10 best wedding planning apps

Getting married is magical. Planning a wedding on the other hand can require you to be somewhat of a magician – juggling budgets, bookings, suppliers, guest lists, playlists and to-do lists on a daily basis.

Luckily, there are some brilliant apps on the market for brides to be, designed to make your life easier.

If you're drowning in a sea of receipts, wondering how much cash you spent so far, worried about your iPod playlist screwing up at your reception, or worrying about when you are going to find the time to track down the dress of your dreams or plan the honeymoon of a lifetime, you need our top 10 apps for brides to be.

The apps featured here are the very best on the market and have been tried and tested by us – get downloading and be prepared to feel a whole lot more in control and less stressed!

1. Wedding Happy – Wedding Planner - Free

Wedding planning apps are taking over the App Store, making choosing a good all-rounder a tad confusing.

We like Wedding Happy best – it's super simple to get up and running (you don't even have to input your email address…) and after you enter your anticipated wedding date it builds a customised to-do list for you to work through, with a dashboard overview available at all times. You don't even need a network connection to use it. The handy 'Export & Email' feature lets you send your schedule and vendor information to everyone who needs to know. Facebook and Twitter integration get it a final thumbs up too.

2. Wedding Party - Free

If you want to see your wedding from the eyes of your guests, or simply want access to all the great shots of the day, you'll love Wedding Party, as this app collects wedding photos from all of your guests in one place.

Once your guests have downloaded the app they can share their iPhone photos and leave messages for you.

You get a minute-by-minute timeline of your wedding and can see the bits of your wedding that you missed.

You can set up a free account in a few minutes and then use the invite system to tell your guests you're using Wedding Party and even print out the free posters and place cards to make sure people know to use it.

3. Met Office Weather - Free

What UK-based bride isn't concerned about the weather on her big day? If you're dealt a bad card, you can at least get prepared, right? Heart shaped umbrellas at the ready! We rate the official Met Office weather app with its reliable and detailed 5-day forecasts for over 5,000 UK locations. It'll automatically detect your current location and let you save up to ten favorite places – great if your big day is away from home.

4. Wedding Countdown - Free

Time flies when you're planning a wedding, so it pays to keep track of it. While lots of wedding apps have an integrated wedding day countdown, none are as easily accessible as Wedding Countdown – which does just this one task, but does it well. Choose to countdown in any combination of years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes and seconds, or heartbeats and kisses if you like the cringe factor. We like that you can personalize the countdown with your favorite photos and songs that you have stored in you phone. You can keep the app after your big day and track your anniversaries too.

5. Pinterest - Free

If you aren't already a keen pinner, where have you been? Pinterest is absolutely brilliant for brides to be.

Whether you're deliberating over dresses or collecting ideas for floral arrangements, there are seemingly endless images to inspire you. Why not create your own mood boards and invite your bridesmaids to collaborate with you? As there are millions of people pinning as you read this you'll discover this is a much faster way of discovering gorgeous images and products you're your average search engine – you'll be hooked.

6. Wedding Dress Look Book by The Knot - Free

If you've not found your dream dress yet, you'll love this app from the people behind gigantic wedding website, TheKnot.com. Basically your fairy dressmother, this app is a brilliant on-the-go shopping source for the most spectacular dresses. Enter your vital stats, the style of wedding you're hosting as well as your best and worst features and it'll generate hundreds of dresses, from different designers at different price points, that'll suit you. If you prefer you can simply search via style etc. instead, of course. Bookmark your favourites for later and show your friends. We love it.

7. Wedding Budget - Free

One of the biggest challenges faced by anyone who ever organised a wedding is keeping within budget. This app is a great help, allowing you to keep track of expenses and giving you a clear view of your budget status and whether you're a splurger or saver. Adjusting the budget of each wedding component as planning goes along is easy too. Used from the beginning of your planning, this app puts you in control and may well save you a lot of stress too.

8. TripIt - Free

When it comes to the exciting task of planning your honeymoon, Trip It is indispensible. This handy app lets you have all your plans in one place and cleverly takes all your trip details and creates one truly helpful itinerary that's stored on your iPhone or iPad, sync'd with your calendar, and also online at tripit.com. 

Once you've signed up (which only takes a minute) use the service by simply forwarding confirmation emails to plans@tripit.com - it's almost magical! You can even share your honeymoon plans with friends via Facebook.

9. WeddingDJ - £1.49

If you're planning to run your wedding music from your iPod or iPhone, you need Wedding DJ. This clever app will prevent the wrong song coming on, the order getting muddled or the music cutting out. Use it to plan out all the music you'd like at your wedding, using the songs and playlists you have in your iTunes account. On your wedding day your MC will simply need to slide "next" for each part of your wedding and you can rest assured the music is sorted.

10. MyFitnessPal - Free

A wedding is the perfect motivation to get healthy and look your best. If you've decided to loose a few pounds for your big day, MyFitnessPal is the best calorie counter app out there. You simply set a daily calorie goal (or allow the app to calculate it for you), and record your daily food and exercise to make sure you stay on track. Add friends to motivate one another and update your status too. A fun and free way to watch the pounds melt away.