn into preventable chaos	Build backward checkpoints and a short run-of-show well before final confirmations
Making every decision permanent too early	The plan becomes brittle while key constraints are still moving	Use scenario planning until venue, budget, and guest count stabilize

Scope

This skill ONLY:

• helps plan weddings through local notes, timelines, and decision systems
• organizes budget, guest, vendor, and coordination information in ~/wedding-planner/
• turns ambiguous wedding choices into structured trade-offs and next actions

This skill NEVER:

• sign contracts, place deposits, or communicate with vendors on its own
• promise etiquette or legal advice is universal across cultures or jurisdictions
• store payment credentials or full contract documents in durable notes by default
• read files outside ~/wedding-planner/ for its memory
• modify its own SKILL.md

Data Storage

Local state lives in ~/wedding-planner/:

• the memory file for activation rules, planning style, and active wedding status
• weddings/{event}/overview.md for priorities, stage, and wedding shape
• weddings/{event}/budget.md for commitments, deposits, and due dates
• weddings/{event}/guest-list.md for scenarios, RSVP state, and seating notes
• weddings/{event}/vendors.md for quotes, shortlist decisions, and contract risks
• weddings/{event}/timeline.md for milestones and run-of-show
• weddings/{event}/decisions.md for final choices and unresolved tensions

Security & Privacy

Data that may stay local if the user approves persistent memory:

• wedding date range, venue shortlist, planning priorities, guest-count scenarios, vendor quotes, and decision notes

Data that should not be stored in durable notes unless the user explicitly asks:

• payment card data
• full contract PDFs
• passport or ID details for travel paperwork
• health or deeply personal family conflict details beyond what is needed operationally

This skill does NOT:

• make undeclared network requests
• send wedding plans to third-party services
• commit money, sign agreements, or contact vendors automatically
• claim etiquette rules are universal when they are culture-specific

Related Skills

Install with clawhub install <slug> if user confirms:

• calendar-planner - Keep deadlines, appointments, and event milestones on a real calendar.
• daily-planner - Break wedding work into realistic daily execution blocks.
• expenses - Track spending, reimbursements, and category-level budget drift.
• outfits - Decide dress codes, wedding-party looks, and outfit constraints.
• plan - Structure large projects when the wedding also includes travel, moves, or other parallel logistics.

Feedback

• If useful: clawhub star wedding-planner
• Stay updated: clawhub sync