Digital Invitations & AI: A Small Effort to Make Wedding Planning a Bit Easier

Source: Dev.to

Introduction

Weddings are beautiful, but they can also be incredibly overwhelming. Between managing guest lists, answering the same questions about venues a hundred times, and trying to keep everyone updated, the joy of planning can sometimes feel like a second job.

While preparing for my own journey, I realized that most digital invitations were just static pages that didn’t really solve these problems. I wanted to build something that could actually help—both the couple and their guests. What started as a personal project evolved into next‑wedding‑generator, a small CLI tool I’ve shared on NPM to help others scaffold their own interactive wedding sites.

My goal was to create a “Quick Start” foundation. By running a single command, you get a full Next.js application that is already set up with the features I found most useful.

Features

• AI Assistant – Integrated with Google Gemini 2.5‑flash, a floating assistant can answer guest questions instantly (e.g., parking, snack times, couple’s story).
• Personalized Links – Generates unique IDs so each guest only sees the events they’re invited to.
• Digital Guestbook – Guests can upload photos directly from their phones to a masonry wall (via Cloudinary).
• Shared Playlist – A simple queue where guests can request songs for the reception.
• Admin Control – A basic dashboard to manage the guest list and track RSVPs without needing complex databases.

Tech Stack

• Next.js & HeroUI – For a clean, modern look that works well on mobile.
• Firebase – Handles real‑time wishes and RSVPs.
• Resend – Sends helpful “day‑before” email reminders.

These tools are reliable and relatively easy to set up for anyone with a bit of web knowledge.

Getting Started

1. Generate – Run npx next-wedding-generator in your terminal.
2. Setup – Fill in your own API keys in the .env file (a guide is included in the README).
3. Personalize – Replace the placeholder photos in the public folder with your own.

Contributing

I’m still learning, and this tool is just a small contribution to the community. I hope it saves a few couples some stress and adds a little digital magic to their big day. If you find it useful or have ideas on how to improve it, I’d love to hear from you.

Project Links

• 📦 NPM: next-wedding-generator
• 💻 GitHub: titasmallick/wedding-site-gen

Wishing you a stress‑free and beautiful celebration! 💍✨