What weddies does well
weddies, from Engen in Germany, builds online wedding albums that couples run from the website or from the apps for iPhone and Android. Guests need neither an app nor a registration: the album link or QR code and the album password take them straight to the photos and videos in their browser.
The album is organised in folders, as many as the couple wants, for the registry office, the church or the bachelor party. That structure carries one of its distinctive features: on Premium, the couple sets up a folder as a video guestbook, and guests upload their video messages into it, recorded with the camera of their phone. A live slideshow adds newly uploaded photos and videos on its own and plays in a loop, and the couple and, where the couple allows it, the guests download single files or everything at once.
Premium keeps the album online, and open to uploads, for a long time, and its term begins once the album is in use rather than on the day of purchase. weddies also offers photo challenge templates made in Canva, which the couple can adapt and print. If a video guestbook is what you have in mind, weddies offers one, and EventAssets does not.
Where EventAssets offers more
EventAssets starts before the photos. Each event has its own page with the schedule, the location on a map and what guests should know, and the same page collects the replies: guests find their name, answer for their whole party and fill in your questions before a deadline you set. The guest list feeds the seating chart, where you place tables and seat parties together, and guests later look up their table on the same page. Budgets with line items, planned and actual amounts and due dates sit beside it.
The guestbook takes written messages and voice recordings made in the browser, signed with a name from the guest list or left anonymous, and you can review the entries before they appear. In the gallery, uploads can wait for your approval before anyone else sees them, on every plan, and albums keep the ceremony, the dinner and the party apart. Photos and videos keep their original quality on the free plan too.
An album for the wedding, or a home for the event
The core difference is what each one is for. weddies is an album for the wedding: it fills when the first photos arrive, keeps them in folders, plays them on the day and keeps them for as long as the plan runs. EventAssets is a home for the event: it begins with the page you send with the invitation, holds the replies, the seating and the budget, and keeps the photos, videos and messages afterwards.
How long guests can upload and how long the gallery stays online depends on the plan with both; the table above sets the windows side by side, with the price of each plan. If you only need the album, compare those rows. If you would otherwise combine an invitation tool, a spreadsheet for the seating and a separate guestbook, compare the planning rows as well.
What to check before you decide
Count your guests and estimate how much they will send, videos included. Decide whether messages should be written, spoken or filmed: for filmed messages, weddies has its video guestbook; for written and spoken ones, EventAssets has its guestbook. Decide whether you want to approve uploads before they appear, and whether the replies and the seating chart belong in the same place as the photos. Then pick the plan that covers it, with either provider, and try the free plan first. With EventAssets, the event page, the guest list and the guestbook are yours to set up before you pay anything.
