COLO gives wedding planners a single workspace for managing couple communication, coordinating vendors, locking in venues and suppliers with contracts, and invoicing across the long planning runway — without juggling a separate CRM, a spreadsheet for the vendor list, a contracting tool, and a fourth app for deposits and balances.
TL;DR
Wedding planners use COLO to manage couple communication, coordinate vendors, lock in venues and suppliers with contracts, and invoice across a long planning runway. The calendar handles planning calls, site visits and the wedding day, contracts cover both the couple and every vendor, and invoicing is tied to the planning milestones so vendor deposits and couple payments line up.
Who this is for
You are a solo wedding planner or a small planning team running six to twenty weddings a year across full-service, partial-planning, and day-of-coordination packages. A typical month is two weddings in the final month of planning, three in mid-planning, one being booked, and the constant background admin of vendor confirmations, deposit reminders, and couple-side comms that never quite slow down.
The friction tends to be the same shape every wedding:
- The couple wants one place; you have five tools. Couples want a single login to see vendors, timeline, invoices, and approvals; you have a CRM, a spreadsheet, an email folder, a WhatsApp chat, and a payment link.
- Vendor deposit schedules clash with couple payment schedules. The venue needs the deposit in two weeks; the couple has not paid the planning fee in three; your bank account is the bridging finance.
- Day-of timelines live in a different document from the planning timeline. The 18-month planning runway lives one place; the 14-hour wedding-day run-of-show lives another; nothing carries over.
Three features wedding planners use every week
Calendar that handles planning calls, site visits, and the wedding day
Run client calls, venue site visits, vendor confirmations, and the wedding day itself against the right couple on one calendar. The calendar feature offers a host of benefits, enhancing scheduling, productivity, and coordination for both users and clients. By integrating a robust calendar, users can improve organizational efficiency and facilitate better time management and coordination. Couples book planning calls from the portal within your availability windows; reminders fire automatically; the day-of run-of-show carries the same calendar logic at a finer-grained timescale.
Contracts for the couple and for every vendor
Build reusable templates for the planning agreement, day-of-coordination addenda, vendor confirmations, and venue agreements — and e-sign them inline. Contracts can greatly enhance the management of agreements, ensuring better compliance, organization, and efficiency. Every signed contract is timestamped and stored against the wedding, so vendor deposit schedules and couple payment schedules live next to each other in one record.
Invoicing tied to the planning milestones
Send the planning-fee invoice at signing, the design-fee invoice at concept approval, vendor deposit pass-throughs as they fire, and the balance invoice in the final month. Integrating invoice functionality into our application streamlines the billing process, enhances accuracy, improves cash flow management, and provides a better overall experience for both businesses and clients. The couple pays each invoice from the portal; the finance dashboard shows what is paid, what is outstanding, and the real margin per wedding.
For more, see contracts and calendar.
A typical wedding in COLO for a wedding planner
- Enquiry — a couple fills your contact form with their date range and venue preferences; the lead lands as a client record with the brief captured.
- Onboarding — you send a branded proposal scoping the package and the milestones; a planning agreement as a signed contract; and the deposit invoice. The couple signs, pays, and the wedding opens as a project with a full planning timeline.
- Delivery — vendor confirmations, design approvals, run-of-show, and supplier deliveries log against the wedding; the couple sees the high-level milestones in their portal; the planning team sees the full task list.
- Payment — the planning fee invoices at milestones; vendor deposits pass through as expense items against the wedding; the balance invoice fires in the final month; the finance view shows revenue and margin per wedding.
How wedding planners use COLO today
Monday morning, the senior planner opens the workspace to a board of nine active weddings — two in the final month, four in mid-planning, two in the contracting phase, one being booked from the weekend's enquiry. Each wedding holds the planning timeline, the vendor list, the signed contracts, and the deposit schedule against a single record. The couple sees only their own portal — branded on the planning studio's custom domain on the Grow plan — with their vendors, their timeline, their approvals waiting for them, and every paid and outstanding invoice in one place.
