179: Should You Use AI to Plan Your Wedding? An Honest Take

Over half of couples planning a wedding right now are using AI, and most of them have no idea where it's quietly leading them astray.

In this episode, Camille cuts through the hype for an honest, experience-backed take on AI in wedding planning. She breaks down exactly where AI earns its place in your planning toolkit, why it's structurally designed to tell you what you want to hear rather than what you need to know, and what 18 years of working in the industry has taught her that no AI can replicate.

Plus: the Destination Planner Principle, a simple way of thinking that will change how you evaluate every vendor, every recommendation, and every AI-generated answer for the rest of your planning.

RESOURCES 

Zola 2026 First Look Report: zola.com/expert-advice/the-first-look-report-2026

The Knot 2026 Trends to Watch: theknotww.com/blog/future-of-marriage-2026-trends-to-watch-report

Axios: Limits to Wedding Planning with AI: axios.com/2026/03/29/wedding-planning-ai

Send Unbridely a 90-second audio message on Speakpipe: https://www.speakpipe.com/unbridelypodcast

*The Unbridely Podcast is sponsored by its listeners. When you purchase products or services through links on our website or via the podcast, we may earn an affiliate commission.*

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This episode of the Unbridely Modern Wedding Planning Podcast is brought to you by Easy Name Change.

You simply choose which companies you need to notify, and they send you detailed process instructions for each of your companies, plus ready to send forms, letters, and emails, so you just attach your marriage certificate to them and you're done!

More info on how to change your name after you get married: https://unbridely.com/blog/name-change-after-marriage 

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Unbridely acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Land we record this podcast on, the Kaurna People. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures.

