Bridebook vs PlannedBy: What You Can Check
Bridebook vs PlannedBy, checked rather than guessed: what PlannedBy verifiably ships, five tests to run on Bridebook yourself, and the number Bridebook earns credit for.
Bridebook vs PlannedBy is a comparison this page can only half make, and getting that half wrong costs more than a missing page does. We hold no verified record of what Bridebook's app currently ships or charges, so inventing a feature table to fill the gap would cost a reader a wrong decision made on a made-up row. What follows instead is every checkable thing PlannedBy does, five tests you can run on Bridebook yourself in a few minutes, and one number that credits Bridebook rather than us.
Five checks, and how to run them yourself
The middle column is PlannedBy, checked against the product source of truth. The right-hand column is how to get the same answer out of Bridebook without taking anyone's word for it, ours included.
| The check | What PlannedBy does | How to test Bridebook |
|---|---|---|
| Does the schedule recompute | Reception beats derive from one ceremony time; the night ends five hours after it unless you set an end | Move the ceremony time and count how many other fields you have to retype |
| What a supplier sees | Nine columns, one per supplier, filtered to the rows that concern them | Ask to see what a photographer or celebrant actually receives, not the planner's dashboard |
| How you pay | Couples pay once for the wedding; planner plans are monthly | Open the billing page and find whether the charge stops when the wedding does |
| What ships before you type anything | Three full run sheets, 52 to 62 rows each, already written | Open a new wedding and count what is already on the page |
| Who the product is written for | An Australian run sheet, for Australian suppliers | Read the help articles and see which country's suppliers they are written for |
Does the day recompute, or do you retype it
PlannedBy builds the reception out from the ceremony time rather than storing a list of clock times you typed. Dinner lands 45 minutes after the couple walk in, speeches at 90 minutes, the first dance at 150 minutes, and with no end time set the night finishes 300 minutes in, five hours after the reception starts.
That matters because a ceremony time almost never survives contact with the actual day. A celebrant runs ten minutes over, a venue changes a slot, and the cost of a tool that stores times instead of deriving them is every row after the change, retyped by hand at the worst possible moment to be doing arithmetic. Beats that would land past a shorter finish time get dropped rather than pushed later, and the send-off is kept whatever else goes.
The reception beats PlannedBy derives from one ceremony time, in minutes after the couple walk in.
The test: change the ceremony time in Bridebook by an hour and see how many other times you have to update by hand. A tool that stores a schedule makes you do the arithmetic again; a tool that builds one does it for you.
What does a supplier actually open
A run sheet is only useful to the people working the day if each of them can find their own rows without reading everyone else's. PlannedBy's sheet carries nine columns, one per supplier, and a row only reaches a supplier's view when that supplier's column has something written in it.
The columns are loaded unevenly on purpose, because a photographer's day and a celebrant's day are not the same length. On the afternoon scenario the primary sheet carries 32 rows, the photographer's column 23, the DJ's 21, and hair and makeup 11. A celebrant opening that sheet reads a short page; a photographer reads a long one, and neither has to scroll past the other's rows to find their own.
Rows carrying content per supplier column on PlannedBy's afternoon run sheet.
Put in a ceremony time and read the day back The run sheet generator builds getting ready, the ceremony, the reception and the send-off from one field, with every row on a real clock.
The test: ask for a photographer-only or celebrant-only view of your Bridebook plan and see whether one exists, or whether everyone on the day is reading the same single page.
Do you pay once, or keep paying for one wedding
A wedding happens once, so PlannedBy charges couples once for it. DIY Free is $0, DIY Core is $59, and DIY Plus is $89, each a single payment covering the whole wedding and never a subscription; the planner plans, built for running several weddings at a time, are the only monthly charge in the product. Prices localise by country, so the pricing page is the only accurate place to read your own figure.
PlannedBy's three DIY plans, each a single payment rather than a recurring one.
The test: find Bridebook's own pricing or billing page and work out, in plain terms, whether the charge for your wedding stops when the wedding does, or keeps running.
Is it written for the suppliers you are actually hiring
PlannedBy is built as an Australian run sheet, for Australian suppliers. That shapes real decisions, not just the dictionary on the page: which public holidays a timeline assumes, which vendor categories get their own column, and which country's conventions the help content was written against.
Bridebook publishes editorial content with an Australian edition of its own, so this is not a claim that it ignores Australia.3 It is a narrower claim: PlannedBy's run sheet itself, the document, was built first for suppliers working Australian weddings, and that is worth checking against whatever you are comparing it to rather than assuming either way.
The test: open the help articles or template library and read which country's suppliers, public holidays and conventions they were actually written for.
What Bridebook does better
Fairness on a comparison page means naming something the other product does well, not just the things we cannot verify. Bridebook publishes a large annual UK wedding cost survey, drawing on roughly 7,000 couples for its 2026 report, with a full breakdown by supplier category, guest count, region and month.2 PlannedBy has built no equivalent research of its own.
The one figure on this page that credits Bridebook: couples surveyed for its 2026 UK wedding cost report.
That is real editorial weight, built from survey data at a scale a smaller product could not easily match, and it is worth reading on its own site rather than summarised secondhand here.
A thin signal, named as thin
The only installed-base figure we hold for Bridebook comes from a US App Store search for wedding planner apps, where it returned alongside four US-native products: The Knot Wedding Planner at 219,225 ratings, Zola at 95,996, Wedding Planner by WeddingWire at 45,829, Joy at 8,682, and Bridebook at 226.1
That is a US storefront search for a UK-built product, so read it as what it is: a thin, geographically narrow proxy, not a verdict on Bridebook's actual size in its home market. We show it because it is the only sourced number we hold, not because it settles anything.
US App Store ratings counts for five wedding planning apps, log scale.
Where PlannedBy is the wrong tool
PlannedBy is built around the run sheet and the day it describes, with seating, guests, suppliers and the budget arranged around that one document. If what you need is a venue marketplace, a directory of suppliers to book through, or a UK-specific checklist with no Australian assumptions baked in, that is a different shape of product and this page will not settle it for you.
Common questions
Why no feature table against Bridebook? Because we hold no current verified record of what it ships or charges, and a comparison table with one invented row costs a reader more than a missing one. Its own site is the place to check that half.
Is PlannedBy a Bridebook alternative? For the day-of run sheet, built to derive from one ceremony time and hand each supplier their own view, yes. For a UK-first checklist and supplier marketplace, compare on the job you are actually hiring for rather than the category name.
Does PlannedBy work for planners as well as couples? Yes. Couples pay once for their own wedding, and planner plans run several weddings at a time with seats for a team, billed monthly.
What does Bridebook do that this page gives it credit for? Its own large-scale UK wedding cost survey, built from roughly 7,000 couples for the 2026 report, with a supplier-by-supplier breakdown.2 PlannedBy has not built the equivalent.
Can I try PlannedBy before deciding anything? Yes. The run sheet generator and the seat planner are open on the site, and the generator builds a full day from a single ceremony time.
The question worth sitting with
Before picking either one, the actual question is not which brand to trust, it is which document your suppliers will be reading at six in the morning on the day. Put your real ceremony time into the run sheet generator and read the day it hands back. Then ask Bridebook, or whatever else you are weighing, the same five checks above, and see which one still holds up once you have moved the ceremony time once.