I became engaged in the fall of 2001, while living in upstate New York (Binghamton).  My engagement glow evaporated as soon as I set the wedding date.  I simply couldn’t believe how many decisions had to be made.  It was so time-consuming.  How do millions of women do this every year AND WORK FULL TIME? 

I had actually planned a number of corporate and personal events in my 20s (I was 30 when I got engaged).  So I knew quite a bit about event planning.  But I needed to find vendors.  I thought that surely there would be one place I could turn to find every service I needed (a caterer, DJ, photographer, venue, etc) and just be done with it.  So I happily set out to identify that source.  I looked.  And I looked.  And I looked.  And then I decided to create it myself. 

This site began as a simple vendor directory for Binghamton.  A printed bridal planner followed and in 2004, we produced our first bridal show (in Binghamton). But then I thought – Why not put those wedding checklists/worksheets at the site so people around the country could use them?  And what if we could help people all over the US find vendors in their communities too?  So we went live with a national event directory at the end of 2009.

Sure, there are already a number of sites out there to help people plan weddings, though we find many to be difficult to navigate and lack fully customizable planning tools.  Plus, it takes some effort to set up an address book, become familiar with planning tools, etc to only use those resources once (hopefully  ). 

And, hey - what about those non-wedding events that take place year after year?  Far more graduation celebrations take place every year than weddings.  And everyone has a birthday, right?  What if you draw the short straw and get saddled with planning your company’s summer picnic or your colleague’s retirement party?  Did you realize when you became senior class president, you’d be largely responsible for organizing your high school reunions for decades to come? 

Wouldn’t it be great to find ALL of the tools you needed to plan ANY type of event –from start to finish – in ONE place?  Wouldn’t it be great to use the same address book for multiple events, held years apart?  And wouldn’t it be really cool if this was all FREE?

What if you could even send an online invite from that same site?  Sure, there are online invite sites, but those sites don’t typically have local vendor directories or event-specific planning checklists and some stick an ad right in the middle of your pretty invitation . 

So we again decided to create this amazing resource ourselves.  We sincerely hope you find:
• our online invites and save-the-date e-cards to be trendy and customizable
• our planning tools to be user-friendly and specific to your particular event
• our vendor directory to be comprehensive
• our planning tips to be relevant (we’re adding new articles all the time)
• and our site to be inviting, clutter-free and easy to use. 

We invite you to help us improve this site.  We LOVE feedback!  Please submit your questions/comments/suggestions via the form on our Contact Us page (link at the bottom) and know that a member of my team will personally respond to each and every submission.

Happy planning!

Kathleen Kilmer
CEO, Easy Event Planning LLC