Transcript

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What's the difference between AI and your best friend? Your best friend will tell you the truth even when it's not what you want to hear. Where AI will tell you, great thinking, or you're so right. I love that idea. Maybe that doesn't make you feel comfortable. What about one of these more sycophantic pivots when you change direction? You raise a valid point. I can see where you're coming from. You're absolutely right to push back on that. Or do you prefer a more enthusiastic cheer squad who'd respond to your ideas with the classic? Great question. Fascinating. Or that's really insightful. What about the capitulation tell, the phrases that signal AI is about to completely reverse its previous answer because you push back, regardless of whether or not you're actually right? Something like, you make an excellent point. Let me reconsider. On reflection, I think you're right. I appreciate the correction. This last category is, I think, maybe the most insidious one because it mimics intellectual humility without actually having any. A human with real life experience and hard-learned expertise would likely respond, actually, no, I've done this so many times and I know what I'm talking about. Think about that for a second. Because I believe that's one of the most important things you can understand before you start using AI to plan your wedding. And right now, over half of you are, according to Zola's 2026 First Look Report, which surveyed more than 11,500 couples, 54% of people are planning a wedding this year using AI in some form. That's a 150% increase from last year in one year. 150%. And look, a big part of that is generational. Gen Z has now officially surpassed millennials, as the majority of engaged couples. 51% of people planning weddings right now are Gen Z. And that's because the oldest Gen Z are around 28, which is right at the average marrying age. This is their moment. And of course they're using AI. They've grown up with it. It's absolutely natural, no hate here. But what I want to dig into today is a bit of a compare and contrast as to the pros and cons of using AI in your wedding planning to give you a broader and more realistic perspective to the massive hype that's surrounding AI and its place in every fucking thing we do. Because there's a difference between using AI and trusting AI. And there's a specific risk that comes with using a tool that's designed structurally, fundamentally, to give you what you want, regardless of the cost or the consequences. When you're talking about drafting a caption for your vacation camera roll dump, you know, that's one thing. But when you're planning one of the most important and memorable days of your life, I think it's something completely different. Because your best friend will look at the venue you've fallen in love with and say, I love that you love it, but have you actually looked at the parking situation? Because 80% of your guests are driving in and there is no parking. Whereas AI will say, great choice. Here are some tips for making the most of your venue. And that's exactly the gap we're going to talk about today. How to anticipate it, recognize it, and work with it to your best advantage. So let's get stuck into it. Unbridly is a community of pro-wedding vendors who believe in freedom and integrity in weddings, giving you options, solutions, tips, and tricks to create the experience and memories that you and your fiance really want and deserve. Because we believe that weddings are a team sport with how-to's, stories and interviews with recently married couples. We find out what went right and what they've changed if they could go back and do it all over again. I'm Camille and welcome to the Unbridly Podcast. Okay, before I get into the problems, I want to give AI a genuinely fair hearing because I think the most valuable takeaway here is not AI bad, humans good. That's simplistic, it's lazy, and it's not true. There are real legitimate uses for AI in wedding planning, and they can save you serious time and headspace. So let's start with AI's strengths. I really think that it's all about the admin and communication, because there's so much of it. If you've been staring at a blank email trying to figure out how to follow up with a caterer who hasn't responded in two weeks, then yes, use AI. Give it the specifics of previous comms with the caterer, give it a tone of voice, draft the email, tweak it, send it, done. This is exactly the kind of task that drains your energy and makes wedding planning seem so bloody never-ending. Now, when I asked AI what else it was good at in wedding planning, it suggested first pass research, as in getting orientated on what vendors you need to book in, in what order, you know, what questions to ask a celebrant, um, what a typical floral budget looks like. AI suggested that it could be used, and yes, I see the irony here, to get the lay of the land before you start conversations with real people. And I heartily disagree on this point. In my experience at least, AI has been super bad at first pass research, budgets, what to ask a celebrant, et cetera. In my opinion, whenever I've asked for vendor prices, vendor suggestions, um, venue options for a certain region, stuff like that, AI has returned information and in particular costings that are not in line with the industry standards. And yes, there are hundreds of inverted commas wedding photographers that got started during COVID and now charge about$1,500 for full-day wedding coverage. But recommending a wedding vendor like that at around that price point doesn't say anything about their talent, their propensity for the work, their work ethic, the standard of what they do, how long they take to deliver a full gallery, the quality of the communication, not just how often, but how effectively they communicate. And it's only because I've lived here in Adelaide and worked as a celebrant for almost 18 years that I know that the starting price for a good wedding photographer is closer to$4,000. AI can tell you what something costs, but it can't tell you what something is worth. So this$1,500 photographer example is perfect because it illustrates exactly why just a dollar amount is almost meaningless without the context that only comes from being embedded in an industry in a specific market for years and years. AI will find the$1,500 option and present it as a legitimate data point. It has no way to weight it against delivery timelines, your comm style, consistency, or the trusted industry reputation that experience locals just know. AI can help you with what vendor categories to research, but the moment you ask it for numbers, names, or recommendations, so specifics, you're in. I don't want to overblow it, but you know, fairly dangerous territory because it has no way to tell the difference between a vendor who charges less because they're new and one who charges more because they're good, experienced, run a full-time business, uh, can be trusted, etc. In addition, the knowledge starting price for a good wedding photographer, like in this city at 4K, is not on the internet anywhere. Like that sort of information, it lives in me because I've been present for over a thousand real transactions in a real market. And AI cannot scrape that. It doesn't exist in a form that AI can access. And it's super important to keep in mind during your planning. I would hazard to say that recommendations from people you already trust who have a clue, have some experience, could be the greatest currency of all when it comes to planning your wedding. Something that I've found AI to be super helpful with in regards to wedding planning, however, is brainstorming and creative unblocking. You know that feeling when you've got a problem or something you're trying to achieve and you can't think of a way past the first step. That's when AI is like that creative thinking friend that always knows a way through. If you're stuck on a way to describe your wedding theme, the dress code, or you can't articulate the type of vibe you're going for. AI can be a useful thought partner when you're trying to find the words for something you're feeling that you can't quite name just yet. A standard wedding reportedly takes anywhere between, and I've seen a lot of different numbers, but between 200 and 350 plus hours to plan. So if you can automate some of the repetitive stuff and get help on when you're stuck on some creative ideas, then you're able to get some of that time back, you know, for the rest of your already very busy life. So I want to be clear. AI has a place in your wedding planning toolkit. But the part I want you to understand is which place? Because there are brilliant examples and then pretty misleading ones. And that's where I think we need to be really honest about AI's place in wedding planning. And the crux of it, I think, all comes back to this: the confirmation bias problem. The thing about how AI works that I think a lot of people just don't fully appreciate yet, is that it's not a neutral search engine. It's not just finding and serving you up information, you know, answers