Through the week, the venue agreement for the September wedding gets the couple's signature on Tuesday; the caterer for the December wedding confirms by Wednesday and the deposit pass-through invoice fires automatically. The day-of run-of-show for next month's wedding sits one tab away from the contract — finer-grained tasks under the same project, not a separate document nobody updates. When the photographer reschedules a Saturday meeting at short notice, the calendar updates once and both the planning team and the couple see the new time.
The wedding in two weeks happens; the balance invoice fires the next Monday; the couple pays from the portal. Six months later, when the same couple's friends ask for a referral and a new wedding opens, the prior wedding becomes the template — the vendor list, the contract templates, the milestone schedule. The studio renewal conversations next quarter start with revenue per wedding type, not a feeling about which packages are profitable.
What it costs vs your current stack
Most wedding planners carry a four-tool stack — a CRM, a timeline tool, a separate contracting tool, and a billing app. The monthly bill comes to roughly $130–200 before the first booking of the season is confirmed. COLO replaces the four with one workspace.
| Tool | Plan | Cost/month |
|---|---|---|
| Current 4-tool stack | HoneyBook + Aisle Planner + DocuSign + Stripe | ~$170 |
| COLO Solo | Free | $0 |
| COLO Pro | Per user/mo | $18 |
| COLO Grow | Per user/mo | $24 |
You swap a $170/month stack for one tool that already does this work. Pro covers up to 5 planners; Grow adds the white-label client portal on the studio's custom domain.
FAQ
Q: Can the couple see vendors, milestones, and invoices in one portal — instead of five tools?
Yes. The couple's portal shows the planning timeline, the vendor list you choose to share, the design approvals waiting for them, and every invoice (paid and unpaid) in one place.
Q: How do I track vendor deposits without paying them out of pocket?
Vendor deposits log as expense items with their own due dates against the wedding; the couple invoices schedule alongside them; the finance view shows the net cash flow for the wedding so you can sequence payments correctly.
Q: Can I run the wedding-day run-of-show in the same workspace as the 18-month planning timeline?
Yes. The planning timeline holds the long milestones; the wedding day itself is a finer-grained task list under the same project, so the run-of-show is one tab away from the contract and the deposit schedule.
Q: Can the couple's portal carry our planning studio's brand and custom domain?
Yes — the Grow plan includes a white-label portal on your custom domain. See our pricing for plan details.
Q: How does COLO compare with running HoneyBook or a generic CRM plus a separate timeline tool?
For most wedding planners, the all-in-one stops the couple-side confusion and gives the team one record per wedding. See the HoneyBook comparison for the side-by-side, and our post on best workflow systems for growing businesses.
Q: Can we invite parents-of-the-couple to the portal with limited access?
Yes. Add additional portal users per wedding with role-based access — for example, parents see the timeline and the venue, but not the planning-team comms with the couple.
Q: How do we handle day-of-coordination addenda for couples who booked full-service planning but want a different day-of contract?
The day-of-coordination addendum is a separate contract template that attaches to the existing wedding record. The couple signs the addendum; the additional fee invoices on the agreed schedule.
Q: Can we invoice destination-wedding couples in their own currency?
Yes. Each wedding record holds the invoicing currency; deposit and balance invoices issue in that currency; the finance dashboard converts to the studio's reporting currency on the day each payment cleared.
Q: How do we run a small planning team without each planner losing track of their own weddings?
Each planner is a workspace user with access to the weddings they own; the studio owner gets a cross-planner view for capacity and revenue planning. New hires onboard by reading the wedding record.
Q: Can we save a "full-service wedding" project as a template for the next booking?
Yes. Save any wedding project as a template — milestones, tasks, vendor list, contract templates — and clone it for the next couple with dates rolled forward.
Pricing
Solo plan is free forever for one planner. See our pricing for Pro (up to 5 users) and Grow (up to 10 users, white-label, custom domain) plans for a small planning studio.