April 14 is the day I got married. And in the two years of organizing, there were a few apps in iOS 15 that we used constantly to make sure everything was paid for and perfectly timed to play its part for the day.
Planning a wedding involves tasks you'd never expect to deal with, from agreeing on music to play while you sign the marriage certificate, to checking to see if the best man has picked the right tree trunks for the table. .
If we didn't have our iPhones and apps handy, we might have had to hire a wedding planner to avoid the multiple stressful moments we would have inevitably had.
But luckily, there were five apps that helped us deal with big parts of the wedding that I wasn't expecting when I proposed to her in 2020.
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Apple's Notes app is the one I've relied on since the first version of iOS. It's simple, useful, and has always helped me remember what to do for certain tasks.
For marriage, its usefulness has been taken to another level, thanks in part to the ability to manage notes with someone.
The fact that we added and removed checklists over the two years helped a lot, especially when an update can come as a push notification.
things 3
While we've been planning the wedding since 2020, the chores didn't really pick up until earlier this year, which is when a to-do app came along.
After testing other apps in this category, like OmniFocus, Things 3 won with its Today screen quick actions. I could add and remove popup tasks, and they would also appear in a useful widget on my iPhone.
Not only is it available on your iPhone for $9.99 / $9.99 / AU$11.99, it's also available on the iPad for $19.99 / $19.99 / AU$24.99 and on the Mac for $49.99 / $29.99 / AU$59.99.
Getting reminders to pay for a photo booth or decide on types of flowers in Things has been a huge help. In fact, it was so useful that I extended it to other aspects of my life, including my job at TechRadar and hobbies like, embarrassingly, the weekly Fortnite challenges.
Shazam
Spotify and Apple Music are two apps that I have used constantly over the last decade. I still pay for iTunes Match, which is an annual service that allows me to host all the music content I have on my iPod.
For the wedding itself, Spotify came in handy for organizing the entire playlist from start to finish, mainly due to the ability to have collaborative playlists.
This allowed us to add and remove songs from a playlist as we pleased, with our initials telling each of us who added the most embarrassing song of the night.
However, Shazam has been very helpful in helping us discover artists and tracks that we might never have considered. Going to bridal parties and stores, we listened to a lot of music, and by using Shazam to find out what the tracks were, we were able to add them to our Spotify and Apple Music playlists.
It's a useful app that can help bolster your music library in whatever music app you use, without being intrusive.
A recent update also allows Shazam to be set as a shortcut in Control Center in iOS 15, saving you time before the track stops playing.
angry birds
For me, directing a wedding is like spinning 50 plates standing on one leg and reciting the alphabet backwards in Spanish.
And that can lead to times when you just want to escape planning, choosing, and paying, and just play a game instead.
This is where I decided to revisit some games thanks to Apple Arcade and rediscovered Angry Birds. It was an ideal choice to alleviate some of the frustration that came with some costumes in February.
The game's creator, Rovio, also re-released the original game on iOS and Android, which I quickly downloaded. Flipping Angry Birds through four worlds on my iPhone 13 Pro proved to be a great way to relieve stress while on a train reshuffling costumes or deciding on the right kind of chairs for the reception.
monzo jars
Weddings cost money, a lot of money. If you want to make sure that location or items you've treasured for years can be a part of your special day, you'll hear the word deposit a lot until the big day.
It's also a great lesson in managing your funds, and that's where the Monzo feature came in handy. Jackpots are a way to transfer money to tranches that your debit card can't use. These are basically saving methods without creating a savings account.
You can block a pot to prevent you from taking money from it, as well as name it whatever you want and put a picture on it. If you wish, you can set all transactions to round the payment to the nearest unit, and the reserve currency is sent to this pot.
This keeps you from worrying about how much you've prepared for your wedding or other savings goals, while also ensuring that you're safe from temptation.