to your questions. It is, in a very real sense, and quite unlike your in-laws, optimized to be agreeable. It is trained on what people respond well to. It's optimized to keep you coming back for more. And one of the ways it does this is by being like you. It's a mirror, it reflects your ideas back to you in a way that feels super validating. You know, it's it's that person, it's that friend, a pathological people pleaser. In psychology, this is called confirmation bias. The tendency to seek out and favor information, that means that we're right. It confirms what we already believe, and we all do it. It's very human, it's how our own social groups are formed. When people think like us and they believe in the same things, like we feel close to them, we feel a connection to them. But most of us have systems in our life that push back on this. That best friend I spoke about earlier, or a parent who will always be the one to tell us the cold, hard truth. Or a trusted wedding vendor who will say something like, I understand what you're going for, but I've done this so many times. And here's what actually works. AI doesn't push back. Or rather, it will if you ask it to. Plus, unbridly podcast listeners get a$6 discount on their name change kits by using the code unbridly6. That's UN B-R-I-D-E-L-Y 6, the number six, and this is valid until the end of 2025. Get your easy name change kit so you can move on to the fun parts of being grown-ups together, like holidays, getting a dog, building a house, herb gardens. So here's a real-world example of what this looks like in weddings. So imagine a couple falls in love with a specific aesthetic. Let's say it's like a lush, overgrown, garden-like reception with dramatic floral installations, and they're hanging from the ceiling, right? Can you see it? It's gorgeous. They've saved approximately 47 pictures from Pinterest, and they prompt AI to help them plan it. AI generates a beautiful detailed breakdown, ways of describing the theme, color palettes, vendor brief language, a vision board description. It's perfect. It's bloody perfect. They take it to a florist for a quote. The florist says those hanging installations they require a minimum ceiling height of four meters, and your venue ceiling is three meters high. And also those specific varieties that you're wanting of flowers, they're not available in Australia in your wedding month. So you'd need to be importing those from overseas. I don't know if we can get them, we can try to get them, but achieving this look would cost roughly three times your floral budget. Now, AI didn't know any of that. AI wasn't going to volunteer any of that because its job in that moment was to give you the best possible version of what you were looking for, right? What you asked for. It was not going to tell the couple this isn't going to work. P.S., your best friend, who'd been to your venue, would have said something. Although she might not have known about the seasonal varieties of your florals. I know that she would have at least been that voice of reason. And this is why the generational perspective really matters too. Gen Z, you know, it's it's a generalization, but they're confident, they're capable, they're digitally fluent planners. But more likely than not, they are also planning their very first wedding. The AI they're relying on has no idea what a wedding actually looks, feels, sounds like, costs in the real world. It's working from data, from text, from patterns, from what people have written about weddings online. Experience, human experience, isn't in AI. It's not on the internet, it's within people. And that gap between what AI can generate and what an experienced professional actually knows is the missing piece. So let me be specific about these things that AI genuinely cannot access, no matter how good your prompt is. And I've seen so many, especially on socials lately, like this is the magic prompt that you need to X, Y, and Z. Um yeah, there's only so much you can do. It doesn't know your fiance or your people. It doesn't know that your love of soft cheeses has developed to the point that some of your holiday destinations with your fiance were selected purely for the tasting experience they offered you. That insight about you will never be shared in AI-generated vows. AI doesn't know that your grandmother hasn't traveled since her hip replacement and she needs to be near the exit for both the ceremony and the reception. It doesn't know that your fiance's dad and stepdad have not been in the same room in over five years. And the seating chart is a live grenade waiting to go off. That will not show on an AI-generated seating plan. It doesn't know that half your crew will be on the dance floor at nine, and the other half will have quietly snuck out by 8.30. And so that AI generated song list won't work for you either. These things matter enormously for how a day should be designed, and AI has no access to them. It doesn't know your venue. AI-generated mood boards are full of installations that can't be built on planet Earth, given our gravitational pull and the laws of physics. They're, as I said, flowers that don't grow in your region, setups that need a structural engineer. The images are stunning. The execution is literally impossible. Now, a vendor who has worked at your venue or venues like it would know almost instantly and could suggest maybe three other ways to achieve something similar on Earth. And AI doesn't know your local market. You know, which vendors are available. And that brings me to thinking, you know, when you are in the orbit of many other wedding vendors, like I am here in South Australia, you know who's pregnant or who's trying to get pregnant, and you know who's going to be available and who's probably going to take some time off to be with their baby. AI doesn't know what's in season, what's reasonable to expect at a particular price point in your city, what a contract clause means in your country. You know, can give vague overviews. It doesn't know a specific venue's reputation among people who've worked there. This is all local, lived, experienced knowledge. And no AI has that. Which brings me to how I think I can best describe the pros and cons, the benefits and shortcomings of using AI to plan your wedding. So I want to share a way of thinking that I think applies to not just AI, but to pretty much every major decision you make in your wedding planning. So think about, imagine you're having a destination wedding. You know, you've chosen a venue on the Amalfi coast or Bali or Byron Bay, doesn't matter. You've never been there. You don't know the best local vendors, you don't know the roads, you don't know the weather patterns, or which caterer has been reliable for 15 years and which one is cheap for a very bad reason. Now you could choose to hire a wedding planner from home, someone local to you, who you could meet in person for coffee, who you know and trust, who happens to have some familiarity with destination weddings in general. That seems super convenient, right? Or you could hire a planner who actually lives and works in that destination, who has relationships with the venue, um, you know, contacts with every vendor in a 30k radius who has done your specific type of wedding in this specific place this season more times than they can count. Why would you choose the second option? Well, you don't pick them because they're more expensive. No one wants to spend more money. It's not because they're fancier, flashier. It's because local knowledge and lived experience trump everything else every time. That planner, the destination wedding planner, will tell you things you didn't even know to ask. They'll flag the things that look great on paper but don't work in real life. If they're great, they're gonna gently push back on the ideas that might not pan out the way you hope they will. Not to be difficult, but because they know they've seen it, they've been the person standing in that courtyard at four o'clock when the light changes, and they understand exactly why the photographer recommends a different spot. And this is what AI cannot be for you. AI can be, and my God, use it as much as you can for your admin assistant, your email drafter, your brainstorming partner at midnight when everyone else is asleep. Absolutely. Use it for all of that. But for the decisions that are crucial to how your wedding day, say it with me, feels the ones where being wrong costs you something real and something irreplaceable. You want someone with skin in the game, someone who has done it before, someone who will tell you the truth, even when it's not what you want to hear. Someone a bit more like your best friend, and a bit less like a people-pleasing algorithm. So until next time, celebrate your people. That about wraps it up for this episode of the Umbradly Podcast. For the links and resources we mentioned, please head to the show notes. And if you love the show, please review and subscribe on the podcast platform you're on now so you don't miss out on a single episode. Thanks so much for listening and remember, weddings are a team sport. Catch you soon.